Parabole de la patate chaude

CATHERINE COSTE

Published in

The French Tech Comedy

9 min readApr 1, 2018

This is episode 21 of The French Tech Comedy Season 2 (French Version).

For Jean-Michel Billaut.

Episode 20: X-road DMP (French Version)

Previously in The French Tech Comedy: In Season 2 of The French Tech Comedy, we follow characters like Japanese oncologist and bioinformatics engineer Takafumi Nagato, who is leading the lab of Bioinformatics for personalised CAR-T-therapies in a Tokyo clinic, and his patient, Chinese giant TenBa’s founder Ken Ba, a zillionaire from Shanghai. Yuki, Taka’s sister, is a French-speaking geisha, meaning “artist” in Japanese, in touch with the French Tech. She just got married to a French engineer who was working in Taka’s lab, Nono, and has secretly donated her healthy T-cells to Taka’s patient who, after his second cancer relapse, decided to try an innovative treatment called “liquid biopsy”. Indeed, Ba is becoming an expert in genomic precision medicine. In his case it is a matter of life or death. Among Yuki’s friends in the French Tech branch is Frederic Mougin, a biologist, founder of the startup Gene-i-us:

“We are developing a patient-centric tool for patients to collect, share & monetize their medical, genomics, lifestyle, IoT data with academics & pharma industry.”

Yuki had promised she would introduce Mougin to people working with Facebook Singapore; among them: Nono. What biz plan can Gene-i-usimplement, in order to work with Facebook? Mougin is using a lot of buzz words, but when it turns out Ba’s cancer mutation has entered the stock exchange market, thanks to the efforts of a pharmaceutical company, his oncologist, Taka, fears a Ba Gate. More than ever, the privacy of genetic data is instrumental in the process of developing precision medicine. Singapore is the Chinese Mecca of I.P. and patents. A cryptocurrency, that is seen by financial specialists as a security, is used as a way to reward (healthy and sick) patients in exchange of their DNA data. Yuki is wondering if this kind of money will revolutionise the whole financial and pharmaceutical market as we know it, or will all digital currencies end up behaving like any other tradable financial asset? After all, a security is a tradable financial asset. Ba, Taka’s cancer patient, is trying to gain insight into the situation… While spending a few days in Malaysia both for business and vacation, TenBa’s founder gets to meet with a total stranger who in fact he only knows too well: Simone, Malaysian Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh’s niece. Between Ba and Simone, things are complicated. But it is only the beginning… Simone is trying to make an algorithmic cryptocurrency that could mimmic biological processes within the human body. Meanwhile, Manga artist Koba writes about the blurring frontier between curing and enhancing in the genomic precision medicine era, and the consequences in society. At school, Simone needs to present her Science Fair project alone. Overanxious auntie Michellehad bribed a student from Simone’s class. She wanted her niece’s science fair presentation to be filmed, live. A few days later, she sent a link to a video to a friend of hers, Chinese giant TenBa’s founder Ken Ba, a zillionaire from Shanghai. She’d compiled a 10 minutes extract for him to see, and a question:

“ — What do you think?” Ba said the video was very interesting and offered to have lunch in Ipoh, Michelle’s home town, next weekend, and discuss things. Simone, meanwhile, is stuck in Bangkok, where Ba has sent her a T-shirt as a thank-you gift, she’s not sure why. Also, as a hacker having served time in a Beijing prison, she is suffering from post-traumatic stress. In Singapore, rockstar US physician Tamir Subramanian is a keynote speaker at Facebook’s “The Patient Will See You Now” Breakfast. In the conference room nearby, a Facebook Open Day Q&A session for students from local high schools has just started. Simone is attending, she gets to meet with Nono, who ends up inviting her for lunch at the famous Facebook cafeteria. How to program a digital currency with its own blockchain, taking advantage (or mimicking) the underpinnings of the biological mechanisms of epigenetics? Simone, Nono and Yuki are trying to reflect on this. Yuki and Simone end up talking about reincarnation and video games, while shopping at Daiso, in Suntec City mall, Singapore. Close nearby is South Beach Tower, with the Facebook company at level 22. Rockstar US physician Tamir Subramanian, editor in chief of the Transversal J Med, is interviewing Geronimo Faber PhD, who is spearheading the global crusade to defeat ageing. Nono is watching the one-on-one interview, a video that was just posted on the Transversal Journal of Medicine’s website. The whole thing is boring, and Faber still needs money. Nono revamps the boring video, writing a new episode for the Japanese Manga Saint Oniisan (Saint Young Men), in French: Les Vacances de Jésus et Bouddha (Jesus and Buddha On Vacation). He is almost done, when he gets a call from the Big Boss… Zuck wants his platform to revolutionise healthcare. Koba the manga artist is writing the story of Pierre, an “augmented” patient. The manga book, for US rockstar physician Sub, is called: The Augmented Patient Will See You Now. French actor Jean Reno gets to read François Mueller’s book: The Tsunami of Digital in Medicine. Bad timing, though, as French actor Reno is not happy with medicine and the health care system at the moment… “ — Digital tsunami in medicine, really? I’m waiting???”, he thought. Meanwhile, Simone and Yuki are talking about education and school, and music, discovering the Yin-Yang of friendship. Anti-ageing activist and scientist Geronimo Faber PhD finally gets substantial funding for his labs, but in return he must offer something… Time goes by… We hear about Simone again, but this time, we discover a new woman; not the teenage hacker with a borderline personality, brilliant, but making people worry about her. Simone is back with a bang, or to be more accurate, a made-in-blockchain press project, and she gets to meet with Ba again, at last. And as the geek saying goes, you never play the same dungeon twice… Simone gets to prove that her business plan is scalable, and she gets TenBa’s attention. Meanwhile, Yuki gets some unwanted attention. US rockstar physician Sub is all ears when she interviews French biologist Mougin, about his startup Gene-i-us. Her YouTube channel A Geisha lost between two worlds attracts job and sponsor offers that she is not sure she wants to get. Sub wants her to do some made-in-the-US genomic entertainment. But Yuki loves la chanson française and she is up to something in Singapore, with Nono’s complicity… In France, computer programming genius Fabrice Bellard talks to physicians about digital medicine and submits a Proof of Concept (POC) to a small software publisher. As a result, something that it is about to make history in medicine… Fabrice Bellard reflects on the hype about startups in France.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Le programmeur de génie Fabrice Bellard écoute la chanson de Jacques Dutronc, un classique. “Il est cinq heures, Paris s’éveille.”

