ARIANESPACE : how to reduce launch cost down to €90M for 10+ ton-loads

SpaceX arrive à 60 M$ par lancement (6 T. aujourd'hui avec Falcon 9), les fusées Delta ou Atlas à près de 200 M$ et Ariane 5 (qui lance plus de 10 T.) à 150 à 175 M$. Ariane 6 permettra de réaliser entre 40 et 50 % d'économie, sans être réutilisable. Elle offrira deux fois plus de masse et de volume qu'un Falcon 9 à un prix divisé par deux. Premier vol commercial en 2021 et service op. (12 lancements par an) en 2023. De son côté, avec le projet Adeline, Airbus Defence and Space développe des concepts de fusées en partie réutilisables.

SPACEX: how to make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than the competition.

SpaceX currently charges $61.2 million per launch. Its cost-per-kilogram of cargo to low-earth orbit, $4,653, is far less than the $14,000 to $39,000 offered by its chief American competitor, the United Launch Alliance. Other providers like Arianespace often charge $250 to $400 million per launch. The secret to the low cost is relatively simple, at least in principle: Do as much as possible in-house, in an integrated manufacturing facility, with modern components; and avoid the unwieldy supply chains, legacy designs, layers of contractors, and “cost-plus” billing that characterised SpaceX’s competitors. Can the $6 million launch—or even cheaper—replace the $60 million launch?

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ONLINE ADS RULES: do nothing under 1M views (over 30 sec.). The Bel case.

One key success factor to emerge in online ad for a consumer brand is: "do nothing below 1M views or visits. Otherwise, there is not enough momentum. Then, do little but massive campaigns just like on TV and keep focused. That's for the media strategy. As for teh organisation, give your Digital Directors enough power on a large perimeter so they can catch the value chain big picture and so they can work with the marketing teams the way Brand Managers do."

VALUE-ADDED NEWS: why are they pushed toward subscription-based models?

4 factors contribute to the resurgence of paid-for news. 1. The weakness of digital advertising for news. In short, all indicators are flashing red (revenue per page, per user, tolerance to ads, ad-blockers). 2. The hijacking of distribution platforms. Combined, Facebook and Google capture roughly 75% of digital ad spending in the United States and 95% of its growth. 3. The rise of Fake News. Mostly spread over Facebook, the phenomenon fueled the discredit of the pervasive social network. 4. The Trump Communication Machine with the novel concept of “alternative facts”.

SEA FREIGHT: new business models with robot ships on the high seas by 2020.

More than 90% of world trade is carried by sea. Between 75 and 96% of marine accidents are a result of human error, often a result of fatigue (source: Allianz). Remotely controlled and autonomous ships would reduce the risk of such mistakes. The threat posed by piracy to ships and their crews would also be reduced. The total cost of piracy in 2013 was estimated at $3.2 billion. Even though the total cost of ransoms and stolen goods approached zero: 90% of the cost encompasses military operations and security equipment and guards (source: Towergate insurance).

BLOCKCHAIN & BITCOIN IN ESTONIA: shaping a future new development model.

The Estonians started implementing blockchain solutions back in 2015 and attempted to deal with 2 issues: 1) to embrace the advantages of blockchain (transparency of storage and data transmission, cutting expenses for intermediaries and document flow, etc.); 2) to find an unconventional solution for the country’s ageing population by attracting young and economically active without requirement to physically stay in Estonia. This gave birth to projects such as e- Residency, public notary, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin ATMs...

HINKLEY POINT C: the 4 risky bets of EDF in the UK.

What: 2 EPR nuclear reactors planned for 2025. Bet #1: relaunch nuclear in Europe. Hinkley Point C should produce 7% of the British electricity needs (7 out of the 8 currently running nuclear plants should be closed before 2030). Bet#2: a major strategic project for EDF. The British gov. guarantees a purchasing price of €108,9/MWh (i.e. above the market) during at least 35 years. Bet #3: a technological & industrial risk? No EPR reactor has ever produced any kW. Bet #4: the huge project cost of €21Bn (66% of which is funded by EDF, and 33% by Chinese CGN).

