Archive for December 2012
European Commission strategy for tech startups: Start in Europe, Stay in Europe
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President for the Digital Agenda of the European Commission, ended the second day of LeWeb, talking about the European Commission’s strategy for supproting European tech startups. The talk was part of an ambitious action plan by the European Commission, currently being studied with input from the European startup scene, which will be presented in […]
Twitter VP Katie Stanton says France is the next big focus
Le Web’s first day was jammed packed with loads of interesting, high profile speakers. As mentioned earlier, in this version, France seemed to get more focus than in previous years, challenging the conventional wisdom that Le Web is a conference made in France, but in no way really about France. This time around, various French […]
Blablacar releases shocking study on Trust in Online Communities
This morning at LeWeb, Blablacar CEO and co-founder Frédéric Mazzella spoke on stage as one of the Ignite speakers. In his speech, Mazzella announced some amazing figures – Blablacar now matches 400,000+ travelers a month across Europe in a community of more than 2.5 million users; for Mazzella, however, this isn’t good enough. He began asking himself […]
French alcohol producer Pernod Ricard to use Salesforce Chatter
LeWeb kicked off pretty strong on its first day, and the announcements are flying around – one of the more interesting announcements came out of the entreprise giant Salesforce, announcing that French pastis maker Pernod Ricard has now implemented Salesforce Chatter into their company. Salesforce Chatter (demo video available below) is a Enterprise Social Network […]
Fleur Pellerin appoints Tariq Krim to map the Paris startup scene
On the first day of LeWeb, Fleur Pellerin, Minister of the Numerique in France, spoke alongside the new head of UK Tech City Joanna Shields and Katia Gaika, who heads up Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation. The talk, moderated by TNW‘s UK Editor Jamillah Knowles, discussed the role of government in the startup ecosystem. While the conversation itself didn’t dig too deep […]
Gameloft rising fast amongst top 10 iOS publishers
Gameloft, one of France’s most famous games industry success stories, has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in mobile gaming. According to App Annie’s October index, Gameloft jumped 8 places to #4 in the ranking of top app publishers by free download on iOS and is holding steady at #4 amongst game publishers […]
Musings on advanced urban ecosystems
For the second time in a month this weekend, fortune had it that I caught one of the brand new trains on RER B. I’ve long suspected that one of the reasons that keeps Paris below other world-class cities in various rankings (such as the recent 11th out of Startup Genome’s Top 20 Startup Ecosystems) […]
Xavier Niel interviews Nest founder Tony Fadell
LeWeb is in full swing today, and the event kicked off powerfully with Xavier Niel, founder of Iliad (the company behind 4th biggest Telecom giant Free Mobile), interviewing Nest founder Tony Fadell. Prior to founding Nest, Tony Fadell worked at Apple, where he was deeply involved with the development of the iPod and iPhone – […]
Ujoolt launches at LeWeb
Ujoolt, one of the 16 startups selected in the LeWeb Paris Startup Competition, is officially launching its real-time geoocalized social network. The service, available for download on the iPhone App Store as well as on Google Play, integrates with Facebook and Instagram, creating a map of all photos, events, and check-ins posted on the two […]
Stellar line-up at DotJS — more conferences to come
DotJS is a top international tech conference on JavaScript that took place last Friday in Paris and gathered 600 attendees. I’d say that more than half of them were from out of town, based on a show of hands. The organizers pitched it as “not a regular conference”, which shows at first sight by the choice of venue […]