Throughout the month of August, the Rude Baguette will be running a series of interviews with some of France’s top and rising entrepreneurs, where they’ll share their reflexions on their year thus far, their plans through the end of the year and how they manage their businesses through the August down period. In this first installment, we talk with Pierre Chappaz, cofounder of Ebuzzing and previous cofounder of Kelkoo.
Ebuzzing, founded six years ago by web veteran Bertrand Quesada and serial entrepreneur Pierre Chappaz, has emerged as a global leader in the social media and video advertising space. Having undergone a series of high-profile acquisitions and now known as Ebuzzing Group, they’ve achieved breakneck growth over the last couple years and continue to expand rapidly around the globe. I recently asked cofounder Pierre Chappaz to share his reflexions on his business for our August entrepreneur interview series:
What have been the big accomplishments for Ebuzzing since the beginning of the year?
We have been growing our revenues by 50% in H1 versus last year: $ 30 million in first half 2013 versus $ 20 million last year. Our international business is expanding at a rapid pace, especially in the UK, and Southern Europe, and we have been opening offices in New-York and Miami. We have big hopes for the US Market because our solutions for distributing video advertising within Media and Social Media are quite advanced, thanks to our unique targeting technology.
What are your goals for the end of the year?
We’ll focus on growing our business in the US, Asia and globally. In September, we’ll launch our Self-Serve platform, which will make it even easier for agencies, brands and publishers to work with us in any country. And we are putting an enormous focus on mobile, building the most advanced solutions for video ad distribution on smartphones and tablets.
What have you learned this year that you think every entrepreneur should know?
I am 54, so hope this will excuse the fact that I haven’t discovered many new things this year that I could share with entrepreneurs. I would say though that If they want to achieve success, they should concentrate on building the best team, developing superior technology, and that they should think big: the game is global, not local!
How does your company handle vacation & the August down period?
It varies between countries. While Southern Europe is rather quiet in Summer, the UK is still very active. And we are using the summer period to work on long-term development programs.