Archive for March 2014
French media leader Amaury invests €3.5 million in shopping comparison engine Shoptimise
Amaury, owners of various French press titles including L’Equipe and Le Parisien/Aujourd’hui en France and sports events including, most notably, the Tour de France, announced today in Le Figaro that they’ve made a €3.5 million investment in shopping comparison engine Shoptimise via its parent company Swaven. Swaven was founded in 2012 by Criteo cofounder Laurent Quatrefages […]
TheFamily: 1 year later, 100 startups & counting
This week TheFamily held its one year anniversary in their brand new office space (photos of the event here courtesy of Eventpixr/François Tancré). The event brought together 500 members of the Paris tech scene – entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, government officials, incubators & accelerators, and, of course, journalists – for yet another unforgettable night. On the […]
ZenDay’s to-do list featured on the AppStore for the kick-off of MacWorld 2014
In San Francisco this week, Annecy-based startup ZenDay is launching the iOS version of their time management app at the ultimate Apple fan event, Macworld. Launched last year by Richard Phan, Philippe Lebeau, and Bruno Dal Palu, ZenDay strives to shake-up the ‘time management app & solutions’ space to bring ‘more serenity’ back to people’s lives by […]
Should you take payments in Bitcoin?
Getting paid is always the most important part of keeping a business afloat and, if you are to believe the local companies, getting paid in France can be even more of a challenge given some companies’ lackluster payment practices. So it falls upon us to make payment as simple, and as frictionless as possible. The […]
SIGFOX raises €15 Million Series B to Connect the World
Toulouse-based startup SIGFOX has raised a €15 Million Series B from IDInvest, BPIFrance, and historical investors (Elaia Partners, Intel Capital, Partech International, etc.), who had previously invested a total of €12 Million; bringing the total funding to €27 Million: Founded by Ludovic Le Moan, formerly co-founder of Goojet (since defunct and re-branded as Scoop.it) in […]
CookAngels raises €315,000 from Elaia Partners to make your dinners tastier
I met the CookAngels team a few months ago at a dinner hosted by the Family, the Paris-based startup accelerator. They came with their product: all the ingredients needed to cook a meal worthy of a 2-star restaurant. Being a terrible cook myself, I though this was a pretty good idea – plus the dinner […]
Did 500 Startups announce their 1st French investment at YC Demo Day?
Yesterday afternoon, Y-Combinator held their Demo Day for their Silicon Valley accelerator, and while Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR may have overshadowed the demo day, the event was not without its merits. Most notably, I was watching Search as a Service Algolia, which I recently named among the top hottest startups in France – the company […]
What makes Blablacar a great place to work? Community, Travel & Growth
Pursuing its mission to fight unemployment and talents’ misfits, the Rude Baguette is featuring interviews of startups (small and bigger) participating in next edition of the Paris Startup Job Fair. Whether your job is insanely boring, your talent is misunderstood by your boss or you are not so keen on going back to Pôle Emploi, […]
IBM’s French R&D lab is paving the way for their new mobile-focused business
When people think about the most dominant tech giants today, many often overlook the granddaddy of them all, IBM. Having evolved profoundly since its founding over 100 years ago and grown into to 430k employee-strong, $100 billion/yr company, IBM continues to be a tech powerhouse, particularly in enterprise products and services (e.g. social enterprise, cloud […]
France is not suffering from an exodus of entrepreneurs: the world is benefiting from mobility
The following guest post originally appeared on Frederic Montagnon’s blog (in french). Frederic is a French entrepreneur, co-founder of Overblog and Ebuzzing, currently based in New York City. The media landscape shows a growing « France bashing » spirit those days, in France and abroad. The blame is that France’s gloominess is pushing its talents outside of […]