Archive for January 2012

Google backs a copycat accelerator – take that Samwer brothers!

Every trend has its backlash, and every backlash has its own backlash. A few months ago we penned our defense of the copycat, and just last week we kneecapped the burgeoning backlash to European accelerator programs. But we perhaps lost the contest of “best contrarian” to Guilhem Bertholet — perhaps best known for running the […]

France: How many startup [     ]'s is too many?

France: How many startup [ ]'s is too many?

Last week, my baguette-ed counterpart wrote about the staggering ratio of accelerators to actual startups in France and Europe – my personal opinion on the subject is that when resources are scarce, they need to be conserved. An accelerator’s resources are startups, mentors, and sponsorship/funding – these are the metrics that drive their ability to […]

France: how many startup accelerators is too many?

France: how many startup accelerators is too many?

Behold the startup accelerator. You know, the YCombinators and Techstars of the world. The concept is anything but new, yet it has started spreading like wildfire since US companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Disqus, Scribd and more have proven the model successful. I’m sure you’re familiar with this by now so I’ll cut the dictionary definition […]

Can Mesagraph Fulfill Scoble's Dreams?

Aside from a love of startups and a preference not to go by the name Bob, I don’t think Robert Scoble and I have a whole lot in common. And we’re especially different when it comes to our usage of social media. Scoble follows nearly 33,000 accounts on Twitter, while I follow only 350. Scoble […]

Conferences: When to go and when to pass?

In the upcoming weeks, our Rude Calendar is pretty packed – meetups, conferences, weekend events, and more – in fact, we’re evening giving away one ticket to Entreprise 2.0 Summit in Paris.  It’s hard to know sometimes when it’s worth it – sure, there’s a price tag, but that’s rarely the deciding factor. This past […]

DrinkOnMe launches a mobile app – the next round is on me!

DrinkOnMe, Groupon for when you want to get your DrinkOn, is holding a pseudo-launching event in announcement of the launch of their mobile app. As listed on our Rude Calendar, which contains all the best startup events in Paris/France, the apero will be held at Le Paloma and will start between 7 and 8. For those […]

Hadopi: What SOPA looks like from the Eiffel Tower

Last week, the US looked a lot more like France than it usually does, thanks to the uproar caused by SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). I probably don’t need to remind anyone reading this that the internet was flooded with the protesting voices of companies like Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and more against the would-be anti-piracy law. […]

Le Huffington Post launches – France says "whatever"

This morning, the long delayed, not so highly await French version of the Huffington post launched – and only a few weeks after the site was hacked and had its landing page screenshoted and posted publicly. The site launched amidst much other news, including the DLD 2012 conference in Munich, which took up much of […]

We've got tickets to Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris. Want one?

February’s just around the corner, and so’s the Enterprise 2.0 Summit! The Rude Baguette got some tickets, but we don’t want to go alone – so we’re taking one of YOU with us! For those who haven’t heard of it before, The Enterprise 2.0 Summit brings Technorati, Web 2.0 enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, CxOs, and academics to […]

Kwaga announces HistoRecall: recall ALL your email contacts!

Following their most recent announcement of a new round of funding, covered here by Techcrunch, Kwaga announced today their most recent addition to the WriteThat.Name – HistoRecall. We talked a bit about WriteThat.Name in an interview with founder and CEO Philippe Laval back in December: in short, WriteThat.Name automatically updates your contact book whenever a new contact emails […]