Archive for January 2013
Fast food employee in France fired after 240 Tweets about his job
French fast food chain Quick announced at the end of last week that it would be pursuing action against the Twitter account @EquipierQuick, which, during the month of November, tweeted 240 times about the daily life working at the French fast food chain. In their press release, Quick says simultaneously that “they welcome all criticism that encourages improvement” […]
hy! Berlin offers 15K€ & an SV tour for startups! Apply today!
Next week I’ll be heading out to Berlin for my first visit there in a few years, and one of the exciting events that caught my attention is hy! Berlin. Bootstrapped by entrepreneurs, the event brings 150 movers and shakers in the startup ecosystem to see the best of what Berlin has to offer Europe […]
Rude VC: Courage to vote for courage
Last May we elected a new French president largely based on his extent of ‘normalcy’. The recent U.S. presidential election revolved around the issue of business acumen rather than inspirational leadership. Not to mention last week’s embarrassing punt by the U.S. congress on the fiscal cliff resolution when what would have really made sense would […]
Slow Control shows off the connected fork at CES – track your eating habits
This week at CES, plenty of startups are showing off all kinds of consumer hardware; none as interesting so far as Jacques Lepine‘s Slow Control, which developed the HapiFork. The fork monitors records and transmits data about your eating, tracking caloric intake and alerting the ‘user’ (i.e: eater) if they surpass their pre-set reigment by vibrating. […]
Deezer closes in on Spotify attracting more paid subscribers in 2012
A recent report by DigitalMusicNews has shown that Deezer‘s paid subscriber rate is growing faster than that of Spotify‘s. Deezer has seen a grwoth of 114% from December 2011 to December 2012, versus Spotify’s 86% growth. This is surprising, given Spotify’s positioning as the #1 paid subscription music service; however, it’s important to remember what has […]
Is Virgin Megastore going bust?
As confirmed Friday on France Inter, Virgin Stores will submit a request today to declare themselves insolvent. As in the US with Chapter 11 status, there tends to be two possible outcomes of this: 1) restructuring or 2) full-out liquidation/bankruptcy. Given how things have been going for Butler Capital owned Virgin Megastores in recent years, […]
Here’s a list of French startups exhibiting at CES this week
With CES coming up this week, it seems that the once infamous event, which had taking a reputation beat-down last year, with Microsoft announcing they wouldn’t be returning this year, has actually come full circle, and is now a highly anticipated hardware startup event. Tech blogs are gathering up their entire team, and it seems the event […]
TheNextWeb announces the French Startup Awards – Jan 31st
TheNextWeb is looking for the hottest startups, entrepreneurs, apps & more in France, announcing the TNW Startup Awards France to be hosted January 31st in association with HackFWD and Cole Street. The event, whose location is currently not specified, will give awards in seven different categories, including startup of the year, co-founder of the year, […]
AdBlock+ has 4M users in France – Why is #AdGate such a big deal?
As Minister of the Digital Economy Fleur Pellerin gets ready to meet with Free in response to what is now being called #Adgate, many have likened Free’s ad blocker to a very popular internet extension, Adblock Plus. I was lucky enough to catch up with the guys from Adblock, who, I imagine, have been working very […]
B2B marketing specialist Touchvibes acquired by CCMBenchmark
CCMBenchmark group, one of France’s the top 10 online media conglomerates who also own such properties as Linternaute, Journal du Net, and Comment ça Marche, have decided to broaden their portfolio with this week’s announced purchase of Touchvibes. Although the purchase price hasn’t been announced, Les Echos speculate that it likely didn’t exceed €10 million. […]