Trista Bridges
Monsieurdrive.com raises € 2 million round led by Schibsted
The price comparison engine for supermarket goods Monsieurdrive.com announced that they’ve raised a 2 million euro round, led by Schibsted Growth and completed by several business angels. According to the terms of the deal Schibsted will reinvest ‘significantly’ based on the Monsieurdrive.com’s growth. Incidentally Schibsted also owns Leboincoin.fr, one of France’s leading price comparison sites […]
Free may finally get its own network if a Bouygues-SFR deal goes ahead
Over the past couple weeks, Vivendi has been in concurrent negotiations with both Bouygues and Numericable about an eventual sale of SFR to one of the two telcos. It looks like whoever ends up the winner, the deal will be valued at around 10 billion euros. While both entities would be amassing substantial levels of […]
edjing celebrates its 2-year anniversary with ‘craziest’ photo contest
Launching just two years ago as the first DJ app on mobile, edjing has grown at break-neck pace to achieve 300% growth in 2013 and 15 million downloads. While proudly wearing their “French Tech” badge (even though they were courted by others to move abroad), edjing is showing that yes you can have your roots […]
OpenDataSoft announces deal with French cloud provider Numergy
OpenDataSoft, a fast-growing startup in the area of publishing, visualizing and sharing OpenData online, has just announced a partnership with ‘French cloud’ provider Numergy. The partnership will make OpenDataSoft available on Numergy, aka France’s ‘sovereign cloud’, enabling both their public and private clients to put the information utilized in OpenDataSoft’s solution in a cloud environment that […]
Canal+ buys France’s #1 YouTube Channel – Studio Bagel
Just a few months back, Canal+ decided to change from its strategy of only diffusing its content line via their own player to developing a Canal+ ecosystem on YouTube by launching 16 of its own channels. Now they seem to have changed course yet again, announcing that they have bought a 60% stake in Studio […]
FNAC goes head to head with Spotify & Deezer with its new music service
FNAC tried a few years back to tackle the digital music world, but never managed to build a sizeable digital music business given the dominance of iTunes. In 2012 however, they eventually ended up stopping their digital music activity and partnering with Apple instead. Now FNAC has decided to jump into the world of digital […]
Dassault Systèmes leads $14.2 million investment in US-based NuoDB
Having completed 7 acquisitions totaling nearly $1 billion over the last two years, Dassault’s appetite for investing in cutting-edge technology is showing no signs of slowing. This week NuoDB, a Cambridge, MA based company specializing in distributed database management, announced that they raised a $14.2 million round with Dassault as the lead investor. This investment […]
Mobile World Congress Day 3 Highlights – Connected City, Startup Europe Manifesto, and Alima
Although there was a lot going on as always, here were the most recent highlights for me at MWC: The Connected City, one of the biggest draws at MWC Building on the success of its Connected City exhibit which drew 15k visitors, GSMA launched an expanded version this year. Its principal partners Deutsche Telecom, AT&T, […]
WePopp announces integration with OpenTable, TopTable and LaFourchette
Having achieved rapid international success with their social planning app and raised a 130k euro seed round last November, Le Camping alum WePopp is ramping up their growth in the US market with the announcement of their integration with OpenTable, one of the global leaders in online and mobile restaurant reservations. The US has been […]
Mobile World Congress Highlights Day 2 – WhatsApp, Startups, Pinterest and more from Orange
The second frenzied day of Mobile World Congress got underway yesterday. Having spent the day shuttling between the main MWC event and the startup focused 4YFN underscored how much MWC has evolved in recent years. Here were my big highlights from day 2: Startups have found a home at MWC For the first time this […]