“Il est cinq heures les startupeurs sont lessivés

Les financiers vont s’rhabiller.”

Il songe un instant à ce qu’écrirait un Jacques Dutronc qui aurait moins de 20 ans et aurait sa startup dans la musique aujourd’hui … Mais son truc à lui, c’est la programmation informatique, pas l’écriture de paroles percutantes, qui font mouche. Pourtant, il y aurait à dire sur la relation entre les startups et les grands groupes en France. Une startup qui réussit, et qui rapporte de l’argent, est une patate chaude pour un grand groupe qui y a investi. Une patate trop chaude pour être mangée par ledit grand groupe.

Le “funding” de startups intéresse les grands groupes français pour se donner bonne image auprès du public et des politiques, ainsi que des avantages fiscaux, ou encore booster les relations avec leurs clients. Plein de raisons diverses, toutes aussi bonnes les unes que les autres. Mais ils ne savent pas quoi faire d’une startup qui réussit : elle va se trouver en concurrence avec leur propre business model, qui va du coup se trouver “disrupté”, estampillé “ancien”, “d’un autre âge”, “dépassé”, “pas compétitif” ...

Une startup doit croître très vite et très fort, grâce à des injections massives de capitaux. Un genre de boost sous amphétamines, dopé par des afflux massifs de capitaux. A la fin de la croissance de la startup (3–5 ans), le but c’est la revente avec forte marge — deux à trois fois les capitaux investis.

Les investisseurs institutionnels (les grands groupes français) ne veulent pas de la revente avec forte marge parce qu’ils font ça pour l’image, l’argent mis dans les startups vient d’un budget marketing dont on n’attend surtout pas de retour ! Si vous bossez ou avez bossé au marketing d’un grand groupe, vous savez de quoi je parle. Moi j’ai bossé dans une startup, Intuitive Surgical Europe, au Marketing. On me reprochait de dépenser l’argent sans retour ! Je faisais le même boulot juste avant dans les assurances risque industriel (groupe américain), eux ils avaient l’air de trouver tout à fait normal que le budget marketing corresponde à de l’argent “claqué”. On me disait même souvent :

“ — La chance. Toi tu bosses au marketing, ton boulot c’est de claquer le pognon.”

La startup qui réussit cause deux problèmes aux grands groupes : s’ils la gardent dans leur giron, elle se trouve en concurrence avec leurs lignes de métier et l’encadrement traditionnel, et si la startup est revendue à l’externe, ça va créer une concurrence externe en facilitant l’arrivée d’un banquier étranger, ou de la concurrence avec des clients étrangers. Bref, on touche l’argent d’une main, on introduit le loup dans la bergerie de l’autre. La patate chaude.

Si le fleuron français (issu d’une startup) est vendu malgré tout à l’étranger, les politiciens et Français sont réticents à la vente à un acteur étranger, et vont tout faire pour s’y opposer. Il suffit de voir l’exemple de Dailymotion.

Les grands groupes français ne veulent pas revendre les startups, et les Français sont réticents à la vente de fleurons français à l’étranger. Au mieux les startups sont condamnées au rôle de Poulidor de l’économie française. Poulidor, l’éternel numéro deux dans la course cycliste, qui n’a jamais accédé aux podiums, mais a frôlé la victoire à chaque fois. Sympa, en plus, ce coureur. Très populaire, le Poupou. Aussi populaire qu’une startup française … Les startups françaises souffrent du syndrome de Poulidor …

Raymond Poulidor - Wikipédia

Raymond Poulidor, dit " Poupou ", est un coureur cycliste français, né le à Masbaraud-Mérignat, dans la Creuse. Sa…

fr.wikipedia.org

Dans deux ou trois ans, le prestigieux Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, qui a son centre d’innovation à Taïwan, en ouvrira deux autres : Pékin et Shanghai. Ils l’ont annoncé l’hiver dernier. Les temps changent. Avec le temps, le syndrome Poupou va peut-être pouvoir être guéri …