JUSTICE-AS-A SERVICE: 4 reasons why this on-demand service may soon take off.

Justice-as-a-Service is an on-demand service, powered by tech, that challenges private and public companies by representing the consumer in their fight for justice/compensation based on laws, consumers’ rights, and contract of carriage. 4 reasons why JaaS could take off: 1- You don’t know your consumer rights. 2- You don’t know how to claim and neither does the service provider. 3- You don’t have the time to fight for your rights. 4- The chances of your claim being rejected is very high.

4.0 CONNECTED FACTORY: estimating the ROI of predictive maintenance.

The automotive subcontractor equipped 240 of its factories in the world with connected objects allowing predictive maintenance: the system detects machine failures before they happen and implement corrective measures. In the case of the Moulins-Yzeure French factory, one worker in each team saves 4 hours a day with this new system. The total investment ranges between €200k and €500k for a factory producing 5M EPS braking systems a year.

DUBAI: self-flying taxis ready to take off in July 2017.

These four-legged, eight-propeller drones can carry a single passenger that weighs up to 100 kg (220 lb) and operate within an area of up to 50 km (31 miles) on a single battery charge, it can reach speeds of 160 km an hour. The Chinese-made EHang 184 vehicles have already been tested in the skies above Dubai. The United Arab Emirates as a whole is becoming a hub for futuristic transport. Dubai signed a deal with Hyperloop One in November to study the viability of linking the city-state with Abu Dhabi through a vacuum-sealed tube in 12 min.

COSMETICS: any business model for reaching out to the long tail of YouTubers?

Multi-channel networks like Machinima and Makers are taking care of the top 1% of pro YouTubers. The French startup Octoly wants to create a marketplace for brands and the long tail of YouTubers. Octoly monitors 800,000 channels worldwide and a million videos every day in order to identify new YouTubers and track existing creating partners. Birchbox France is paying Octoly €3,000 a month to ship free makeup boxes to these YouTubers for reviewing.

UPS is testing drones that allow its delivery trucks to be in two places at once

The drone-and-van solution allows drivers to ship packages from a certain distance with 30-minute autonomous drones. Being able to cut a single mile from a driver’s daily route saves the company up to $50 million each year (UPS has around 66,000 drivers out on the road). This could be a good alternative delivery mode for rural zones. However, this test should not go live soon (at least in the coming 3 years) as federal regulations passed in 2016 prohibit drone operators from flying them beyond their line of sight.

TRAFFIC: the huge cost of congestion studied in 1064 cities over 38 countries.

The largest ever study of traffic congestion shows that drivers spend an average of 42 hours a year in traffic during peak hours. The direct and indirect costs of congestion to all U.S. drivers amount to nearly $300 billion in 2016, an average of $1,400 per driver. At the global city level, Los Angeles tops the list of the world’s most gridlocked cities, with drivers spending 104 peak hours in congestion in 2016, followed by Moscow (91 hours), New York (89 hours), San Francisco (83 hours) and Bogota (80 hours).

ICT: worldwide interactive risk map and steady sector growth

The Information and Communication Technology sector (ICT) grew steadily at +2.5% in 2015 and rose by +2.7% in 2016. At present, the services segment (70% of sales) and Asia (37% market share) are the two main drivers. Despite its apparent maturity, the sector remains under constant pressures from: (i) declining prices; (ii) the need to constantly renew the goods and services offered; and (iii) relations between manufacturers and service providers.

GOPRO: the rise and fall of an innovative product on a niche market

GoPro closed out the previous quarter with a rash of bad news. The company suffered from production issues with its flagship Hero5 camera and Karma drone, and then had to issue a recall for the small number of drones on the market when they discovered they were falling out of the sky. GoPro is also facing stiff competition from Chinese companies like DJI in the drone market, which GoPro is relying on as a new revenue stream. More generally, GoPro may be facing an existential crisis as fewer consumers find the need to upgrade their existing GoPro to a newer model every year.

