Who said that products targeted at young children can also be used for grown-ups? Well apparently Iddoo and its Retrouve Doudou say so! In short a ‘Retrouve Doudou’ consists of two little devices: one that you attach to the kid’s security blanket, and one that you keep in a known location. The idea is twofolds:

• if the kid misplaces his/her security blanket at home, you can use the second ‘Retrouve Doudou’ to ping the first one. The first one will then emit noise, light up.
• if the kid misplaces his/her security blanket outside and you cannot ping it, there is a code on the back of the ‘Retrouve Doudou’ that allows the finder to get back in touch with the owner via the Iddoo website.

As it turns out (I chatted with the inventor/CEO at the ‘Salon Baby’ in Paris), he made a large proportion of his sales from…. adults (men) who consistently lose their keys!

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‘What makes a good investment?’ is a question that I have been asked a number of times and that I will try and answer in this short post. For a starter, I would like to differentiate between investment and speculation as defined by Ben Graham. The main difference between the two is risk. With speculation, you are making a bet on the future stock movement of a given company, for which you may or may not know anything about (high risk). With investment, you make a calculated analysis of the company’s growth prospect, irrespectively of its stock price (for a starter) (low risk c.f. below). Click to continue »