This Thursday we get the pleasure to host the 9th edition of #ParisFounders, the premiere startup networking event in Paris which we first began organizing back in 2013 in a bar. The event has since grown to over 2500 attendees last year, including 1,000 packed into the Hotel de Ville last October for our NYC edition, where our speakers & demo-ing startups all had a Paris-NYC connection.
For our Winter 2016 meetup this week, we’ve lined up some of our best speakers yet – headline-making startups like Stuart, Angel Investor Gil Dibner, Cathay Innovation’s Jacky Abitbol (who leads investments in Europe & Israel for the Franco-Chinese fund), Keyrus CEO Eric Cohen, HLN Partner & JVC Venture Partner Nimrod Kozlovski, Microsoft’s new leading lady Diana Filippova, and a few more surprises up our sleeves.
However, what has always make #ParisFounders great has been one simple promise: every quarter, we find 5 awesome products built by even more awesome founders and we give them 3 minutes on stage to convince a couple hundred founders of that fact. Over the last two years, we’ve had more than 30 alumni grace our stages – here are just a few of them:
- Front – Y Combinator alumni & raised $3.1 Million from in the Silicon Valley
- Aircall – raised $2.75 Million from Balderton Capital
- Phonotonic – a CES favorite two years in a row
- Wisemetrics – acquired by Augure in June 2015
- Gorgias – accepted into TechStars
- Marie Quantier – raised €1.5 Million
- Prynt – raised $1.576 Million on Kickstarter
- Prizm – raised $161K on Kickstarter
- PopChef – raised their Seed round in 2015
- 3DSoundlabs – raised $125K on Kickstarter
Of course, their stories aren’t done being told, and we can hardly take credit for any of it. Young startups like Ferpection, Triber, NeverEatAlone only just launched 3 months ago, but their clients, funds raised, and growth thus far being to paint a picture of future success. We don’t make startups succeed by launching them at #ParisFounders, we’re just fortunate to have startups participating who, regardless of their participation, will statistically succeed more often than startups who don’t participate. Some of our demo-ing startups, like Wisemetrics, have returned to join the ranks of our Founder speakers, which include founders from Devialet, Showroom Privé, Scality, Blablacar, Happn & more.
Join us this Thursday to meet the next Fred Mazzella, Didier Rapport & Jerome Lecat as they demo on stage at #ParisFounders Winter Meetup