Archive for November 2013
35k+ register for France’s new MOOC since launching October 2nd
Finally realizing that they were substantially behind other countries in the MOOC space (massive open online courses), Minister of Higher Education Geneviève Fioraso decided to launch France Université Numérique (referred to, of course, as FUN) in response. Thus far 35k+ have signed-up since registrations opened on October 2nd. While certainly a drop in the bucket compared […]
If you build it, will they come? The HTML5 distribution problem
For better or worse, HTML5 obliterated the technical barriers to entry to creating applications. As the barriers came down, many developers tried to strike gold in the app Eldorado and the market became saturated. The initial focus turned towards monetization of the apps, which made sense as the ecosystem was growing. At last year’s Mobile […]
Study suggests France’s IT sector will shrink in 2013
Although weathering the downturn better than other sectors, France’s IT sector hasn’t entirely escaped unscathed in 2013. Syntec Numérique, a leading association representing France’s tech sector, just released their annual report on the state of play in France, which projected that France’s tech sector will end the year down -0.3% from 2012. The hardest hit in […]
RudeVC: Investing in competing firms
The other day my partner received a fundraising teaser from an intermediary which contained a section on the project’s competitive landscape. The competition mapping followed the common quadrant format, yet to my partner’s astonishment, included one of our existing portfolio companies smack in the sweet spot of this project’s competition. To solicit us for fundraising […]
500 Startups’ Warmgun conference recap: we’re all designers
The following is a guest post from Michael Ferranti, a marketer and product guy living and working in San Francisco, USA. You can follow him on Twitter @ferrantim where your tweets in English and français are welcome, or on his blog. For the last three years, a highlight of my year has been a design conference called Warmgun organized by […]
Meninvest raises €1.5 Million for dude media: suits, sports & style
Meninvest announced this month that they have raised an additional €1.5 Million, on top of the €10.1 Million the group has already raised, for their menswear-focused media, publishing and e-commerce. Founded by Marc Menasé, the media group, which runs sites like Menly, Menlook, as well as Oki-ni (acquired earlier this year), creates media targetted at […]
Criminal Case: 1 year later & 100 Million players
We’ve been covering the spectacular rise of Criminal Case since its launch just one year ago. Having integrated fun and accessible game play, high quality game design and integrated and deep storylines, they’ve managed to take the genre of hidden object games to a whole new level. To date, an impressive 100 million […]
Collaborative listening platform Soundrop expands beyond Spotify; now available to Deezer users
The venture-funded music listening app Soundrop has announced that it will be available to Deezer users starting today. The application, which was originally built exclusively as a Spotify app, allows users to listen to music together in ‘rooms’ – a Turntable.fm of sorts, if you will. The startup has already raised $3 Million for its application, and a […]
Azendoo makes work even more collaborative with Skype integration
Azendoo has been innovating at a fast pace, actively enhancing the Azendoo experience for its now 135k users. Over the past year they’ve had at least one big announcement each quarter, including their Evernote integration to kick the year off, roll-out of their new and improved platform last spring, their Box integration this past summer and many […]
Appsfire puts Engagement, Monetization & Control in the hands of app developers with their Mobile SDK
Mobile App Discovery startup Appsfire has announced the launch of their Mobile SDK, a “360° Solution for app developers to grow discovery, engagement, [and] monetization.” The startup, which has offices in Paris, Tel Aviv & the Silicon Valley, raised $3.6M from Idinvest back in 2011, and has been growing its Android & iOS app following steadily. Today, […]