Presentations

Saul Klein, founder of seedcamp has a very good advice to entrepreneurs : investors are looking into people, they are backing up people they like thus  present first yourself and your team even before what is your project about.

see this post for all the links to these companies

iDesktop.TV : better user interface than usual reader, higly personalizable, seems to target people wanted to have their own L&F reader on their site. Existing example: mashable, techcrunch. Monetization : subscription, advertisement in videos, services.

iFrame project : make the internet easy to use with touchscreen tablet PC, what's the competition with Nokia own internet tablet ?

Art & You : the artistic market is becoming the music market of a few years ago, it's all about community, bring advertisers to new audience, sales of derived products. They had the best presentation, and they implement an idea I am thinking about since one year. <sight !>

Brainient : launch veevid, video platform, interesting for their automatic tagging audio ability, open-source so they can use the help from developers to enhance the platform, monetization from services, it seems. Comes from Romania. The guy has a lot of energy, is very passionate.

APsynth proptotype : provides SDK to develop application on apsynth marketplace, working in the cloud, offers to developers to live from application subscriptions.

Etreproprio.com : real estate, all about free classified for people wanting to sell their houses. Wants to provide a better service than competitors, monetize through partnerships advertisement, usual advertisements, premium. They will have to fight for audience with big ones like seLoger.com and PAP.fr.

GameTube : all about connecting gamers (who should be already connected, I think, through forums and game server chat room), be the linkedin/facebook of gamers. They should be able to get the information about you (stats and so on) from games sites and servers. Monetize through premium, advertising and database selling.

Jiwa : wants to free the music (not very popular with big music companies ?), allows user to create webradio, have virtual money you can spend and earn, monetize through premium and advertisement

kpiWeb : B2B, providing business intelligence in SaaS kind of way. Promises to deliver solution in two weeks instead of months. Monetize with fees and subscription (number of users, data uploads/download).

kwaga : makes your mail easy to manage by taging it automatically with semantic information, can extract the meaningful part of the mail and understand structured information. Monetize by semantic advertising, Premium and OEM partnerships.

E-meilleures-entreprises : about providing to people looking for jobs the information about the working life inside companies.  Bring information from HR professional, employees. Monetize through advertising, jobs classified push. How will they stay non-biased ?

Musicovery : hear the music corresponding to your mood. Provide webradio. The radio can learn from you. Available on web, three-play (tv), and phone. Monetize through advertisement.

M--X--M.net : provides technology for email delivery, thus helps people make their mail campaign (or announcements, notifications) efficient and avoid seen them as spam. Monetize through price per mail sent. What's their differentaition with EmailVision ?

MyVocal: everything audio on your phone, works by calling a local number or visit a website. Monetize through phone calls, subscription and white labels. Ex : m.myvocal.com/seedcamp.

PrestaShop : open-source e-commerce software, magento competitor. Monetize through services, training, hosting and modules. Lots of french backing. Would be interesting to work with them to hook OpenSI with their platform.

rtgi linkscape : tracking the converstations on the web about brands, allow history, show maps of the links between web locations, so clients can targets their actions were they will be the more efficient. Monetize by subscriptions and selling studies.

SimplySim : 3D robotics simulation, monetize through services, selling products (generic 3d environments, simplysuite). Photos look amazing.

Weem : marketplace that is better than ebay (simpler to use, because using semantic analyzer), allows also to give/lend to friends. When selling, allows multicanal selling to other marketplaces, allows to connect to social networks and give you the opportunity to create your weem (shop) for your community. Monetize through premium, sell information about users (inventory).

Wozaik : cut from a web page, paste it on your wozaic. The content changes when the original source changes, it is linked to it, allows you to find content and sites better than bookmarks and search. Better than netvibes kind of websites. Monetize informations about the users of the services, for advertising purposes. Great product and demo, crappy business plan.

Yoolink-pro : digg-like and knowledge management tool. Monetize through subscription, targeting corporate entities (not big). Strategy based on freemium, bringing non-pro users for selling the product into their companies.

Question : is there a valid model for open-source based companies (prestatshop, veevid) ?

Question :  lots of monetization through selling user informations. I got the feeling than it can works if  you sell on performance (Cost per transaction,CPC) not the user information per se.

