I popped over to Paris today to get a taster of the startup scene in France, and to draw some comparisons with the UK startup scene. No doubt there are lessons to be learned (on both sides) in terms of the differing experiences a British or French company has in starting up locally country and, perhaps, trying to think internationally. (And on that note, I have a cheeky idea of getting UK startups over to Paris one day to network with their Gallic cousins, so let me know if you are interested). In the meantime, here are my notes from the startups which presented at Seedcamp in Paris, the startup competition which roams Europe and which culminates in a week-long event later this year. (Update: the day’s event was won by won by Squareclock and MyPronostic.com. They are both now qualified for the European Final in London. Here are some photos).

I found that when French startups pitch, they play things as downbeat as a lot of Brit startups - something which they were jokingly harranged for by one VC on stage (”Be more Israeli or American about it! Harass people!).

During a panel debate of VCs and French entrepreneurs, the consensus was that French startups also need to be encouraged to share their ideas more. It’s interesting to hear this, given that France is the home of Loic Le Meur - the man who has made sharing his ideas an integral part of his business model.

Interestingly, French startup founders are rarely as respected as the company CEO in French society. This is the reverse of the UK or US scene, where founders get the respect, and the CEO is generally seen as just a business person brought in to make things run smoothly. In the US the founder is the hero. In France it’s the boss. This means that the French founder tends to want to remain as the CEO for as long as possible, whether this is in the interests of the company or not. French law only allowed for Chairman and CEO to be different roles three years ago, which means the concept of a Chairman to help guide the company is a relatively new one, and once which is bound to improve the culture for startups and founders there.

Also French startups often fall into the same trap as UK firms - they give away too much of the company to an Angel early on so, if or when they need to raise VC they don’t have enough equity to give to the VC to get to the next stage and that effectively kills its potential. Something worth remembering for all.

Here are the statups that presented at Seedcamp Paris:

Lokad.com
This is Web forecasting as a service. Customers upload data and get a forecast back. Think ‘optimising business operations like inventory management. Forecasting is not a new sector - but lokad provides low-cost forecasting for smaller companies. Founded one month ago, with a team of 4. Its young team is unusual for France, where being a young entrepreneur is the exception rather than the rule, where young people tend to get a stable job first, instead of a slightly risky one.

Voisineo.com
You meet our neighbours to exchange goods and services. Special offers from local shops etc. Convert virtual meetings into real-world exchange. 80% of French people would like to meet their neighbours but tend not to (not just a British problem then!). Young team, three, from Lyon business school (what school you went to seems to be even more important in France than in the UK and is constantly mentioned). Launched in Beta last november in Lyon for 500 users. Now launched in Feb across France and now has more than 80,000 users. They are working on their first fundraising of 300k Euro.

Whooknoows.com
Social Network, for local merchants. People sharing what they like do do and visit. You need a dentist, plumber, where do you go? Yelow pagestype search with eBay type ratings. You can search by ratings or map. The team seems strong, ex-Kelkoo, Yahoo etc. Launching Alpha in September. Maybe. (Alas, this is quite a common business model, to put it mildly…).

Winancial.com
Online personal finance manager - Finance 2.0. Need 300k Euros to develop the site. Sounds like it is not unlike Kublax or Mint.com.

Easycity.com
Local search and reviews (again). Hotels bars, etc mapped to GPS co-ordinates. Social network. Have a database of 850,000 places. After 300k investment. Hard to see how this is different from a number of similar sites…

WatZatSong.com
Fun and collaborative online music services. Music quizzes are popular, so this is a music gaming community. You sing the song and the community recognises it. Monetised via traffic, but also white-labeling for music stores. Singstar etc are doing well with virtual Kareoke, so this has an interesting chance.

Square Clock
Sophisticated online 3D modelling to improve the marketing experience of users online and speed up the buying process. Emotion is part of the experience. Mass customisation. Think MyDeco, where you design a room with products. Also there is a B2B play here. There is a lot of serious IP contained in this startup. 3D semantic modelling - in other words the application knows what it is modelling, like a chair or a vase. Can also synchronise what you design with other people designing other rooms in the same house. Seriously slick technology.

Melty.fr / Eeple.fr
Melty is a new web site aimed at youth. 30,000 members so far. It wraps a social networks around the news. It’s going to be launching a new feature called The Board, which is based on Microsoft Silverlight, where kids drop their media, like a virtual scrapbook, onto something that looks like a board that might hang in their room. I took some video, below, as the demo was seriously impressive.

Beeblox
A Mobile “Wallet 2.0″. Turns your mobile phone into a virtual wallet containing loyalty cards, coupons, shopping lists, etc. This provides direct access to the consumer. You use the wallet at a Point of Sale. The wallet is shareable and is monetised on a performance based model. Addressing 20% of a 180m Euro market. Couple of international competitors but not many in this space in Europe. Looking for €500k.

