RemyA's

I had a great day at Seedcamp Paris. The maturity of the selected projects was better than last year, at least from a product point of view. The business models were not that convincing : I have a hard time believing that people can do lot of money from advertising if they have not what is necessary to get a very large audience. Some were talking about making money with user information (still advertising related business), but I'll believe in it when I'll see real numbers. B2B business models (SaaS oriented or not) were a lot more convincing.

Mentors came from all over Europe, mostly investors. It would seem that I was the only guy who could advise about technology, with we tech guys are mayve more shy than VCs. Anyway, people don't come to SeedCamp to find advice on tech and product design, it's more about validation of their business models, or their product definition and marketing strategy. And about networking, naturally.

Entrepreneurs can apply to SeedCamp sessions outside of their country. There was one from Romania, today, and also some from UK. So, if you miss a session, you can always try for the next one.

The mentoring sessions were great because of lively discussion with the entrepreneurs, trying to find with them solutions to their problems. I found out that my experience in Kelkoo, Yahoo and my knowledge of Internet business mechanism is still useful. I also had very interesting discussions with other mentors.

In the end, there was a vote to designate the projects that will go to the next step of the seedcamp process this year. The winners are : Art And You, Brainient (for Veevid), Kwaga, M--X--M, Wozaic.

The following are the notes I wrote during the presentations of the projects, the panel discussion and the mentoring sessions.

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Quelque mois après le rachat de Kelkoo à Yahoo, le fond Jamplant fait le ménage à la tête de Kelkoo et remplace le CEO Glen Drury par Richard Stables, l'ex-CTO de uSwitch.com. En soi, ce n'est pas surprenant de voir les fondateurs de uSwitch.com placer leurs hommes chez Kelkoo. Le profil de Richard Stables m'étonne quand même un peu : un gars au background tech remplace un gars au background business. Aura-t-il la vision qu'il manque à Kelkoo depuis que Pierre Chappaz l'a quitté ?

L'autre chose qui me fait peur, c'est le possible choc de culture : je viens d'essayer de trouver quelle techno se trouve derrière uswitch.com, et en utilisant Netcraft.com, je suis tombé sur ce rapport. Si l'ex-CTO est habitué aux technos microsoftiennes, il ne va pas être déçu du voyage.

Amusant article sur les modèles business de l'Internet et leur évolution face à la crise : "The Economics of Giving It Away", paru dans le Wall Street Journal, écrit par le rédacteur en chef de Wired Magazine. Il résume assez bien les possibilités qui s'offraient à l'entrepreneur Internet, il y a encore quelques mois, en matière de monétisation des services gratuits : vivre de la pub, se faire racheter ou vendre le petit plus qui fait la différence. En période de crise, quand l'argent des investisseurs se fait rare et que le gâteau publicitaire n'est pas assez gros (en tout cas, ce que laisse Google après s'être servi), le denier modèle semble être le dernier recours et il va falloir se creuser la tête pour convaincre les utilisateurs si volatiles des services gratuits de nous acheter quelque chose.

Vous avez des idées ? On se lance ?