After running their annual tech tour for 7 years, Ubifrance in partnership with BPIFrance announced that they would be evolving their tour into a 10-week Silicon Valley based accelerator program. The program is supported by both French and Silicon Valley mentors; various supporters including such big names as Yahoo, Logitech, IBM, Oracle, etc who the startups will get face time with; and, of course, sponsors including Air France, French Tech Hub, and Gigaom Structure. The French Tech Tour has been a successful initiative for Ubifrance and in the past has included several of the French tech ecosystem’s rising stars including BIME, docTracker, Wimi, tinyclues, and Sush.io. Ubifrance is undoubtedly hoping that their newly launched acceleration program will enable the participating startups to get Maa quicker and more durable foothold in the US market.
Late last week Ubi i/o announced the 8 startups that have been selected to be a part of the first accelerator class, kicking off in Silicon Valley on May 5th and running through mid-July. There is clearly a strong b-to-b focus amongst most of the selected startups for this year’s class. The selected Startups include:
Anidot specializes in data enrichment and search engines. Their solution Fluid Topics has ‘reinvented’ the way technical documentation drafting and editing is done. It essentially allows users to add personalized documents and create lively, simple and interactive online publication systems with browsing, search, annotation, comment and feedback features.
A leading European player in data marketing automation and also present in Brazil, Canada and Australia, Makazi enables advertisers to consolidate and add intelligence to their marketing data in order to activate personalized communication messages to end customers.
Elaia Partners-backed Mirakl, offers a SaaS marketplace platform which allows online retailers to rapidly extend their product range leveraging product inventory shipped directly by third-party suppliers. Their client list thus far includes some of the biggest retailers in France, including Galeries Lafayette and Auchan.
Sublimeskinz is one of the leading ad networks specializing in skin-based technology across the Internet. Having only launched a little over one year ago, they delivered over 300 campaigns on 700+ websites in France alone (with 29 Million Unique visitors per month), working with more than 40 media agencies. They’ve now set their sights on markets outside of France, recruiting 150 websites in the UK, more than 300 websites in Spain and more than 100 in the US.
CoSMo focus on complex systems modeling and simulation that enable the world’s largest companies to master the increasing complexity of their core activities. Their solution has tackled such challenges as supply chain resiliency, the robustness of critical networks (e.g., electricity, water, communication), urban infrastructure sustainability, and biosproduction optimization for the pharmaceutical industry.
Their Trading Desk’s platform manages and directs advertisers’ and media agencies’ display, mobile, and video campaigns through Real Time Auctions. Tradelab’s obejctive is to reach targeted audiences, developed through its own proprietary data management platform, optimization technologies, tag management system, and viewability optimization.
Vade Retro provides a unique email classification engine and a safe unsubscribe service that manages threats (spam, phishing, scam, virus, etc.) and graymail (newsletters, commercial emails, social networks notifications) for inbound and outbound customer flow.
Contract Live (recently added)
Contract Live is a cloud-based platform which help companies manage all their contracts (supplier, client, HR, partnership, etc.) throughout all stages (creation, negotiation, e-signing, managing) in one single safe place.