Mentoring

During the mentoring sessions, I was associated with some investors (or related), a marketing expert (Stephanie Bouchet from RougeFrog) and a PR expert (Collette Ballou Lamotte from Ballou PR).

Youlink-pro : suggestion to base their marketing strategy through partnerships, reseller programs (follow basecamp example). Theu sould partner with editors providing complementary functions for intranets. They should target knowledge people, lawyers, architects, thus verticalize the application.  Think about targeting events dedicated to those people.

ApSynth:  competitor of app exchange, targeting non-IT application developer, business professional. Take example of marketplaces for look&feel . The benefit for application author should be seen as marketing help, creation and hosting. The benefit for applications user is SaaS benefits and more specific application than what they can find on the shelf. Build a team around you, investors will like that.

Etreproprio : I think their main problem is seloger.com, Rob saying that UK/US has same models (Zillow/Zupla).

Weem : B2B, suggest to partnership with CE service and software provider. Other says that the B2C part of the business is hopeless. I talked to the guy afterward and he was saying that he will surely focus on B2B tomorrow.

Jiwa : streaming, 1 cent per track played for on-demand. webradio is on sharing advertising revenue. I still cannot feal any appeal for music related businesses. And still don't know exactly why.

kpiweb:  decisionel, small and medium business. pre-packaged analytics. partnetrships: microsoft, sage, dynamics, other in the US; lucidera, yoko (?) , marketing problem: saas security and scalability.  seems ok, should go for sales partnerships, incentive plan for freelance. I ask for open-source alternatives and competitor using that : differentiation is the knowledge they have in BI. They are using microsoft BI tools, they differentiate because of the engine allowing to setup a BI projects in less time than others.

kwaga: suggest freemium, targeting indivual users and then asking them to introduce the solution in corporate environment. interesting, but difficult to see them make real money, I would like to see a demonstration with my usual email. The mail has also to go through their servers, so one more intermediary to trust.

rtgi-linkfluence : good product, you can see how marketing departement can use that. Competitor says Ben Tomkins could be company  uberview (?). Suggested to provide vertical pre-packaged online product so medium businesses can buy their services. Ferrero paid them 100k€ for survey and recomandations in 2008.

Panel

  • Anne Gousset, managing 4 incubators in Paris
  • Wouter Gort,  boostcompany (not sure)
  • Luis Courtot, paris business angels
  • Xavier Lazarus , elaia
  • Phillipe Colombel, partech ventures
  • Saul Klein, Index ventures

My takes:

  • advice to entrepreneurs:  proof of concept should be done, be very clear, should be must-have product.
  • examples of clarity (P. Colombel): augmented reality, clear on technology vision, while other is "reinventing the radio business", convincing on business side.
  • people : confidence and trust is very important, sharing minds. Since the ideas are not always good from the start, the people and their personality is very very important to the investors (VC)
  • communication: give the bad news as well as the good news, because it will come to the investor ear very fast anyway. It's better to share, and find a solution together. The VCs are mature now. When looking for funding, talk about competition (don't hide it) and explain how you differentiate.
  • VC-entrepreneur relationships : entrepreneur should ask for references of the VC, should meet with CEO of companies working with the VC, should discuss and find how sustainable is the VC, what is his strategy. Ask yourself if you are ready to live 5 years+ with the guy facing you.
  • when can you find the money ? the VCs are reluctant to fund ealy stage, because of dillution problems (motivation of the entrepreneur and management). Solution: try to diversify your investors and reduce as much as possible the amount you need.
  • Paris Business Angels, 600 applicants, 20 funded, why ? criteria: amount asked (too much for some), business angels try to exit after 3 years (so if no exit solution, no deal), and people
  • Find the right partner inside the VC company, and go through people they already trust.
  • Think about what is the right amount of money you want to get from your company in the end. You will derive from that the amount of money (and how many shares) the investors will take.
  • Most companies changed a lot in their life : people, but also core business. Be honest with yourself, be critical, maybe it will be you who has to move out in order for the compny to successful.

Wrap-up and Vote

I voted for linkfluence because their techno is super-cool and there is real research behind. If they are able to find a business model without services, they should be great.

Having Art and You in the first place of the "competition" is anyway a good thing : after all, they are implmeenting one of my ideas :-)