Radical Departures

#16: Ethan Pierse

OuiStart Media

Episode 16 - Ethan Pierse - Entrepreneur is not a dirty word

Key Points

• Founder of Borderless Ventures, partner in new Silicon Valley fund targeting deep tech

• Engineering education, career started doing digital marketing & corporate training

• Business activity between France, Southeast Asia and the US

• Sees confluence of positive events in France coming together today

• Being an entrepreneur is now cool, which helps build ecosystem

• What is Ethan looking for with startups? Idea needs to be great but the team has to be great to build real value and full potential

• Team is critical to success of startup!

• New book coming out on corporate innovation - Chief Startup Officer

• Why France is a hotbed for deep tech

Ethan Pierse spent years working in the US as a successful digital marketer before moving to France, where he initially did similar work until four years ago when he started helping French startups gain access to US investment capital as well as business development. This effort then led to working with Singapore and Hong Kong, where French expats make up a significant community.

Today, Ethan’s splits his time between Borderless Ventures, which helps startups, investors and corporates access opportunities between the US, France and Southeast Asia - as well as a new Silicon Valley venture fund that is investing in AI and Industry 4.0 deep tech.  This new fund is based in the US but investing in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in Israel and Southeast Asia.

In this episode, we discussed why France and why now, and Ethan clearly explains the confluence of events over recent years that has positioned France as the place to be. The French government has been promoting entrepreneurship and improving the visibility of French startups outside of France. They’re pushing hard to drive this change and the results are starting to show.

One big change Ethan comments on is that younger students today really want to be entrepreneurs, which is a radical departure from years ago when so many wanted to work for big organizations or the government. Today, it’s cool to be an entrepreneur-- which, as he mentions, can cut both ways. Ultimately, it’s still a business and as fun as some of the perks of that business can be, they’re just that: perks.

Listen as Ethan explains in very clear terms what investors are looking for when they are considering a startup. We also discuss how startups interact with corporates, including the positives and the negatives on both sides. Yes it can work out well, but startups can easily waste valuable time and collapse if they chase the wrong corporate partnerships. If big corporates want to be part of the future, they urgently need to be serious about engaging with startups. For more on that subject, keep an eye out for Ethan’s new book, Chief Startup Officer, coming out soon. Our podcast discussion with Ethan wraps up as he discusses why France is well positioned for the Deep Tech wave of startups that will be disrupting organizations around the world in the coming years.

Ethan is very active on social media, putting out a ton of great content, so follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook,  He’s also a regular on BFM Business and once you start following him, you will quickly see why!

#15: Eva Peris

OuiStart Media

Episode 15 - Eva Peris - Once Upon a Dating App...

Key Points:

• Dating market has been around for a while, first online and then apps, but market has been evolving

• Met Once founders soon after product developed

• Once’s concept was based on addressing dating app inefficiencies, including wasted time wading through countless profiles & embarrassment of everyone seeing their profile

• Once’s founders are French but launched in UK

• Post-Brexit & following Macron’s victory, Paris became a more interesting place to relocate

• Breaking into a crowded market requires something solid & a new idea

• European markets more skeptical of the new and different, compared to US consumers

Breaking into a crowded market can initially sound like the worst idea in the world.  You have to be crazy to even think such a thing, right? After all, there’s often a reason that a market isn’t crowded. A crowded market can actually mean that there’s a lot of attention and potentially money in addressing that particular market’s problems. Look at what our previous guest Edouard Aligand has managed to achieve with QuasarDB.

Eva Peris had already worked for happn, another dating app, so she had some experience in the market. While many of the online sites were past their prime and Tinder was the market leader, users were looking for something different. Swiping through so many profiles wasn’t for everyone and for many, the thought of exposing your profile to thousands of people didn’t sound like a great idea either.

The big question then was how to succeed in such a crowded market, where the competition has both market share as well as very deep pockets. Eva was hired as the Deputy CMO at Once to build out their marketing plan, and they’ve enjoyed considerable success both with building a customer base as well as raising multiple rounds of funds. In this episode, she explains how Once differentiated themselves from the competition and why they’re enjoying so much success.