Stupeflix
This team is coming out of DailyMotion and Exalead.com (which means serious street cred in the French startup community). Stupeflix automatically generates professional looking videos out of pictures, music and videos. If that sounds like Animoto, then you are right, but they say they are around twice as fast as Animoto at processing video and unlike the latter they are developing the API before the site. You upload, use templates (also customisable) on the site, then it generates a new video which can then be shared on other video sites like Daily Motion. The service is direct or via an API. Worth a look when it launches in September. Here’s a demo.

Noovolution
Personalised start page which makes RSS more accessible to ordinary users. Real time screen shots of your favourite sites. Instead of using NetVibes of iGoogle, you use Noovoution start page which has visual look and feel. You create one ID which makes it easier to access. Business model, targetted ads based on user preferences depending on the sites they select to track. Private Alpha so far, want to launch in Sept 08.

DoYouBuzz
A sort of “CV 2.0″ take on reputation management and professional social networking. In partcular they have noted that the idea of being introduced via LinkedIn doesn’t work in France where the idea is culturally an anathema, seriously.

EKOZ
Turning corporate data into more usable information. Currently they use huge relational databases, with terrabytes of data. EKOZ address these issues with a new process. They already have a client for the product, and are looking for investment.

Chugulu Games
Casual online gaming. They have a game which is a stockmarket for celebrities - buy and sell shares in Paris Hilton etc. Working on a multiplayer web platform with Flash games and quizzes.

Media No Mad
Marseille-based. Have a travel social Be-noot.com dedicated to creating a multimedia travel diary linked with a virtual network for travellers offering its members financial benefits. Monetised by ads, sponsors, sponsors put inside user videos etc

Six Squared
Geneva-based startup focused on “build and test” networks. Testing and deploying things in a reliable way does not really exist. They automate this proccess and make it seamless. Team is very experienced in grid and cloud computing.

MyPronostic
This is a predictive game on all subjects. Not just experts doing it, but everyone. If you make a pronostic about a football game and get 80% right answers then someone will want to know what you say about the next game - so the whole idea is that the betting industry does not have a similar service. Signed a deal with the Metro newspaper a white-label page for a game about the Euro 2008. Just had a 500k round of financing to develop a white-label model for large media companies. No dissimilar to HubDub, but closer to HubDub’s recently launched PunditWatch.

Progonline
An ‘Ebay of services’ where service providers meet and collaborate online. B2B trading platform with project management collaboartion tools. Service buyers pay for the tools, with 15% going to the site. Have 10,000 service French providers and 3,000 companies (SMEs). Just secured 200k investment.

BabyGo
Tools for protecting kids online. Working on a secure search engine for kids and teens. Now claims to have 500k page views a day (14m a month).

Visit Me (still looking for the correct URL)
Virtual real estate engine online. Sold direct to real state agents. Allows people to upload video of their home from a mobile.

OutWit Hub
Released last week as a Firefox extension in Beta. Information collection environment for the web. You find with Google - for example - and get it with OutWit. Simple, aimed at broad audience. experienced team, with one of the best Mozilla developers in Europe. The idea is to monetise the community of users, not the tech itslef. Looking for a second round of funding.

A while ago, CG’s Matt Hickey got a packet of screenshots of a squat green iPod from an anonymous source. That same green iPod got us a C&D from Apple and was finally proven to be the iPod Nano. Well, Matt just got another packet of photos and aside from a few discrepancies with might just be looking at a mock-up of Apple’s marketing collateral for the new iPhone. What does it include? GPS, 3G speeds, a front facing camera for video chat, and iChat for — along with iChat for Windows to complement the new hardware.

Visit CrunchGear for more information…

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Beema, a 3D animation studio that has been working in the corporate space for the last decade, has released a new platform in beta that allows users to generate 3D speaking avatars with only a phone call.

During signup, users enter their phone numbers and carrier information, which is tied to their account. From then on Beema makes things easy - you simply call their free 800 number which prompts you to leave a voice message. A few minutes after leaving the message, Beema sends you a SMS text and email containing a link to your rendered video, which you can distribute as you see fit.

For the time being users are limited to Beema’s avatars, which consists of hundreds of possible choices that range from 3D wizards to Orson Welles. In the future users will be able to upload their own images, and the company hopes to introduce copryrighted characters as an option (for a small fee).

Beema isn’t going to win any awards for originality - there are a number of avatar sites that have very similar features, including Vidiator and Oddcast’s Voki platform. But the site does win points for its simplicity, forgoing Flash (which is standard for most avatars) for the standard 3GP video format, which gives users much more freedom with their videos (and also works on the iPhone). On the other hand, there’s no easy way to embed a video - there is no widget available, so you’ll have to upload your video to YouTube yourself.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Let me just say before I begin that I think everyone should come up with their own names. I could never understand why companies pay naming consultants to come up with empty product or company monikers that nobody can remember anyway. (Unless you are Altria, and you just want people to forget that you are really Phillip Morris). Well, now companies can ask strangers on the Internet to name their product. I’m not sure this is a much better idea, but it is more fun.