FINANCE : is the blockchain disrupting the banking business model?

In 2016, many predicted that the blockchain would totally disrupt the chain of trust and that we would simply get rid of trusted third-parties, but it's rather the contrary that has happened so far: the traditional trusted third-parties (like banks) already have integrated the blockchain before it becomes popularised. The technology is still in early stages because of limited computing power, lack of standardisation and in particular because of security breaches.

AIR TRANSPORT : LHLC (long haul low cost), the new frontier

The pan-Scandinavian carrier Norwegian recently launched 10 new transatlantic routes from Ireland and Scotland to the US with some tickets as low as £69. But by kicking off such low prices; Norwegian intends to replicate what made them Europe’s eighth biggest airline, carrying 30 million passengers a year compared with 12 million just five years ago. The business model is still flimsy but productivity is optimised (6,000h flight/year for the 737 i.e. 18h/day) and is combined with improved generations of single-aisle jets.

AGRICULTURE: The Drone Revolution and Australian Agriculture, case study.

Farmers can make sound business decisions based upon real-time high quality data thanks to drones: the cheapest aircraft costs $580,000 to buy and around $400 /hr to operate. By comparison, drones cost only cents per hour to operate. In a typical, 20-minute quadcopter flight, a drone will take around 10,000 photographs from a systematic grid pattern and measure pasture dry matter, identify mid-field weed, variable-rate fertility, monitor cattle movements or bush fires... A 5% improvement in yield would be $450k more revenue, so the payback period on a $50k drone is 6 weeks.

POLAROID: an impossible project becomes possible

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BUSINESS MODEL: Why Companies Fail? 200 company post mortems to understand.

Companies--startup or established-- still focus very much on products and value propositions. Addressing a relevant market need only gives you the right to compete. Figuring out a profitable, scalable, and competitive business model is what gives you the right to succeed. 4 assumptions to consider: 1- Feasibility (chose the right infrastructure to execute your business model well) 2- Desirability (create customer value) 3- Viability (profitability) 4- Adaptability (strategy regarding external factors, like competition, technology change, or regulation).

RENAULT: a $4,000 car with ceremony can be as disruptive as the Tesla Model 3

What is disruption? Its definition is usually limited to autonomy, electrification, and still undefined pitch words like mobility. In India, where the average wage is low, it starts with an affordable car that isn’t a complete piece of junk. This is where the Renault Kwid comes in ($4,000). But, more important, for the 90% of Kwid customers whom are first time car buyers, ritual matters. And this is why the Renault car dealers do a Puja which is a prayer ritual meant to spiritually celebrate an event. This is really disruptive.

TRANSPOD: between train and plane, business plan of the Canadian Hyperloop project

Sébastien Gendron is crystal clear on this: this is technically the most reliable Hyperloop project. Funding is estimated between $300M and $500M. Transpod closed a seed round in 2016 for $15M and aims to have the test track ready to test prototypes by 2019, with commercialization targeted for 2022. This hyperloop system would whisk lightweight composite-fibre passenger pods through 4-metre-tall vacuum cylinders using a frictionless magnetic levitation system at speeds of up to 1,000 km/h. Sébastien has engineers already working on 5G trains (Paris - Beijing in 90 mn!).

DEEP WEB & DARK WEB: the critical issues of due diligences, e-reputation and top managers physical safety.

The surface (visible) web is in fact very limited: 90% of the web is non-indexed content (Deep Web) and Dark Web (encrypted non searchable). This huge hidden net is a valuable source of critical intelligence in different cases: due diligence (attending private forums for instance), e-reputation (anticipate destabilisation) or cybersecurity (detect threats or data/hardware robbery and kidnapping). The high risks in this underground net require the help of specialists.

PRODUCTION METRICS: what correlation is there between reliability and safety?

