A number of years ago, I read a book by French author Michel Houellebecq titled La Carte et le Territoire (EN: The Map and the Territory). The expression was first coined by Polish American scholar Alfred Korzybski encapsulating the view that an abstraction derived from something is not the thing itself.

I am delighted to join the team at Promus Ventures and help establish our presence in the European market. I have been active in the European Venture Capital market for the best part of the last 15 years, initially at Atlas Ventures, where I learned the trade from some of the best VCs in the business.

How can you tell if a founding team will be honest with investors? Every day someone is trying to sell us. Our job at Promus Ventures is to cut through the chatter and figure out if the team in front of us is all that and a bag of chips or just another team with hope as its strategy.