StartinParis #3
*Language Warning* many of the links below point to content only available in French
Last night I attended StartinParis #3, a new monthly event in Paris with a straightforward objective; 5 startups, 5 pitches - audience votes, winner selected. The co-founders of submate.com Laurent Kretz and Jonathan Benoudiz created this event to ignite the startup community in Paris and that they have done. For this event, 36 startups applied to pitch from which 5 were selected by 1200 voters.
Around 100 motivated entrepreneurs, developers, investors and startup fans packed La Cantine for the evening. Michel de Guilhermier, a successful French entrepreneur kicked off the agenda with a short speech on what’s important for a young startup. My personal takeaway, which I’ve heard over and over again yet bears the value of repeating is this simple phrase; “listen and adapt” - so easy to understand, so difficult to execute.
Next up, the 5 pitches. We heard from 5 very different startups:
Super Marmite - a geo-based, social network where you can buy and sell homemade meals
Dress-Me - put your wardrobe online and let the community help you get dressed
Scrumers - a web application for project management
Hop-Cube - provides tools to manufacturers and distributors to highlight the environmental impact of their products
Wizme - allows consumers to get advice from people they trust on future purchases
Everyone did really well with the pitches - we saw creativity, confidence and passion. Of course there can only be one winner and the audience voted for Wizme - congratulations to the team - it’s evident there is a great market out there for social advice platforms.
One thing which struck me about the majority of the startups was their sole focus on the French or French-speaking market. (Kudos to Scrumers for your site in English) With the resources we have at our disposal today, there aren’t many reasons why you wouldn’t launch your product in multiple languages going for a regional if not global launch from the beginning. The French market or for that matter any domestic market in Europe isn’t what your after, is it? Start global, start now.
All in all, it was a great event and quite impressive to see such a strong interest for the startup community in Paris backed by a great group of entrepreneurs. HackFwd is proud to now be an official sponsor of StartinParis and we are already looking forward to StartinParis #4.