One recurring topic in business models is about maintenance. This is an important cost center where the investment is key in particular regarding human safety. Two thoughts: 1- The probability of an injury is significantly increased with non-routine maintenance activity resulting from equipment failures. 2- Connecting the importance of human safety to the importance of equipment reliability is critical in driving an injury-free culture. Moving from an expensive corrective maintenance to a preventive and finally to a predictive one can be achieved by using IoT.

AUTOMATED INBOUND MARKETING: the Netflix case

At Netflix, the Content Platform Engineering and Global Product Creative teams know that imagery plays an incredibly important role in how viewers find new shows and movies to watch. Identifying the unique elements of a story that connect the audiences to diverse characters and story lines is key. As the content slate continues to expand, Netflix technical experts are tasked with finding new ways to scale the resources and alleviate the creatives from the tedious and ever-increasing demands of digital merchandising. One of the ways is to use automated search and caption.

FRENCH CHILDCARE MARKET: last man standing strategies

With no surprise, a major amalgation takes place on the French chidlcare market due to different factors: a slowdown in birth rate and the fierce competition of pure players like Amazon. The direct result is H3M (Compagnie des Petits) buying CDM (Allobébé), Orchestra Prémaman restructuring its debt (-9% in Q1 turnover), Sergent Major buying DPAM and Kidiliz (Catimini, Chipie) turning Chinese... A typical amalgation found in last man standing strategies.

FRENCH MILITARY BUDGET: new configuration for new threats

The global French military budget will increase from €45.09Bn in 2018 to €46.72Bn in 2019. External ops get a +28% rise (€850M), as well as the Sentinelle operation (securing public space) with +16% at €360M. The airforce should get a 14th Airbus A400M (€180M), 2 Lockheed tanker aircrafts C-130J (€160M), an Airbus A330 MRTT (Multi Role Tanker Transport) at €175M.

VIDEO GAMES: the Fortnite phenomenon

Fortnite is a third-person multiplayer multiplatform shooter (PC, console, smartphone) and has generated over $1Bn for its developer since launching in Oct 2017 to May 2018, with $296M in April alone and $130M in profit. By mid-2018, the game was making $2M in revenue per day on iOS alone. The amount of these revenues is all the more astonishing as the game is free. Its revenues come from micro-transactions or purchase of extra cosmetic content.

FERRY SERVICES: new opportunities thanks to Brexit

The British government is taking weeks of chaos at the port of Dover into account, should the UK leave the EU with no deal in place: Scotland wants a direct ferry connection with Europe. The ferries would sail between Rosyth and Eemshaven (NL) on a daily basis leading to important markets for the Scottish whiskey- and wood industry, such as Germany, Denmark and Italy.

HEALTHCARE: $650M raised on GoFundMe in the US to pay healthcare bills

One in three campaigns through GoFundMe are for medical costs: there are over 250,000 medical campaigns per year raising $650 million each year. The costs are tremendous and for many people, health insurance is no longer affordable. In 2018, the average silver based plan for a 40 year old is close to $6,000 yearly and the average deductible is about $4,000. GoFundMe is one way to pay the bill but charity is not the answer to funding the US healthcare needs

CINEMA: Quibi's innovative narrative, production and business model

Quibi’s concept: original content made exclusively for the smartphone. Films, documentaries, and news content will be sliced into “quick bites” — hence the name. Making this work will require many breakthroughs: format & narration techniques (movies sliced in 7–10-minute episodes with one release per day), production techniques (the stories can be seen on both portrait and landscape viewing, a technology called “Turnstyle”), business model (including ads sliced into 10-15 seconds). Jeffrey Katzenberg and Med Whitman raised $1,4bn to get started on April 6, 2020.

SCOOTERS: a fast-learning market heading (at last) to profits

All free-floating operators are still losing money. The reason is to be found in the rather expensive business model, lying on costly machines with short lifespans. Things may change as their are expanding their products lifespan with more robust scooters designs (from 3 to 12-14 months). They use self-employed workers picking up as many machines as possible to charge them during the night and bring them back on the streets before 7 a.m. The use of removable batteries will improve the process. And prices are starting to rise (from $0,15 to $0,39 /min.). A more mature market.

