Archive for December 2012
ePawn raises €1M from Elaia to bridge the real & virtual world
ePawn has announced a round of funding of €1M from Elaia Partners in order to bridge the connection between machines & real-world objects by using its patented technology to allow machines to detect the position of objects & interact with them. It is currently licensing this technology to major players in the video game & […]
Everything must go! Loic sells LeWeb to Reed MIDEM
Yesterday afternoon,a surprise announcement dropped into email inboxes around the world, that the LeWeb conference series, started by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur in 2004, has been acquired by Reed MIDEM, a leading organizer of professional, international tradeshows and conferences. Loic and Geraldine declined to comment on the acquisition amount, according to TheNextWeb, though it seems that the Le […]
Former Deezer co-founder raises $4M for Cloud Media Startup Plizy
Cloud media startup Plizy has raised $4 million from Atlas Ventures, with Atlas Ventures’ Fred Destin joining the board, alongside Paypal President David Marcus. The news, reported by AllthingsD and TechCrunch (though still not updated on Crunchbase), comes as the formerly Paris-based startup has officially installed itself in San Francisco. “Plizy is the media center […]
Google ends 6 year feud with Belgian press
Google announced yesterday on their French blog the end of a six-year struggle with the francophone Belgian press, who argued that the “cached” versions of articles on Google violated the rights of journalists, and that they should pay royalties to said press. Google announced an agreement with the Franco-Belgian press, highlighting four initiatives: They will promote Belgian […]
Greenbureau raises €800K to consolidate online bills
Paris startup Greenbureau (“Green Desk”) has raised €800,000 from 3T Capital & Omnes Capital to help large companies reduce paper use by transitioning to digital billing, invoicing, and account management through their web interface. Currently only available in France, Greenbureau, founded by Mathieu Delobelle, Frédéric Dermer, Yan Tamalet and Florian Nicourt, allows users to manage all of their regular bills […]
Uber is finally big enough to piss off French taxi authorities
If the sign of success is having the incumbent leader publicly announcing his desire for you to not exist, then it’s been quite easy to watch Uber’s city-to-city success over the past 9 months. It all started when D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Ron Linton performed a “sting” on a Uber cab, riding in the car […]
The Mobile Operator Cluster Fuck – The Saga Continues
It seems like the four major Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) can’t stay out of the news these days, as Challenges reported yesterday that Bouygues Telecom (3rd largest operator in France) is suing Iliad ( parent company of Free Mobile, the 4th largest mobile operator in France, launched earlier this year) for €100 Million for an […]
The Fancy spreading its wings in France
One of the hottest curation startups at the moment is New York-based The Fancy, a site that seeks, via a visually and technologically elegant platform, to entice people to share and, ideally, purchase actual or similar items to what they ‘fancy’. Although the sharing of beautiful ‘things’ is an integral part of the Fancy experience, […]
Chef Jérôme partners with Casino to convert recipes to carts
Earlier this month, I wrote about a few French entrepreneurs who are Stanford grads, or pseudo-grads – one of them was Chef Jerome founder Antoine Durieux, and today Chef Jerome went live with their recipe-to-online grocery list service, available on AtelierDesChefs.fr, a top recipe site in France. Very simply, the service appears next to any […]
Why Wink is not just another photo-sharing app: location, location, location
Today, Denmark-based Wink is launching it’s new photo-sharing, location-based social network. Available for iPhone today, Wink CEO Francesco Patarnello demoed the app for me at LeWeb, despite my initial evasiveness at the thought of yet another photo sharing app, Francesco’s demo really caught my attention – not to mention the ridiculous viral video he created for the launch: Room […]