French Tech Podcast

Staying up to date on your skillset is critical and can be difficult, and when that skillset is tech - and you plan to use that skillset outside of your home market - it can be even harder. Paris-based global tech bootcamp company Le Wagon looks to fill that educational and training gap for workers. But come prepared to get your "hands dirty", because you won't walk out with just a paper credential. You'll have created a fully coded and functional product at the end. 

Listen as French Tech Asia Pacific host Nikolaj Groeneweg talks with Le Wagon's man in Shanghai, Thibault Genaitay, as they discuss the need to keep up on tech and the special tech learning needed for the China market, given its unique ecosystem.

Find out more about Le Wagon at www.lewagon.com.

How can we make innovation more open, more diversified and more sustainable? If the best ideas can come from anywhere, how can companies find those ideas, those solutions, if they only have access to a local ecosystem?

Agorize, an Open Innovation platform that connects businesses and organizations with innovators from across the world, might be the answer. Mathieu Toulemonde, Agorize Asia CEO, shares what makes their platform so special, tells the story of their fast growth in the ASEAN region and explains how their recent series B will allow to help even more companies to source the best digital solutions from anywhere in the world.

Find out more about Agorize on their company website : https://www.agorize.com/en

In his second part of our conversation with Frédéric Nouel, we discuss the evolving attitudes towards entrepreneurship in Japan and the difficulties of starting and growing a company there.

Like in many other countries, entrepreneurship in Japan is on the rise. But the push of traditional Japanese society towards stability and corporate careers is still strong and the change is taking time. A lot of time.

Because of that, the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Japan still isn’t very easy to navigate, especially for a foreigner. In our conversation, Frédéric shares how he managed to find his way on the Japanese market and brings us valuable insights into the common pitfalls, and how to avoid them, when starting a company there.

This week’s guest is Frédéric Nouel, a long-time game-developer and co-founder of "3rd Kind", a mobile game publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Frederic has lived in Japan for almost a decade and shared with us many interesting insights into the Japanese mobile gaming market, as well as on Japanese entrepreneurship.

In this first part of our conversation, we take a deep dive into the gaming preferences of Japanese consumers, what it takes to be successful as a game publisher and the importance of content and micro-transactions on the Japanese market.

Soreasmey Ke Bin is the founder and managing partner of Confluences, an incubator in the kingdom of Cambodia as well as the co-president of French Tech Cambodia and the vice president of the French Chamber of Commerce. Who better to tell us about the business opportunities the kingdom has to offer to entrepreneurs? Soreasmey shares his insights into what makes Cambodia special and why the kingdom might be the perfect place for certain startups to get started in the ASEAN region.

To learn more, check out: Soreasmey’s incubator “Confluences“ : https://www.confluences.com.kh/The French Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia: https://www.ccifcambodge.org/

Why has Singapore become the business-hub for the ASEAN region - attracting entrepreneurs and investors alike? What makes doing business in Singapore so easy? What are the challenges when expanding from Singapore into neighbouring markets such as Indonesia? We discuss all of these things and more with Adrien Barthel, co-founder of Sleek - a startup that makes it super easy to start and manage a company in Singapore.

If you're thinking of setting up a company in Singapore, Sleek is 100 % the best way to do it. Be sure to check out their services here: https://sleek.sg/

Today's guest is Marion Bernardi - Fintech engagement lead at SC Ventures, a Standard Chartered Bank business unit that promotes innovation, invests in disruptive financial technology and explores alternative business models for the financial industry.

Marion tells us about the recent launch of the SCVentures Fintech Bridge - a platform that connects and matches partners from the fintech ecosystem to the Bank’s internal community. It’s not always easy for startups and banks to work together and the Fintech Bridge seeks to facilitate and accelerate this process. In our conversation with Marion we explore the differences between Europe and Asia when it comes to the way startups see the financial ecosystem, and we discuss the appetite of Fintech startups to move into the ASEAN market.

Learn more about the SCVentures Fintech Bridge here : https://fintechbridge.scventures.io/public/homepage

Yoann Fol and Thibaut Brière are the driving forces behind Singapore's French Tech For Good - a movement that aims to promote the idea that Tech not only can, but should have a positive impact on the world.

In this conversation we explore what it means for a tech company to be purpose-driven and whether or not the goal of having a positive impact on the world is compatible with the pursuit of profit and growth.

We also discuss Yoann's larger vision for the French Tech For Good movement: to see it become an integral part of the French Tech mission statement, a guiding principle behind which all French startups can rally.

Yoann Fol is the founder and CEO of Dathappy, a social enterprise in Singapore that provides high quality consulting to support the data revolution of purpose-driven organizations. Find out more at https://www.dathappy.com/

Emmanuel FAUVEL is a serial entrepreneur who has been based in Thailand for almost two decades. In this conversation we explore how the Thai market has changed during that time and what the ecosystem’s current challenges and opportunities are.

Emmanuel paints a picture of a Thailand that was perhaps late to the game of tech-entrepreneurship, but that has since managed to play catch-up. Although talent is extremely scarce and access to funding is sometimes elusive if one doesn’t have the right connections, Emmanuel paints an overall picture of a Thailand that is more welcoming to foreign entrepreneurs than one might think - whilst still being affordable and offering an excellent quality of life.

Gilles Langourieux is the CEO and founder of Virtuos - one of the worlds leading game development companies.

Virtuos employs over 1,500 staff worldwide and as a part of their global growth, they have recently moved their headquarter from Chine to Singapore - and that’s where we met with Gilles, not long after Virtuous closed a funding round to finance its next phase of growth and international expansion.

If you like video games, or movies for that matter, you’ve probably seen some of Virtuos work. They’ve contributed to game titles such as Dark Souls, Farcry and COD: black-ops - but also to movies, such as Rango or Star Wars : The Force Awakens.

We talk to Gilles about how he grew his company, which he founded in 2004 in China, we explore the difficulties of being a foreign entrepreneur on the mainland Chinese market and learn how the Chinese market has changed over the last 15 years.

Gilles generously taps into his own experience to give advice to us, his fellow entrepreneurs, that are perhaps considering expanding into China and tells about the two major challenges that await there : unprecedented competitive pressure and massive scale.