We announced earlier this month that LeCamping’s manager Alice Zagury has left LeCamping to start her own accelerator, named TheFamily, though details at the time were scarce as to how they were planning on differentiating themselves. LeCamping receives a combination of regional and national funding from the government and also counts several corporate partners, who regularly invest or buy from LeCamping companies, but its lack of funding or equity stake in the startups has long been a pain point in comparison to other accelerators. We received the below Pitch Deck from LeCamping, which gives details into what The Family will do to differentiate itself from other European accelerators.

No Office Space, 1% Equity, and Paid Services?

Some of the quick details that popped out were the lack of office space and the 1% equity stake. This is quite similar to SeedCamp’s model, and TheFamily seems to have taken a page or two out of their playbook. Weekly mentor sessions and a group dinner seem to be the ordre du jour, and they promise 1000+ attendees to their Demo Days, occurring every 6 months. While no specific funding is offered, they are actively searching for funding, and if anyone can raise an accelerator fund in France, it will be Alice Zagury.

Reading through TheFamily’s pitch deck, they really took a page out of the Rude Baguette, tearing down the Paris scene and setting the stage for their arrival. Citing the Startup Genome Report, in which Paris places #11 in terms of Startup cities, they describe the ecosystem as “Toxic,” not a word I would use to describe the market I operate in, but to each his own I suppose. Apparently being 4th in Company Performance Index is toxic – I wonder how Paris’ accelerators have contributed to its Toxicity.

They are offering rolling admissions, similar to SeedCamp, though I’m not sure this model doesn’t lower the ‘sense of urgency’ that startups require in an accelerator. They offer services to help startups get started, but oddly enough they seem to be planning to have startups pay for these services after fundraising. This is normal practice for law firms and accounting firms to provide intro-level services to be paid by venture capital funding later, but since they are taking 1% equity, I don’t know how to feel about this. If that’s true, you really are paying 1% for access to Alice Zagury’s contact network, which may actually be worth it.

I’ve heard from sources close to TheFamily that they are looking for a ~250m² space in the  Sentier district of Paris (the center of the Paris Startup scene), not for coworking, but for events.

Only time will tell how TheFamily will develop – as more news comes out about them and about LeCamping, it seems sure that there is room for an accelerator who promises Silicon Valley exposure; we’ll see if Alice and Oussama can attract talented startups.

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