A Deep Dive Into The Paris Startup Scene
From 9am to 7pm today, I was in back to back meetings with not a minute of free time. I managed to meet with sixteen parisian entrepreneurs in back to back 30 minute sessions, with time out for breakfast and lunch. It was stimulating, enlightening, and only a bit exhausting.
I am headed to Berlin tomorrow to do a similar thing and hope to be able to blog about today’s meetings a bit more on the flight to Berlin tomorrow. There were some great meetings.
I want to thank Marc Brandsma and his partners at Chausson Finance for hosting the day long event and Colette Ballou and Ken Newcomer from Ballou PR for organizing it.
And I want to let everyone know that Ballou PR is doing one of their "Pont Parties" next Thursday night, July 17th. I am going to be there from the start at 6:30pm to around 8:30pm. If you are in Paris next Thursday and want to meet up with other people working in the startup scene, this looks to be a great event. Here’s the details:
Time: 18h30 (weather permitting, but it looks very promising)
Where: Passerelle Solferino, 4th & 5th bench on south side, facing west
Metro: Solferino, Tuileries, RER: Musee d’Orsay
Who: You, bring friends!
What to bring: you know the drill; each invitee brings a bottle of wine
Comments (Archived):
Thanks for the update Fred. I’ll have to stop by.
I guess that means you are still in France. You know; the French have a different word for everything.
I am not quite sure why the french have a bad reputation with some people. I love them
I’ve said this once, and I’ll say it again, “when I grow up I want to be Fred Wilson” 🙂 Looking forward to your update on the startups you saw today.
Fred, you should seriously consider doing the same thing for Asia. It will be an awesome experience.
I know that I need to do that. My concern about asia is that nyc is so far from asia. I wonder if we are as well positioned to invest there
It would be fun to be able to hear and see what went on in those discussions! A friend created a simple tactile image, to be worn, expressing “cultural blindness”. The first one, states “monetize simplicity”, which was such a perfect statement for this period and a nice comment on funding.They are images, clothes, editorial statements, conversations ready to happen, all boiled down into simple tactile expressions. I like them: http://blinked.tumblr.com
Very cool. Anxious to hear the highlights and which you liked the most. How many on the list are geo-agnostic versus euro-centric? I always find it invigorating to tap into my industry abroad and see how they’re doing things over there….
Excellent news Fred! Can we hope to read more thoughts about the Paris startup scene (and also the Berlin startup scene)? I’d love to read your thoughts about the startups here, if our scene has something different/special compared to the others.
It’s really been an intense and thought provoking day for us. I appreciated a lot, so did all the entrepreneurs, your questions, comments and feedback. Lot of work ahead but we like it. Also, thanks to the people at Altaïde and Open Coffee Club for their help in the organization.
Just to clarify for all you folks not familiar with Paris: the pont party is on the pedestrian bridge between the Musee d’Orsay and the Jardin des Tuileries. Metro: Solferino (south side) Concorde or Tuileries (north side) or RER Musee d’Orsay. The only rules: please bring a bottle of wine and be ready for great conversations.
I was planing on stopping by the Pont Party this evening to say hello to Mr. Freemium 😉 himself but something came up.I was looking forward to pointing you to a foundation technology I discovered while researching secure, scalable messaging systems to power one of the apps we are building. The developers are rockstar Swedes based in SF. Their tech and approach may help sort out some of the issues you are having with twitter.You are welcome to ring me directly on my Paris number +33660664111.
Yes and no. But I will be in london a fair amount over the next couple monthsWe could meet on one of those trips. I’d love to see what you are up to before we schedule a meeting though