Crowdsourcing startup Kluster (which launched in February), publicly opened up a new site today called NameThis. It works pretty much like Kluster, except it is only for coming up with names for products or startups. A company pays $99 to put up a challenge describing the product or entity to be named, the community suggests names and votes for the best ones by investing their allotted ‘Watts.” The people who come up with, influence, or invest the most in the top three names split $80 among themselves, and Kluster keeps the rest as its fee.

There are obvious problems with this and with crowdsourcing in general (for instance, read about the implosion at Cambrian House). But one thing this has going for it is simplicity. Anyone can come up with a name. (Anyone can steal a name too, but that is another issue).

The site just launched today, so most of the “namestorming” challenges are just for fun. They include thinking up a better name for the Verizon G’zOne, Hot & Crusty Bakery, the Chevy Nova, Wolf Blitzer, and the Microsoft Zune. Some contenders so far: Divr (for Verizon), the Chevy Supernova, Wülf Blitzkreig (sic), and the Microsoft Rune (spelled correctly, but would be more apropos if spelled Ruin). There is even one real company that needs a name for a universal inbox service.

Just to see what people would come up with., I asked Kluster to put up a challenge to rename our recently launched video site TechCrunch Elevator Pitches. We went through an internal debate of our own before settling on that name. And some of our rejected candidates, like CrunchTime and PitchCrunch, have already come up independently on NameThis. There are also some we didn’t think of: IdeaCrunch and LaunchCrunch. Most of the rest are subpar. But you only need one good name.

Did we pick the best name or is the crowd coming up with better options? (Not that we are going to change the name. This is purely an exercise.)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

But Loren Feldman, of 1938 Media, (the guy who always seems to be at Michael’s house) is going to be producing a weekly video for Cnet. Dan Farber, the bravest man in newsdom, is also trusting him with a blog. Congratulations.

I hope it involves puppets. Lots of puppets.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Will bus stop and subway advertising to the tune of an estimated $250,000 per month help Google gain search market share against Russia’s home grown leader Yandex? The company is launching “”Moscow 2.0,” which includes over 5,000 outdoor advertisements across Moscow.

Yandex, with nearly 50% market share, is preparing a Nasdaq IPO. Google has around 31% market share.

Translated version of the story is here, and see the Quintura blog.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

But apparently CNet has acquired Loren Feldman, the creative force behind the 1938Media productions. In case the names Loren Feldman and 1938Media don’t ring a bell to you, perhaps you’ll have your memory jogged if I mention the TechRooster and the Shel Israel puppet at ShelIsrael.com (both creations of Loren Feldman).

Loren Feldman put out a couple minute video post today describing a meeting with CNet’s Dan Farber, one in which they both hit it off pretty well.

“I met Mr. Farber, we got along. Next thing you know, this happens,” said Feldman.

He’ll be blogging and doing videos presumably in the same style of his present videos, though questions regarding the non G-Rated language are still unanswered.

A hearty round congratulations to Loren are in order, proving that his unorthodox style of technology analysis is indeed a marketable brand of information delivery, despite what others may argue regarding the longer naked conversations style that Feldman is averse to.

—
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

CBS Acquires CNET For $1.8 Billion
Rumor: Google Looking To Purchase CNET?
CNet Losing Ground to Investors. Takeover Inevitable?
Investors Preparing a Takeover of CNET?
CNet Acquires FindArticles: Part of its Refocus?
Report: CNET Cuts 10 Percent of Staff
CNET TV Brings Online Video Content to the UK

Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: TenantWIZ

20-word Description: TenantWIZ enables vacation homeowners to streamline the management of their property online using TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software.

CEO’s 100-word Pitch: TenantWIZ enables vacation homeowners, property managers, agents and rental businesses the ability to easily and securely build a real-time property rental site using its TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software. The software provides users with an exstensive suite of Web-based tools for managing properties online anytime from anywhere. The application encompasses all aspects of vacation proptery rental and management including instant pricing & availability data, renter and owner account access, digital contracts with electronic signatures, online payments and unlocking the property remotely.

Mashable’s Take: Taking good care of your home and keeping up with all the bills can be daunting at times, especially when you own more than one or you are constantly on the move. What TenantWIZ provides is a medium through which you can access all the information about your properties from anywhere in the world. As long as you have an internet connection, you can connect to the web and instantly manage your vacation homes, rental rates, and more.

TenantWIZ covers every nook and cranny when it comes to the small details that are involved in homeowning. The site lets you add amenities and activities, generate and view multiple reports, and upload images.

