{"id":5662,"date":"2012-09-28T15:54:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=5662"},"modified":"2012-09-28T15:54:04","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:54:04","slug":"riam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2012\/09\/riam\/","title":{"rendered":"CNC-Oseo-RIAM can help fund your "image" startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Although it has existed in its current form since 2007, the CNC-Os\u00e9o RIAM\u00a0call for proposals is still a little-known way of getting funds for projects that deal with the “production, channelling and distribution of interactive or non-interactive images and\/or sound, in a linear or non-linear form”.\u00a0One of our most renowned French startups, Dailymotion<\/a>, is using RIAM funds for its current efforts to challenge US competitors.
\nThe French\u00a0National Centre for Cinema and Animated Picture (CNC)<\/a>\u00a0have been working in partnership with\u00a0Os\u00e9o Innovation<\/a>\u00a0to provide grants and zero-interest loans\u00a0for the development of innovative products or services in the image domain.\u00a0In 2009 for instance, 15 projects received funds totaling 10M \u20ac.\u00a0CNC claims that these funds have either made projects possible, or made them more ambitious, or have brought development milestones closer.\u00a0Projects are selected by\u00a0CNC\u2019s Research Network for Innovation in Audio-visual technology and Multimedia (RIAM), which is a network of experts\u00a0and representatives of the Ministry of Industry, of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and of the Institut pour le Financement du Cin\u00e9ma et des Industries Culturelles (IFCIC).<\/p>\n

It’s not a competition<\/h1>\n

The CNC-Os\u00e9o RIAM\u00a0call for projects is an “open call”, meaning that proposals may be submitted throughout the year. As such, it is not so much of a competition but more of a process that, owing to the feedback given by Os\u00e9o and CNC experts before and after submission, allows you to come up with a solid innovation project with tangible milestones, budget and commercial projections.\u00a0Projects carried out by small and medium sized companies (< 2000 employees)\u00a0may receive support from the very beginning to the end stages of development which helps them\u00a0manage internal and sub-contracting expenditures linked to the project\u2019s conception, to technical and commercial viability expertises, to R&D, to prototype development, patenting, market launch, search for partners, etc.
\nThe first step in answering this call is to\u00a0get in touch<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0Pierre-Marie Boy\u00e9 or Baptiste Heynemann at CNC<\/a>\u00a0who will provide a first assessment of your proposal and the application form to be filled.\u00a0Applications are pretty straightforward and require filling in a 20-page form (plus appendices). They are reviewed every 3 months and decisions are taken within 4 weeks. If a proposal is refused, it can be improved thanks to the accompaniment provided, and then it can be resubmitted later.\u00a0Ultimately, more than half of proposals are approved. Funds are made available shortly after, with transfers spread over the duration of each project.
\nFilling in the application does take a bit of time if you haven’t thought things through beforehand, but it’s always useful to ask yourself the same questions that the people who give you money do, and to plan your work, even if you’re in R&D and particularly fond of R\u2026\u00a0You’ll have to start with the usual stuff: describe your company, your project, its context, how it fits in what the company is doing and its strategy, how it relates to what other people are doing, what is the commercial potential, etc.\u00a0You’ll also have to identify both technical and commercial difficulties and risks.\u00a0It’s important to do a background review of the state of the art and explain\u00a0what you are doing differently or what you are improving.\u00a0Equally important is execution and how you plan to reach your objectives.\u00a0You’ll have to explain your methodology and break your project into sub-projects, give milestones, specify deliverables, indicate how you intend to validate them, and identify resources necessary to carry out developments.<\/p>\n

Numbers<\/h1>\n

You may get between 30% and 50% of the budget estimated for your project in funds, part of which will be grant money, and part will be zero-interest loan.\u00a0The precise amounts for each individual project are determined by CNC and Os\u00e9o, based on the RIAM expertise.\u00a0For projects estimated at up to 100K \u20ac you may get pure grant money from CNC only.\u00a0It is worth noting that you get more grant money if you have been labelled by a “p\u00f4le de\u00a0comp\u00e9titivit\u00e9” such as Cap Digital<\/a>! The RIAM label will also add to your credibility when in need of raising money in the future.
\nTo get an idea of the range of project budgets, during the 2007-2010 period the smallest was at 34,568 \u20ac (Studio MAIA) and the largest at 1,779,092 \u20ac (3DTV Solutions<\/a>), while\u00a0Total Immersion<\/a>\u00a0was smart enough to submit two projects\u00a0<\/strong>totaling 3,409,073 \u20ac in budget. In the 58 approved proposals, more than two thirds were submitted by companies with 1-19 employees, there was\u00a0one\u00a0third of young startups that were less than 3 years old and who submitted project proposals of around 100K \u20ac \u2014 there has to be some coherence with the company’s own funds. Most\u00a0projects relate\u00a0to disruptive innovation and to the creation of new products or new services, which have led to\u00a03 US patent applications by RIAM laureates. The funds provided have allowed to maintain about 100 jobs and to create 100+ more.\u00a0You’ll find more statistics in the\u00a0Bilan 2007-2010<\/a>\u00a0(in French).<\/p>\n

Case study: Dailymotion<\/h1>\n

This is perhaps the most widely known company to have benefitted from the RIAM. Dailymotion’s current project is entitled DaaS \u2014 Dailymotion as a Service \u2014 but it looks like the resulting product has been renamed to\u00a0Dailymotion cloud<\/a>, which was\u00a0relaunched in the summer<\/a>. In short, it is a cloud-based video platform on which you’ll be able to host videos, have them automatically encoded in different formats and\u00a0optimised\u00a0so they play nicely on all devices and internet connections, and which will give you access to a\u00a0customisable\u00a0video player to embed on your site and statistics\/analytics to find out how your videos are watched. The service\u00a0competes with\u00a0Brightcove<\/a>\u00a0(who\u00a0went public on\u00a017 February 2012<\/a>) but Dailymotion cloud has a different pricing that is solely based on streaming hours.
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\nThe project actually started on 30 September 2010 and spurred from an effort to adapt to new usages of video on the internet. It was scheduled to last 30 months (one of the longest), it was budgeted at almost 1M \u20ac, and Dailymotion received the largest grant amount at 200K \u20ac plus a loan of 175K \u20ac. They clearly announced ambitious objectives (to become a global player in online video delivery and to establish the company’s international position). The developments implied an overhaul of the technical architecture and were made along 4 axes:<\/p>\n