Archive for August 2013
Is there room left to innovate in Online Dating?
From Minitel Rose to Tinder, the $4.2B online dating market evolves more quickly than mobile apps, and new players are rising and falling every day. Like alcohol, cigarettes, porn & cat videos, it’s one of those markets that you know will always evolve, but will never go away. As long as there are humans, there will […]
Startup Rally rolls through Paris – A Review
After touring some European cities like London, Berlin, Vienna, and others, Startup Rally arrived in Paris yesterday evening hosted at La Cantine. The event is being organized by Leto, a London-based agency specialized in creating websites and mobile apps and sponsored by Innovation Warehouse, a London-based accelerator for entrepreneurs, investors and innovators which delivered the […]
Is the European Tech Community ready for its own Burning Man?
This week I found myself in a converted junkyard across the street from what was formerly Germany’s largest brothel. Previous trips had included tech entrepreneur Morten Lund riding in on a fire-breathing half-dinosaur half-motorcycle, a band of robots playing heavy metal music, and an unlimited supply of beer. While they wouldn’t specifically refer to themselves […]
Founder Interview: Focusmatic cofounder Amirhossein Malekzadeh discusses customer trust and the value of flexibility
Throughout the month of August, the Rude Baguette will be running a series of interviews with some of France’s top and rising entrepreneurs, where they’ll share their reflections on their year thus far, their plans through the end of the year and how they manage their businesses through the August down period. In the final […]
Oliver Samwer’s Global Founders Capital announces 3 investments: Berlin, Paris & London
After launching earlier this year, Global Founders Capital, which counts Rocket Internet’s Oliver Samwer as one of three partners, has finally announced its first three investments. In addition to investing UK dress rental service GirlMeetsDress.com & Berlin-based language-learning platform Lingoda.com (previously rumored on Venture Village), GFC has invested $5 Million in Paris-based Videdressing, founded by […]
The Yin and Yang of Gamification
“I completed my expedition in two months. I brought away the fixed amount which he had ordered me.” You would think this sentence was taken out of a recent online game but you’d be wrong. It actually is one of the earliest recorded examples of gamification. It was carved on an Egyptian stela around 1860bc. […]
Five things I learned during TechStars
The following is a guest post by Cyrille Vincey, co-founder of Qunb, a platform that helps anyone turn their data into visual stories. You can follow him on Twitter at @cyrvin. The very day after qunb won LeWeb’12 Paris Startup Competition, I was pressing the team to figure out how to turn this award into […]
Founder Interview: OpenDataSoft CEO Jean-Marc Lazard discusses the importance of putting the customer first
Throughout the month of August, the Rude Baguette will be running a series of interviews with some of France’s top and rising entrepreneurs, where they’ll share their reflections on their year thus far, their plans through the end of the year and how they manage their businesses through the August down period. In this installment, […]
Rude VC: Europe’s leading VC countries, part två
Last month I superimposed the data for VC investment in 2012 onto a map of Europe (see here). The feedback was overwhelming, and some excellent suggestions arose along the lines of indexing the investment to each country’s respective size. In absolute terms, out of the total 3.5 B€ invested by VCs in Europe in 2012, […]
Balderton invests in 3D Hubs, a social network for the 3D Printing community
Balderton Capital has invested in the seed round of 3D Hubs, an Amsterdam-based startup which currently boasts the largest network for 3D Printers. Leveraging the roughly 95 percent down time that 3D Printers have in people’s homes and offices, 3D Hubs wants to leverage the fast-growing communities of 3D Printer-owners and 3D makers by creating […]