Liam Boogar
Smart Address Book startup Kwaga purchases BoxCar
This afternoon, French startup Kwaga, creator of smart address book service WriteThat.Name, announced its acquisition of New York-based startup BoxCar for an undisclosed amount. Founded in June 2009, BoxCar’s push notification applications for iPhone received $150K seed round from the Paris-based Kima Ventures this past March. In the announcement, Kwaga CEO Philippe Laval stated that the […]
Sparrow Investors not happy with acquisition
I just sent out the Rude Baguette Weekly Digest – for those who aren’t on it, go ahead and sign up to the right of the page or here. In it, I gave my thoughts on the Sparrow acquisition by Google, which has had a variety of reactions across the web. Pandodaily cried inside, French […]
Philippe Marini champions eCommerce tax in French Senate
In the past week, we’ve talked a lot about the new administration’s propositions. As is expected when a new party takes the executive power, a few of the previous president’s initiatives, such as the National Counsil for the “digital economy”(Conseil National du Numérique), have been all but disbanded. In addition, despite Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s attitude […]
Digital Eye Glass Inventor assaulted in McDonalds
Reported across the interwebs this week was the assault of Steve Mann, a renowned PhD engineer who works on creating technology for the visually impaired. The device surrounding the event was his own invention, the Digital Eye Glass, which resembles The more unfortunately part of the story, other than the fact that it happened in […]
Le Mash Up Teaches Startup Students The Art of The Pitch
Le Mash Up has long since been a favorite event of mine. The event focuses on educating students about the startup ecosystem, while bringing students from different backgrounds together to find internships, meet startup icons, and learn about startup problems. The group just announced their upcoming event, which will take place July 24th, and will be […]
[Breaking] Peugeot cuts 8K jobs in France – Not As Lean as They Claimed.
Peugeot announced this morning that they will be cutting 8 000 jobs in France, primarily in the closing of a factory in Aulnay, just outside of Paris. The story is being covered widely and being tied together with President Hollande’s “difficulties” as president. The company’s CEO, Philippe Varin commented on the “seriousness” of the cutbacks, stating […]
Index Ventures Summer Party on the Criteo rooftops
Yesterday evening, Index Ventures hosted a summer party on the top of Criteo’s new office building, located just across the street from the Theatre de Paris. The party welcomed a fair amount of Index VCs from their offices in Geneva & London, as well as some of the head honchos. The event also featured some […]
First Impressions of Lille's EuraTechnologies: Home to 100+ startups
When I used to write on my personal blog, I would write articles about places & events just hours after I visited them, in order to thoroughly give my First Impressions. They were not meant to be my final judgment of something, but merely my ‘customer feedback’ as a visitor to something. I thought I’d […]
#1Seed: London money investing in seed-level French startups
Money’s tight for startups in France – or so Journal Du Net claims it will be – accelerators don’t give out the 100K that they do in the US, France angel groups like Keiretsu France charge startups 1000s of euros to pitch angels who won’t and don’t intend to invest in tech startups, and French […]
IBM Smartcamp Paris invites "Smarter Planet" startups, August 31st
IBM will be hosting a second edition of IBM Smartcamp Paris on August 31st. The event, which looks to gather together entrepreneurs, startupers, investors, and “IBM-ers,” is connected to the IBM Global Entrepreneur initiative, which began in March 2010. The half-day event is open to the general public via sign-up on their site, and is […]