RETAIL : 5 tips to handle a tough negotiation

Wise tips from a former member of the elite Police Tactical Unit of the French National Gendarmerie, when you have to deal with a difficult negotiation: - a healthy lifestyle (no alcohol - at least during the negotiation period of time ;-) - physical activity to ge rid of muscle tension - 15 to 20 min recovery time after lunch - process a mental image of success before the negotiation rounds - regularity of the lifestyle (bedtime in particular)

ENERGY: a positive energy residential building case study

One Hundred Elithis ‘Energy-Positive’ Resi Towers to Rise over European Skylines from €2 billion Investment based on previous achievements: a firt energy-positive office tower delivered in Dijon in 2009 still outperforms industry regulatory requirements and standard certifications ; the world’s first energy-positive residential tower built in Strasbourg in 2018 shows how the inhabitants can save around €1,600 per year in energy costs. This last building complies with the average market building cost of €1,300/m2.

AD AGENCIES: new business model ahead

Business models are broken, leaders are toppling, agencies are consolidating. In-housing, predatory consultants and automation are ratcheting up the pressure. But out of the apparent chaos comes opportunity: agencies have the opportunity to change their flawed business model by hiring the best talent and charging accordingly; to demand to be remunerated for the growing and multi-faceted contribution they provide to clients’ businesses as well as the "big ideas"; to use technology to take on the most mundane tasks.

Covid-19 and Flash's super-power

The coronavirus outbreak is first and foremost a human tragedy, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. It is also having a growing impact on the global economy. Large-scale quarantines, travel restrictions, and social-distancing measures drive a sharp fall in consumer and business slowing down most of the economies. A weird time in which we move faster than the business world, just like if we had the Flash's power: run faster than light. What can we do with such a (limited in time) super-power?...

What sales strategy in times of Covid-19?

Jean-Louis Soudan facilitated this webinar

The dark kitchen phenomenon

Also known as ghost, virtual, cloud, central, satellite and commissary kitchens, dark kitchen is a relatively new term used to describe a commercial kitchen without a dining area; the food cooked is purely for onward delivery. Many benefits: greater efficiency, cost savings, market expansion possibilities, consistency and quality. With low start-up costs, flexible contracts and 24/7 access, it’s a win all round – the venue owner achieves their rental income, the tenant benefits from the commercial kitchen environment and the general public continue to have cheap good meals.

GAMESTOP: how Robinhood is linked to the sheriff of Nottingham

One of the things that has always complicated Robinhood’s finance-for-the-little-guy pitch is that it works hand in glove with the big guys. The main way the brokerage makes money is that it sells its retail transactions to large trading companies that execute the trades. Robinhood Securities received $71 million in order flow payments for stocks and options in December, according to a filing, more than half of which came from hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities.

CINEMA: China no longer needs Hollywood movies

China doesn’t need Hollywood anymore… Chinese box offices broke all-time records over the Lunar New Year weekend with a $775 million haul, led by homegrown franchise feature Detective Chinatown 3. This is the latest demonstration that China’s film industry is perfectly capable of raking in piles of cash without importing the Hollywood blockbusters that used to account for nearly half of its revenues.

SHIPPING: carbon neutrality (new key selling point)

Maersk, the world’s second-largest shipping line pledged to make its business carbon neutral by 2040. The rest of the shipping industry is lagging, but Maersk’s announcement raises the pressure on its rivals, all of whom are sitting on billions of dollars of pandemic profits, to cut emissions more aggressively. It’s in their interest to catch up: Ambitious climate goals are a key selling point to discerning customers in a cutthroat industry.

E01 - 1st contact email

E02: Discovery call

E03 - Response to tenders

E04 - The pitch

Grendizer, go or no go?

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