What’s also interesting is Eva’s experience working in London both pre and post-Brexit, and Emmanuel Macron’s successful bid for the French presidency. London was once the undisputed leader in Europe for startup talent thanks to its international community, but the tide appears to be shifting and Paris is looking better than ever moving forward.

One of the perks of Paris’s fast-changing startup scene is that after three and a half years with a market-changing startup like Once, Eva was recently hired by Ironhack as the VP of Marketing.  In her new role she will be overseeing the global marketing for the top coding bootcamp. This says a lot about the dynamics of the fast-changing Paris startup scene, where opportunities for internationally experienced professionals are increasing by the month.

#14: Jean-Francois Morizur

OuiStart Media

Episode 14 - Jean-Francois Morizur - CAILabs: Bending light for better network bandwidth

Key Points:

• Born in a research lab at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, created partnership with the university for license

• Found new application for shaping light - can expand fiber capacity by 400%+

• Working with SAFRAN, who also led the latest round of financing

• No longer need to rewire older fiber, saving time, money, and complexity

• Sell via integration partners, expanding globally

• Currently hiring for many positions in engineering, commercial & internships

The initial research lab tests were hoping to find uses for manipulating light for the field of microscopy, though the joint research teams from France and Australia ultimately concluded that no, it was not going to work. Thanks to one of the professors at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Jean-François had kept in contact with the team and was convinced that despite the results of the initial study, something interesting could come out of that research.

It may not have yielded results for microscopy but instead, that research provided the backbone for what became CAILabs, a startup that works to shape light, which can provide enormous time and money savings for existing fiber networks and beyond.  

The business case for CAILabs is immediate and obvious: instead of replacing existing, older fiber LAN networks in factories, hospitals, etc - a process that can be painfully long, requiring significant paperwork and an often challenging process - customers can instead implement the CAILabs product, which can reduce bottlenecks for local networks.

Jean-François Morizur is yet another example of a startup founder in a very technical market who has an amazing ability to explain his solution in easy to understand terms for mere mortals.  (Edouard Alligand, CEO of QuasarDB who joined us in Episode 7 was another.)  He is of course a very deep technical person - he has a PhD in quantum optics, after all - but he’s also a smart business leader who is highly engaging.

During our discussion he explains their target audience and their plans for global expansion, including the age-old question of whether to put the US office on the east coast or the west coast. It’s a topic worth spending time exploring, rather than rushing into a choice to move out west just to be in the Valley.

Moving forward, CAILabs is seeking to hire new members for their team, both in engineering and the business side of the company now that they’ve secured a new round of funding.  They’re also getting a lot of customer traction, so there is a lot of opportunity here for people interested in working on a very innovative solution with smart people.

 

#13: Damien Courbon

OuiStart Media

Episode 13 - Damien Courbon - Swapcard:  Bringing efficiency & engagement to events

Key Points:

• The event market was ripe for disruption & innovation

• If you wait until you arrive at an event to organize, it’s already too late

• Attendees seek more efficiency, so planning ahead makes more sense

• Events are very expensive and there’s a lot of competition, so organizers need to show better metrics to win business

• Swapcard sends team members to events to listen and learn, so they can improve

• Seeking to build an international team, so hiring more foreigners

• Focused on team happiness and engagement

• Moving forward, exploring predictive analysis & more international expansion

f you have ever attended a trade show, you’re familiar with the challenges: You want to go to important sessions but it’s also a great time to meet in person with others in your business.  

If you’re a vendor, you spend countless weeks trying to figure out who will be there for networking, since your company has invested a significant amount of money to be there. If you’re an attendee, your company has sent you there at great cost as well. And if you’re an event organizer, you need to show metrics of success to keep and grow your user base.

Swapcard saw the inefficiencies of the market and built an app that brings more value for vendors, attendees, and organizers alike. You can plan your event in advance, including important networking meetings, without scrambling during the event to find people who you need to meet. Swapcard lets you plan and prepare for the event, including scheduling your meetings. The end result is a much more productive event and metrics that show the benefits of attending.

Damien and Swapcard are focused on satisfaction and improving the overall experience. To do this, they make sure their app is easy and quick to use so that their users actually use it! As obvious as that sounds, it’s astonishing how many businesses seem to forget about this.

