In the spirit of France’s tradition of offering one’s hopes for what the New Year will bring, the Rude Baguette writing team figured we’d follow President Hollande’s lead and offer ours. However our wishes will, of course, focus squarely on France’s tech ecosystem. Feel free to offer yours as well in the comments section. Enjoy!
Bruno Vaz Moço – Business Development Intern
For 2014 I hope to see a startup ecosystem more willing to embrace past failures as key for success. It’s more than just valuing entrepreneurs with unsuccessful ventures, by doing it we get more fresh grads, who instead go corporate “to learn first” and try to do it right at their first stab at it later, into the ecosystem – done is better than perfect!
Joël Galeran – Web Developer
Happy New Year to all our readers ! I wish all France’s tech guys a great year with bugs and cool releases ! Improve your workflow to work smarter and get more rest and/or build some blazing products! If you have not already done this of course. 😉 Moore’s law for tech ecosystem is here…with the P2P collaboration today, our minds are connected anytime, everywhere. We now share a lot of things, making life easier after all.
Gregory Menvielle – Contributing Writer
Happy New Year Rude Baguette readers! May your code compile, your server stay 500 free and VC look at all your funding requests. 2014 is shaping up to be the year of the connected devices which means that heaps of data are going to be collected, sorted, and analysed. I hope that all of you involved in this industry remember to put the proper safeguards in place to protect our privacy and information. I have a few other tech wishes for 2014 which you’ll be able to check out here on Rude Baguette first thing tomorrow …
Miruna Mitranescu – Contributing Writer
Happy New Year!. 2013 was a year full of cool stuff for french startups: Criteo’s IPO, Neolane’s acquisition by Adobe, Deezer’s on its way for its US launch, Dailymotion expands to Japan, Mention partners up with Buffer, Talend raises $40 million and is on its way to IPO, Mindie’s got everybody talking about it, Bunkr gained an impressive traction since launching, as well as some funding projects like Kima15 or 101 Projects, not to mention the convertible note AIR by The Family. Two of France’s ministers have spoken at LeWeb and “working on a startup visa” has been announced. All of these are signs that something is changing for the better, the ecosystem is gaining confidence and maturity. Even French politicians seem to be aware that change is needed. So what is in the cards for 2014? We’ll see. In the meanwhile I wish France’s ecosystem continuous growth and development as well as keeping 2013’s beautiful promises.
Mark Bivens – Venture Capitalist & “RUDE VC”
My wish for the French tech ecosystem in 2014 is fewer zombies. Put another way, a slightly warmer embrace of failure. For would-be entrepreneurs, this means being able to leave their comfortable yet mind-numbing corporate jobs to venture our on their own without the stigma attached to their inevitable stumbles along the way. For politicians, this means occasionally going out on a limb to stand for something that is in the country’s interests though not politically or personally expedient. And for VCs, this means having the courage to take more risk than just encouraging a strategy of ‘generate Ebitda’, putting their money where their mouths are, owning up to investment mistakes and accepting portfolio loss ratios.
Trista Bridges – Cofounder
2013 was a great year for France’s tech ecosystem. In addition to the big Criteo and Neolane news, we also saw big news like Google’s purchase of Flexycore, the breakneck growth from rising tech stars like Ebuzzing, Rentabiliweb and others, the big fundraising rounds from startups like Talend, Talentsoft, Planetveo, BIME, Bonitasoft and others, the rapid growth in the French accelerator and incubator space (eg TheFamily launch, Silicon Sentier’s NUMA, the Xavier Niel backed 1000 startup announcement), the explosive growth and success of Pretty Simple’s Criminal Case, and much more demonstrating that France increasingly continues to be one of Europe’s leading tech hubs. My big wish for France’s tech scene in 2014 is to demonstrate even bigger, bolder ambition internationally. While the US will continue to be a priority, I’d encourage them to more actively look East. I was fortunateto have spent some time in Japan and Singapore meeting several key people from the tech ecosystems such as leaders from telcos, internet giants such as Yahoo Japan, VCs , startups and blogs. There’s definitely an appetite there to learn more about what’s going on in Europe and particularly France. While a lot of focus has been on China where France continues to make serious inroads, other Asian markets such as South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and, even, stalwart Japan are on a serious upswing at the moment. Partnerships, client development, etc there are lots of great opportunities out there for French startups. So go East young startup, go East.
Liam Boogar – Cofounder & Editor
In 2014, I hope to see the French Startup Ecosystem solidify its voice the way Berlin’s prominent entrepreneurs & investors learned to do a few years back. Paris has held its own as a tech ecosystem through rapid growth companies, acquisitions, foreign investment & IPOs; however, as an ecosystem, there is still a lack of unity that is present even from inside Paris. I’d like to see more entrepreneurs encouraging each others’ success, being early adopters for each others’ products, giving feedback and making selfless introductions for one another – more importantly, I’d like to see a common message coming from France to the international tech community. One that is rid of self-basing, rid of excuses about government policy, that focuses on the fact that French entrepreneurs, wherever they are, build better companies because they are French, not despite being French. Happy New Year, startupers. Let’s make 2014 a year to remember.