l’Académie française: Has Micro-blogging Killed le Vouvoiement?

Disclaimer: this post is probably more for myself than anyone else. 🙂 Remember that terrible 80’s song by The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star”? Well, if video killed the radio star, I’m pretty sure that the evolution of web 2.0 – with my figer pointing at micro-blogging in particular – has killed le vouvoiement. French 101 For […]

French companies you probably didn’t know were on Twitter

The other day I bought a box of tea from the French brand Kusmi Tea. For anyone who doesn’t know Kusmi, their teas are amazing but somewhat expensive. And despite having somewhat modern packaging, the company’s history dates back to 1867. So you can imagine I was surprised to discover the company had a Facebook […]

Dear US Entrepreneurs, You Have it Easy.

Everytime I meet a new entrepreneur – French, American or otherwise – the topic comes up: What are the differences between being an entrepreneur in the US and in France? In my former job, I was constantly confronted with the opinion from the other side of the Atlantic vis-à-vis doing business in France: “The French are always […]

Trying to Make Sense of the French Job Market

Yesterday, Marc Thouvenin (Regioneo founder) posted a tweet that caught my eye: “Can interns make good community managers” with a link to this blog post by Benjamin Rosoor of Web Report. Traditional recruitment meets realtime web. For anyone that can’t read French, Rosoor’s post argues against younger employees – and more specifically, interns – doing the […]

The Truth: (Young) French VCs ARE on Twitter

In an earlier post, I applauded the French VCs that I found on Twitter. Turns out a majority of the French VC adoption of Twitter is from the younger VC crowd. I’ve included them in my FrenchVC list on Twitter but here is a quick look at who they are. Serena Capital Has funded companies like […]

The Aardvark Hall of Fame

This is just a quick post in honor of Aardvark (@vark) and my experience with the service that was apparently worth 50 million Google dollars. Think before you Aardvark. In the beginning, I was utterly annoyed to get rather irrelevant questions from Aardvark flooding my inbox. “What time is it in France?” would get my blood boiling. Are these people just […]

I’m Putting My Money on MyFab

Sequoia and Benchmark, you may want to listen. Jeff Bezos too. MyFab: THE next hot start-up to come out of France. First off, let me say that I do not write this for just any old company and it is very likely that this will be the only post of its kind for a long time. […]

Eticketing: What Silicon Valley is Bad At

One of my first posts was called “A Letter to Silicon Valley” where I named 3 things in France that desperately need to be exported to Silicon Valley: SOS Medecins, the TGV and the Freebox. Add electronic ticketing to the list. I don’t care if public transporation is more popular in France than in the […]

The Truth: French VCs ARE on Twitter

One of my first posts was called “France, Meet Twitter” where I happened to very slightly criticize French VCs for their absence on Twitter. Well, I take it back. I discovered some very high-profile French VCs on Twitter, namely Guillaume Lautour (@G_Lautour) of AGF Private Equity. Even though I haven’t come across the Twitter accounts of anyone from Partech International, Sofinnova or […]

French start-ups that got VC funding in January 2010

I think the VC community in France had a promising start for 2010. The month of January included the launch of the Paris Founder’s Club and tech innovation cluster System@tic launched its investment club with 17 VC firms. In addition, quite a few start-ups got funding, including (and obviously not limited to): eYeka (@eyekafr) This company likes to […]