My 2022 Year in Review
Welcome to 2023, my friend. While 2021 was very family oriented as we were all adjusting to Covid restrictions, I for the first time in almost 2 years managed to travel internationally again.
It felt great to be traveling to Europe, where I spent almost 4 months this year 2022.
Health
As part of my longevity diet (disclosure: I am an investor in Novos), I had a sugar-free year, meaning 12 months without refined white sugar, added or as part of ingredients.
While it was easy to cut added sugars from coffee and other substances, it was a lot more challenging to remove 100% white refined sugar (not the one you got from carbs or fruits) from my diet. Basically, it took me the discipline to check or ask if any sugar was added to pretty much anything you’d found in a bakery or in a food can (or even French sausage). And of course, processed juice or pretty much anything in a bottle (two years alcohol-free already!) that is not just water.
At first, as I cut completely sugar, I had craving for bread. That was somehow manageable while I was in China but as I enter the land of the baguette, I quickly decided to also cut bread.
In 2023, I will continue the Alcohol & Sugar-free diet — along with a healthy dose of sports, and regular 8 hours of sleep.
Wealth
Another year, another batch of successes to celebrate. As I look back at 2022, here is a snapshot of my investment so far:
I was expecting to double down on Crypto in 2022, and while the market was somehow unexpectedly challenging for everyone Hodling (“hold on for dear life”), I ended up doing overall pretty well.
The Algo Trading company I co-founded caught most of the crashes (Luna & FTX) and benefited from them as our bots got trained to trade from discrepancies in the market, profitably and at scale.
I also invested in another algorithmic trading company in Singapore, which is less into High-Frequency Trading and favor Directional Trading strategies.
I connected with tons of smart people in the algo-trading space, market making, and Defi. I remain bullish to invest more.
Fraction, a company my former co-founder in gaming, Shaun, started a few years ago, and in which I am an investor, is doing great. I am happy to see investors like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, one of the largest investors worldwide, saying that “the next generation for markets, the next generation for securities, will be tokenization of securities” especially for real estate. That is what Fraction is doing in South East Asia. Fraction is the first and only fully licensed, SEC-compliant actor in the tokenization of real estate, both leading on the legal and tech sides.
I am confident we will see more of this approach in 2023, enabling a different way to trade assets like stocks, bonds, real estate, or even alternative assets like land, wine, or art, allowing the transfers to be visible on a public ledger.
Apart from crypto, I am also glad that I doubled down on Artificial Intelligence.
ChatGPT and generative AI have been on every investor’s mind since OpenAI released ChatGPT-3.
I am astonished by what AI can do today. And even more when you think that GPT-4 is just a few months away from being released to the public. At 100T parameters, GPT-4 would be over 500 times larger than GPT-3. That means GPT-4 would have roughly the same number of parameters (connections) as there are synapses (connections between neurons) in the human brain. In 1998, Yann LeCun’s breakthrough neural network, LeNet, sported 60,000 parameters.
While I am actively meeting entrepreneurs building AI-powered applications, including in EdTech, CRM, finTech like AlgoTrading companies, I am also proud to be supporting the spread of AI in traditional industries and companies, like in Energy & Transportation, Discrete Manufacturing, or Retail.
In an industry that is moving very fast, I follow the Pick-and-Shovel Play. A pick-and-shovel play is an investment strategy that invests in the underlying technology needed to produce a good or service instead of in the final output.
Many of my friends joined me in investing in ALEIA, the AI platform company allowing multiple entities to train together and run in production AI.
I am particularly excited to have my friend Alain, formerly CEO of Microsoft Greater China and France, joined not only as an investor but also taken an active role in the company. I am thankful to be working with him almost daily in the last few weeks as we are working on a new round of investment together, helping great founders like Antoine & Francois scale their companies.
We are on a mission to scale what is becoming one of the most promising AI companies in Europe, cumulating accolades as recently selected by Gartner, FrenchTech, and Campus Cyber and customers ranging from large corporations like Disney, Vinci, Renault to Federations in transportation, construction, and cyber security.
I mentioned last year in my 2021 retrospective that as a family, one of our investment priorities was on how to avoid a Climate Disaster, a generational challenge for decades to come. ALEIA for example is the leading company in Europe using AI to prioritize building renovation to avoid energy loss, with clients like Action Logement — the largest owner of social buildings (HLM) in France.
On the climate front, my investment in the new hydrogen-powered car company, Hopium, which was motivated equally by the greatness of the team and its potential positive impact on the environment, was confirmed to be a great one.
Hopium signed a billion-dollar order from the car-leasing subsidiary of Credit Agricole (one of the main partners of Tesla in Europe), and announced its first mega-factory in my beloved Normandy.
Contribution
Committed to advancing entrepreneurship, I am grateful for the work my editor, Amanda, put into my book “Atomic Scaling”. It is very rewarding to feel that the 7th manuscript is the one that will see the light of a library or an Amazon store.
Beginning of 2022, I also mentioned my intention to contribute more to political causes and foundations. I am glad to announce that I am now a French Elected Official — Representative in China for the 11th Consular Constituency of France (“Conseiller des Francais de l’Etranger”).
As US President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Challenging everyone to contribute in some way to the public good, I am excited to serve the French abroad. I am also excited to explore a new world, behind the scenes, the people and political institutions like the Senate to which I am now a voter or “French Grand Elector”, in France and Europe.
Relationship
For over 80 years, researchers at Harvard have studied what makes for a good life. They found one surefire, scientifically proven predictor of happiness: developing warmer relationships. I long understood that a crucial element of happiness is relationships.
As we can constantly chase the next big thing, let’s all take a moment to seize the present, smile, and say thank you.
I cherished moments this year 2022 playing cards with my mum, asking a stranger how’s his day so far (guarantee conversation in Uber), discovering my youngest daughter Anna's talent for mental calculation, kissing my wife, watching our kids playing with our newly adopted cat, or preparing for Miya’s next horse riding competition.
Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys and girls. 2023 is yours to create the life you want. Enjoy every moment here and now. May we all enjoy the beautiful year 2023, health — happiness, and abundance!
