Liam Boogar
My TweetStorm on France’s International, Sector-Leading Technology Companies
I’ve hit my limit on people, both French & otherwise, denigrating the French startup ecosystem. It took me about 10 minutes to put together an alphabetical list, including almost every letter and filtering town to tweet-sized bites (too many M’s, A’s, C’s, and D’s to mention), filtering once again for Startups that have international clients/users/presence, and […]
In Paris, Uber fined €100K as advertising for UberPop declared illegal
A court decision ruled this week that advertising UberPop – Uber’s low cost peer to peer transport solution in Europe – fining the company €100,000. The case, which is independent of Uber’s ongoing negotiations with Taxi authorities, was brought forth by the anti-competition & fraud commission of the French Ministry of Economy, and Uber currently plans to appeal the […]
Here’s how KEECKER’s HomePod is breaking new ground on KickStarter
After appearing at CES earlier this year, KEECKER has launched its HomePod on KickStarter, looking to achieve a $100,000 goal. Founded by Pierre Lebeau, a former Googler, KEECKER is a new take on the idea of ConnectedHome, replacing all your TV Screens by a fully autonomous, smartphone-controlled robot. Speaking with Lebeau about KEECKER earlier this month, he told me […]
Wit.ai raises $3 Million led by A16Z to make everything voice-controlled
Natural Language Processing startup Wit.ai has raised a $3 Million seed round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (Chris Dixon), with participation from Ignition Partners, NEA, A-Grade, SVAngel, Eric Hahn, Alven Capital, and TenOneTen. The startup, co-founded by Alex Lebrun, Willy Blandin & Laurent Landowski, went through Y-Combinator previous, and also announced LISTEN Conference, taking place on November 6th in San Francisco. As a product, […]
Xavier Niel throws in the towel on his bid to purchase T-Mobile US
After a last-minute bid threw him into the spotlight earlier this year, Iliad CEO & founder Xavier Niel spent the last 3 months looking for backers in order to increase its bid. As stock prices continued to drop (nearly 25% since July), Iliad had announced they would only pursue an acquisition until mid October – it seems that, […]
Prizm – Nest for your home speaker system – launches on KickStarter
Context-aware music startup Prizm has launched their KickStarter Campaign this week, bringing in $30,000 in the first 12 hours of their campaign. The Paris-based startup, composed of Pierre Gochgarian, Olivier Roberdet, Pierre Verdu & Arthur Eberhardt, has spent the last 18 months working on R&D, and, after DEMO-ing the product exclusively on stage during Paris Founders Event last week (photos […]
The French government will fund expatriated French entrepreneurs (& the VCs that back them)
You may recall that back in June of this year, during the FrenchTech month, François Hollande spoke in front of 200 members of the FrenchTech community (and a few distinguished guests, like GigaOm founder & TrueVentures partner Om Malik as well as VentureBeat Editor in Chief Dylan Tweney). During his speech, which had its ups and […]
How HotelTonight continues to redefine last-minute booking
Leading last-minute booking app HotelTonight has blazed the trail for mobile-first eCommerce since their launch in 2010, allowing users to find a hotel, tonight. The simple concept has led to $80.7 Million in funds raised, 10,000+ Hotels on board, 11 Million downloads (2.5 Million of which are in Europe), and, more recently, new offices opening in Berlin, […]
Meet SAM: the 21st Century LEGO for the Internet-enabled generation
I decided to meet SAM co-founder Joachim Horn after a colleague in the Connected Hardware space pointed out their KickStarter Campaign, which had surpassed its £50,000 goal in a matter of days. He stopped by our office and pulled out little gadgets similar to the ones I’d seen in the campaign video, and he said “Let […]
French Education startup Digischool targets growth in 2015
The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) movement hit the internet hard in the past years. As with the Internet itself, the phenomenon began with a handful of Universities looking to share their knowledge, and quickly has spread into independent startups looking to ride the education revolution that will inevitably arrive in the coming years. Online education […]