Archive for September 2015
Globalizing HR digitalization, PeopleDoc raises $28 Million from Eurazeo
PeopleDoc has raised a $28 Million Series C round of investment led by Eurazeo, the company announced today. PeopleDoc, which has seen explosive growth in the last 18 months, during which they brought on 150 of their 400 clients, which include Yves Rocher & Auchan in France, but also American Express & Match.com in the US. […]
What you need to know about the bill for a French digital Republic
The « Projet de loi pour une République numérique » is finally in the starting gates after it was first announced in autumn 2012. What makes this bill special is that, from now on, and for the next three weeks, it will be open for public debate and proposals. An online consultation platform, designed by the […]
The worst innovation of our day ?
I have this ongoing contest with a childhood friend on identifying the most impactful contributions to society’s moral decay. Potential winning candidates reflect more than mere kooky inventions: they genuinely qualify as innovations because they witness widescale adoption, for better or (in this case) for worse. I had won the last battle when I cited […]
NYC's 10 hottest French startups – 2015 edition
For the 3rd year running, I’ve been spending part of the summer in NYC, meeting with the budding French entrepreneur scene there – and putting together an updated list of my 10 favorite upcoming startups. The past 12 months have been eventful for the laureates of the past two editions: Sunrise was acquired by Microsoft […]
The 5 best IOT startups at Techcrunch Disrupt 2015
Last day of TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, a whole section of the startup alley is dedicated to Hardware (note that there is a separate section for Virtual reality). Robots are snooping around, drones are flying above our heads: you can tell the future is happening here. Everything looks pretty cool from the outside, […]
Right to be forgotten: CNIL and Google’s arm wrestling match is only the symptom of a deeper disease
We often say, « the truth lies somewhere in between ». That’s exactly what applies to the arguments put forward in the battle the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (CNIL), a French independent authority in charge of data regulation, is fighting with Google for the implementation of the « right to be forgotten ». The […]
Content is King; Distribution is King Kong
I love the expression by which I titled this post, though I cannot take credit for it. That goes to Laurens Rutten, CEO of our portfolio company BoosterMedia, a leading network for cross-platform mobile games. The importance of digital distribution has been on my mind a lot lately, and bubbled up again last week as […]
France's 1st FinTech exit, Leetchi acquired in a deal valued at €50 Million+
Leetchi has seen 86% of its capital acquired by French Bank Credit Mutuel Arkéa in a deal valuing the payments startup at more than €50 Million, the two companies announced this week. The deal, which will see its historical investors, who injected a total of €7 Million into the startup since its founding in 2009, […]
iAdvize nabs €14 Million to bring its Customer Engagement solution to the US
Customer engagement startup iAdvize has secured €14 Million in new funding from Iris Capital & Bpifrance, with participation by their historic investor Alven Capital, in order to take their platform global. Founded in 2010 and based in Nantes, the 120-person team has seen an average 100% annual growth over the past 5 years, iAdvize offers […]
Capital inefficiency in hardware startups is a myth, period
When I joined my partners at the Hardware Club to re-focus myself on investments in hardware startups, my former boss at my previous VC firm warned me, out of concerns about my career, that hardware startups were capital inefficient and would not be able to generate the investment returns as well as lean startups. At […]