Check out the 16 startups competing at Web2day in Nantes!

Events

With Web2day just two weeks away, and the Rude Baguette excited to be attending both as a media partner and as a moderator, the details about the event are slipping out a bit at a time. This week, Web2day announced the sixteen startups who will be competing for a chance to pitch the investor panel at the end of day two. Here’s our breakdown of the startups that will be pitching:
Joli TV: Based in Paris and working on social recommendation, Joli TV hopes to revolutionize the way we watch TV and the approach to visual multimedia in general. While they don’t have a product out just yet, they are currently hiring a Community Manager intern, so for students looking for an internship starting in the summer, this is definitely a startup to put on your radar.
Dictanova: based in Nantes and founded by three doctors, Dictanova provides real-time text analysis using linguistic recognition, primarily for sentiment analysis. The company, hosted at Atlantic 2.0 where Web2day will take place, has already received OSEO grant funding, and is a great example of R&D being applied to the startup world. While I’m excited to see another example of how France accels in R&D, there’s also an initial level of concern when a company comes directly from a research project, for fear that it might be the case of “a solution searching a problem.” Nonetheless, they have competitors in the field, like ex-Camping Mesagraph, so there’s a certain validity to the problem their looking to solve.
Kawet: I’m excited to see this team has come a long way since their LeCamping days. Originally a tool to make mobile app development easy for non-technical people, they’ve since pivoted to a more b2b approach. They still provide a mobile app development platform that is easy for non-technical people to use, but they are now focusing on helping entreprises create apps for their employees to use in-house. They currently count BNP Paribas, SNCF, and Proctor & Gamble as clients. Interestingly enough, another one of the competition candidates, Beapp, offers similar services to those which Kawet used to offer before their pivot – I wonder if there will be some backstage knowledge sharing going on.
Sharypic: A HackFWD company, Sharypic has come along way in the past year since it began offering its photo sharing services at events. Ever since its site redesign, they’ve begun refining their business strategy along with their offering, and I’ll be excited to see what new services they’ll be pitching. (@sharypic)
Infinit: With Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Skydrive, and Amazon’s storage services all piling to get your data on their servers, it can be a bit overwhelming and suspicious to wonder what exactly their endgame is. Infinit has taken the questions out of the equation, by offering a cloud storage service which is encrypted so that Infinit can’t access your data – that kind of security is powerful. Infinit is also a recent LeCamping graduate. (@infinitdotio)
Hubbub: The first real sound network, Hubbub wants to take your internet news feed, and vocalize it. A radio station-style customizable news feed, hubbub’s teaser video certainly got me interested. Currently in private beta, the startup will certainly have to deal with the ‘network effect’ problem quickly, as the lack of immediate content on the site made it difficult for me to feel connected to the site.
Bringr: an intelligent real-time analytics provider and curator, I must say I was a little confused when I was asked to subscribe to their mailchimp newsletter in order to get analysis (what kind of analysis, I don’t know) on my twitter account; however, their recenty analysis during the French presidential election seemed to attract a fair amount of attention, so perhaps their analytics are more sophisticated than the many competitors that are out there. (@bringr)
Match My Size: A recent winner of Startup Weekend Bretagne, the startup claims to be able to provide the proper size of clothes when users by clothes online. The company is based in Rennes. (@matchmysize)
Spreadbutton: Social CRM is certainly a hot topic recently, and Spreadbutton wants to take on the likes of Nimble. Harnassing the data of social networks, Spreadbutton wants to  input the social element into your sales team’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) work. Finally you can make use of those 2nd and 3rd connections on Linkedin.  (@SpreadButton)
Atendy: a b2b event management platform, Atendy allows you to leverage the power of your social and partner networks to promote your event. Taking on the likes of Eventbrite, Weezevent, and Amiando can’t be easy, so i’ll be excited to see what Atendy’s special sauce is. (@atendy)Humanogames: we all drain our days on facebook playing the latest -Ville game: wouldn’t it be great if all those hours could be put towards doing something helpful? Well founder Stéphane Buthaud certainly hopes so. The creator of the Happy Life facebook game, Humanogames turns games into humanitarian acts. (@humanogames)
LGM Learning: founded in 2011, LGM Learning is the creator of MyBlee, an educational application for numeric tablets intended for children in primary and middle school. Currently offering apps to help learn mathematics as well as French, the company hopes to use the intuitive nature of tablets to help educate children. Their educational apps are currently available in the Apple App Store. (@myblee1)
Not all of the startups have been listed above, due to lack of information available on the startups. The remaining startups are Babble Planet, Newage and Smart Pixel. We’ll update the post if we receive more info about these startups.