I must admit I am not a homeowner myself, but I have been exposed to the details of managing a house or multiple houses and I must say that TenantWIZ definitely offers an extensive list of features that could be useful for people who cannot be present and on location. The site makes the difficulties of owning vacation homes look like a walk in the park. From the comfort of any computer, users can book properties, manage their accounts, digitally sign rental contracts and print online invoices.

The TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software, however, is not a free service. It costs $69/month and there is a $69 one-time setup fee. In the world of free music, movies, pictures, and web services it can be confusing to have to pay for software, but it seems clear that TenantWIZ is created for the professional, serious homeowner who is organized and on top of their personal finances.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

A few days ago, my startup HubSpot, launched a new app called Press
Release Grader. It’s not our core product, but a free tool for marketers
and PR folks to analyze a press release and provide suggestions.

The launch has gone exceptionally well for us (and by that, I mean,
the uptake in the community is much, much better than we were expecting). Would
put some stats here, but it’d seem a bit like bragging and the focus of this
article is not on press release grader or its specific results, but things I
learned from putting it out there.

Warning: As noted in the title, I have an uncanny knack for the obvious, and
I like to focus on the fundamentals (which is a polite way of saying that you’re
unlikely to find any brilliantly insightful lessons here).

7 Uncannily Obvious Lessons From A Product Launch

1. It’s Not Too Early To Release: I’m a really, really big
fan of the “release early, release often” mantra. But, even I fell prey to the
“let me just get a bit more done” mind-set. I could have released the product a
few weeks earlier, and I should have done exactly that.

2. Be Ready To Iterate: I intentionally cleared my
schedule of other major distractions so I could focus on the software and
iterate, iterate, iterate. In the days after the release/launch, I iterated
like crazy with multiple production updates a day. Not a day should go buy that
the software doesn’t get better for the users. Continue this as long as you can
(maybe even weeks and months).

3. Provide Simple Feedback Mechanism: You don’t need
anything fancy. Just a place for users to click a link, type in some feedback
and send it to you. That’s it.

4. Respond To Feedback: This goes back to #2. You should
be ready to fix the “obvious” bugs and add the enhancements based on user
feedback (as long as they make sense). The magic of immediate user
responsiveness is underestimated. I’ve had a couple of noteworthy bloggers
write about Press Release Grader simply because of the rapid response-time.
It’s just good, clean living.

5. Track As Much Data As You Can: For a web product, I’d
suggest that at a minimum, you track all the standard web data (this can be done
via a web analytics tool) + any “inputs” that the user is providing.

6. Don’t Waste Time Coding Reports: Although you should
track/store as much usage data as you can, don’t waste time creating fancy (or
non-fancy) reports just yet. Just capture it. Some simple mechanism to get a
sense of usage is fine, but don’t try to build ways to look at all the data
you’re tracking. It’s a distraction. Focus on what will make the users happy.
You can work on reports later.

7. Watch It Spread, Nudge It Along: You should be
spending half of your time not just on coding, but on promotion. This
includes watching who the product is getting picked up by across the web and
who’s writing about it. When people do write about it, thank them and offer to
do something about their ideas and feedback. This works wonders. Even if
you’ve got the luxury of business people (marketing, PR, etc.), stay involved.
There’s no replacement for being “plugged in” to the community.

On point #7, here are places I check to see what’s being said:  Google (mostly blogs), Twitter, delicious, StumbleUpon and digg.  (I have a wee bit of an advantage because I’ve got some internal tools to help with this stuff). 

What lessons have you learned from releasing a product out to the wild? What
will you repeat and what will you change the next time?

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Original Article
Copyright 2007, Dharmesh Shah - OnStartups - Software Startup Blog

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Don Dodge posted an interesting article recently on his blog titled “Web
2.0 = Bubble 2.0“.

The part that really caught my interest are the four “stages” of a bubble
that he describes. Here’s a quick summary:

Stage 1: The smart money declares we are not in a
bubble.

Stage 2: People agree that we’re in a bubble, but declare
that there’s still a year or two left to make real money.

Stage 3: The bubble has actually burst, but people declare
it is just a “temporary setback”.

Stage 4: Everyone recognizes and agrees that the bubble has
burst, and life will never be the same.

Don believes we’re well into Stage 2 of the cycle this time around. I sort
of agree, but think we’re getting really, really close to being in Stage
3 — if we’re not there already. Though the Web 2.0 bubble may not have burst quite yet, I’d argue that folks
are not blowing a bunch more air into the bubble (i.e. so the expansion of the
bubble has started to taper off a bit). I could even argue that a little bit of
the air is being let out. I could argue that, but I won’t.

What do you think? Are we at a point now where the bubble has actually
burst, but we still haven’t acknowledged it yet?

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