In this episode, Damien explains how the company is growing, including hiring more people from abroad and expanding their market reach. The tricky balance moving forward is maintaining the company culture during this growth, so they’ve been focused on finding new team members who will be able to come in, work hard and keep the same team spirit.

Because Swapcard has plans to grow internationally, the culturally diverse team will be its strength for building into new markets as well as new ideas. This diversity is a positive trend we’re seeing increasingly these days in French startups, and we expect to see a lot more of it moving forward.

 

#12: Anne Ravanona

OuiStart Media

Episode 12 - Anne Ravanona - Opportunity Loss: Closing the $300 billion global funding gap between men and women

Key Points:

• Anne is on a mission to get more women entrepreneurs funded

• Need to close the $300 billion funding gap between men and women

• Help women understand the funding system, including the language, the biases and how to navigate the system

• Change the funding system to provide fair and equal access to funding

After a successful business career, when Anne hit 40 she asked herself what she wanted to do with her life. The answer was a resounding “help female entrepreneurs.” This is when Anne created Global Invest Her.  

We’ve all read the stories about low funding for women but Anne is stepping up to build a network of women to help other women entrepreneurs. The funding gap between men and women is a whopping $300 billion, which is enormous. Anne’s mission is to close that gap and teach women how to navigate this complex system: one with ever-changing players and rules.

Successful female entrepreneurs help other women who are seeking funding by explaining their own journeys and how they were successful in the process. Change is coming, but only slowly: we’re still a long way off from equal funding, despite women being 51% of the global population.

Anne walks us through some of the brutal statistics and why most of the investment world is missing out on so many great ideas. The “opportunity loss” numbers are not easy to quantify but it seems hard to believe that businesses are fully realizing their potential when so few female  startup founders receive funding and even when they do, the amounts are generally lower.

While there are a few positive examples of existing investment funds, what’s really exciting today is the number of new funds created by women that focus on funding and assisting women.

As depressing as the current statistics can be, there’s good reason to be hopeful for something better moving forward. As Anne tells us in the episode, anyone wanting to team up to address this issue needs to talk with her so they can collaborate and create that better environment that we’re all demanding.

#11: Robin Lepercq

OuiStart Media

Episode 11 - Robin Lepercq - The evolving click-and-mortar model

Key take-away points

• Created after leaving an IT services company, noticed the inefficiencies of the market

• Freelancing was small compared to other countries but growing rapidly

• Pivoted from a broad offering to a very narrow market

• Strong focus on the market and focus on delivering high quality so very selective

• Building a community for high end, technical freelancers

• Opting for organic growth rather than raising funds

After working for years in IT services, Robin was let go. A situation like that is rarely welcomed or ideal when you’re raising a family, but thanks to the incredible French system, Robin was able to transition from this tough situation into launching a successful startup - FreelanceRepublik -  that has an abundance of assignments. Not a bad place to be for a young startup.

The idea came about after collaborating with businesses and seeing how the process worked with developing projects and applications. The traditional model was struggling due to high costs and very long cycles for hiring IT teams. He could see that the future was definitely in empowering top freelancers who wanted interesting jobs where they could learn and grow.

One of the great things about the French safety net is that the system provides a strong layer of support for people who lose their jobs. Robin used this structure to help get FreelanceRepublik off the ground. It provided him with the help he needed during that period so he could try one model, before pivoting to what exists today.

What he learned during this process was that having a razor-sharp focus helped the company offer the best possible service both to companies and to freelancers. By staying narrow, he got to know his market and his market got to know him. Robin makes sure that FreelanceRepublik keeps a strict quality standard, so he’s been able to easily find missions for talented freelance developers and project managers.

Moving forward, he wants to evolve to have more click and less mortar in his click-and-mortar startup, though there will always be a need for a least a little mortar in the business of high-end recruitment.

