Archive for January 2013
WriteThatName now updates your Outlook address book so you don’t have to.
WriteThatName announced today that their automatic contact-updating service is now available on Outlook for enterprise and individual users. Launched in June 2011, WriteThatName has been quietly keeping my contacts up to date for years, and they’ve scanned more than 600 Million emails since then. Outlook is just the latest of address books and CRMs that […]
3 Myths Busted about European vs. US Venture Capital success
The British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) just published a report dispelling many of the stereotypes and myths about the performance of Europe’s VCs. The conventional wisdom has been that Europe’s risk-adverse nature and difficult IPO environment has constrained the potential and success of Europe’s venture and startup communities. As the report points out, we […]
Orange offers Deezer-competitor Spotify to under 27 users in Switzerland
This week Orange & Spotify announced a partnership in which Orange customers in Switzerland with a “Orange Young” plan would receive Spotify premium for free, in addition to unlimited texting & calling as well as a sizeable data plan. Orange Young is Orange’s cell phone plan offered to anyone 27 or under, and Orange’s VP […]
How did France do in The Europas last night?
Last night in Berlin, the guys at Web Summit hosted The Europas for its 4th edition, awarding European startups, VCs, and entrepreneurs in various categories. We’ll see what the word is on how the event itself went, but Mike Butcher broke a record for being the first person to finish an award show 20 minutes […]
Toulouse-based BuyBox raised 1.7M€ for its SaaS payment solution for eMerchants
BuyBox announced today that they have raised 1.7 Million euros from Iris Capital and Midi Capital in order to brings its social payments soluion for eMerchants to international markets. Founded in 2010, BuyBox has had a fair amount of traction and interest, having already added Celio, Wonderbox.fr and Micromania as clients. Essentially, BuyBox provides a white label solution […]
Vacances à volonté, a rising trend of unlimited vacation days
“Impossible, that would never work in France; don’t be so idealistic,” chided my friend with a dismissive wave of the hand. With a storied career rising through the ranks of a CAC40 firm and more recently a business owner, my friend knew a lot about managing people in a French workplace. We were discussing a […]
Tech Sector growth is outpacing all other sectors in France
Syntec Numérique, one France’s leading professional organization representing the tech sector, just published a report offering some interesting and encouraging findings on the state of France’s tech sector. Not surprisingly, the sector has been major driver of economic and job growth in France over the last decade, outpacing many other sectors. Here are some of the […]
French Startups are getting invested in, just not by French VCs
In the beginning of the year, we reported on the state of investment in France -more money went to startups in 2012 than 2011, a total of 543 million euros, or a 93% year-to-year growth. It was made very apparent that this funding was concentrated, with “Deezer(€100M), Criteo(€30M), Spartoo(€25M), Viadeo(€24M), Fotolia(€117M) and Sensee(€17M)’s impressively large […]
We’ve got the Pitch Deck for TheFamily, Paris’ newest Accelerator
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 […]
Eventbrite, Airbnb and Fab tell tales of fighting off the Samwer Brothers
At hy!Berlin this past weekend, Eventbrite CTO Renaud Visage was interviewed by TNW European Editor Martin Bryant on the topic of Selling to the World, during which Renaud hinted that Eventbrite would be hiring in Paris very soon, in addition to Berlin and other European cities. The company, headquartered in the US, has had tremendous […]