Liam Boogar
LeCamping Manager & EIR to launch TheFamily, an early-stage accelerator
According to LinkedIn, LeCamping‘s manager, Alice Zagury, and the most recent Entrepreneur in Residence Oussama Ammar, will not be joining LeCamping for another season, and have instead partnered up to launch TheFamily. Described as an “accelerator for early-stage startups to support them from [0] to [1] through education & unfair advantages,” TheFamily sounds quite similar to […]
Paris Apple store robbed on NYE by 4 armed individuals
Waking up after a long evening, it seems no one had a better New Year’s Eve party than the four masked individuals who broke into the Apple Store at Opéra last night around 9:00PM. Having subdued a security guard, the four men spent forty minutes loading the entire store stock – estimated to be worth […]
Texas Instruments closes its French operations – not saying OUI to France
In the wake of what will total 1700 cut jobs in its Telecom division Texas Instruments announced earlier this month that it will be cutting 517 of the 609 jobs, the majority of which at the Villeneuve-Loubet R&D center in the Alpes-Maritimes. While the 60-person sales team in Boulogne will remain intact, this represents a hard […]
2013 may see all new French tax ideas, like The Internet Tax
France’s unstable tax scheme may see yet another shift in the coming years, as LeFigaro reported earlier this month that an “Internet Tax” may see the light of day in the next few years. Specifically, the French government may begin taxing the storage of personal data about French internet users. The proposed law is expected to be brought to […]
Meetic purchases Belgian dating site Twoo.com to go international
It seems that Marc Simoncini’s dating site is looking at internationalization in 2013 – they purchased Massive Media, which owns Twoo.com, one of Belgium’s largest dating sites, for $25M. In their announcement, originally caught by TNW, Meetic CEO Philippe Chainieux said: This acquisition consolidates the MEETIC Group’s positions with a substantial increase in the number of […]
Why I think 2013 will be the year of "passive"
Each year we try to identify trends – Gartner often hits sector trends, but I tend to look cross-sector, at how people will view products in general. Remember when social was everything? If you had a product, you had to add social – connect to Facebook, share with friends, etc. Now that’s all a given, […]
Top 5 best performing Windows 8 Apps by French Startups according to Microsoft
At LeWeb Paris this year, I got to try out the Windows Surface as well as sit down with the Microsoft guys and talk shop. With all this “2012 is the biggest year for Windows ever!” talk going around, I thought I’d touch on a better subject: of those French startups who committed to building […]
4 New Years Resolutions for Tech Journalists in France
I wanted to reach out to my ‘colleagues’ and discuss the state of tech journalism in France. I get it. Sarkozy terrified Journalists into remaining “unbiased”. This whole “startup” thing is still new, so we’re all sort of figuring out how to cover it. But look – I’ve been writing about and talking to European entrepreneurs […]
French corporate taxes improve for 2013. Now only the 3rd worst in Europe
A recent report by Pricewaterhousecoopers comparing tax systems and rates across all countries for 2013 reveals which countries have the most attractive tax systems. Originally brought to our attention by LeFigaro, the report looked at each country in terms of how high taxes work (broken into labor, corporate, and social charges), the administrative impact of paying […]
SNCF iOS app now stores user info. Can Capitaine Train compete?
I wrote a little while ago about a startup called Capitaine Train, which raised $2 Million in order to bring a unified train travel ticketing experience. I have been outspoken about my lack of conviction about this business model – it’s not quite the kayak of the train travel industry, and their largest value-added is […]