#10: Tamara Brisk

OuiStart Media

Episode 10 - Tamara Brisk - How to successfully break into the French market

Key take-away points:

• Tamara was experienced in consulting, real estate & startup cultures

• WiredScore was created in NY to highlight high end internet readiness for office space

• French market is largest in EU, third largest in world

• To succeed, it’s critical to study & adapt before jumping in

• Commercial office space is highly centralized in France & well organized

• Challenges remain:  slow hiring process which might hinder growth

• Global clients helped open the market, French clients adopted quickly

After working in France for years, Tamara Brisk was frustrated with her career options in France. So, she moved back to the US to join a cool new startup in San Francisco. Equipped with an MBA from a top-tier US program and a high-end consulting background, she wasn’t afraid of the risks associated with joining a startup the way she had seen in France. Tamara is North American, so shifting gears comes relatively easily to her.

But as exciting and fun as it was living and working in California, there was still a special draw for her to Paris. When the opportunity popped up to lead a hot new startup into the French market, Tamara jumped on it. The new company that would bring her back to Paris was only a few years old, but it fit with her previous experience in the real estate business, only with a tech angle.

The New York based startup, WiredScore, originated from a program started under Mayor Bloomberg, who was looking for something that would be a selling point for businesses in New York City. The point of the project was to provide a ratings certification system for high-end fiber networks in office buildings.  A strong rating would make an office more attractive to global businesses who were looking for office space.

For any company operating in the office space market, France is critical: it’s the largest market in Europe and the third largest in the world. Despite its reputation for being a challenging market for startups, Tamara explains why France is extremely well suited to a company such as WiredScore, and why Paris in particular is so full of opportunity.

Like any smart business person, Tamara thoroughly studied the local market first before launching WiredScore here in Paris. The conditions in France are ripe for adopting this innovative tool, and WiredScore could not have found a better fit for building out the business.

#9: Timothée Rebours

OuiStart Media

Episode 9 - Timothée Rebours - Seald: Not your father’s encryption product

Key take-aways:

• Formed team with complementary skills during UC Berkeley program

• No interest in working for a large company

• Always loved encryption, sought an easy answer to a serious problem

• More secure for large organizations, consultants, going to the cloud

• Paris makes good business sense thanks to lower costs, BPI & ecosystem

• French businesses are more engaged with startups

• Focused on building base in France, then take abroad

Ten years ago, students often dreamed of hopping into the corporate world following graduation.  It was safe, it was comfortable and that’s just what one did in France.  While it can still make sense for many, more young graduates want to dive straight into the startup world.  Sure it’s tough and there’s not the security blanket of a big company and a big team, but for people like Timothée and his co-founders at Seald.io, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

The idea behind the encryption product was one that started years ago for Timothée.  He always had a strong interest in security and encryption so when he needed to create something for his graduate studies program at UC Berkeley, he thought back to his childhood idea of encrypting his dad’s email messages and the ongoing problem of sensitive data being encrypted.

Another continuous challenge is making it easy.  As a kid, Timothée would explain to his dad the dozens of steps he could take to secure his emails. His father was already interested in the concept, but Timothée knew that all those steps would make it impossible to implement in the corporate world.  

To bring all this together, Timothée joined up with Mehdi Kouhen and Maxime Huber to form the initial team. Each brought something to the table and together they delivered a really nice, easy-to-use encryption solution that protects sensitive data on email and beyond. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of ease-of-use, whether it’s one or even zero-click functionality.  It’s a core focus of the team.

The end result for users is a product that makes it easy to properly encrypt sensitive information that’s being distributed via email, Dropbox, or other tools.  For companies moving sensitive data into the cloud, they too now have a solution to sleep well at night.

Seald.io has enjoyed market success with early-mover accounts in France, where they’re close to customers and have received helpful impact.  Timothée asserted that large French companies are changing and are engaging with startups better than in the past.  This is indeed a welcome sign and we’re thrilled to hear it.

The benefit for Seald.io and the rest of the French tech startup world is that it’s easy to build our your initial product offering with local customers and then take it on the road to other markets.  It’s an enormous expense for startups to have to travel to another country - this means train or plane tickets, hotels, etc - when getting started, money that could be better spent on building out the product and the team.

On the subject of future growth, Timothée gave high marks to BPI and the rapid help they provided.  It’s hard to underestimate the positive impact BPI has had for the startup world.  As for launching in Paris, when San Francisco or London could have been an option in the past, he sees the benefits of setting up in Paris over the rest.  Timothée says that the cost in France is lower for developers and the overall support structures for startups has improved dramatically.

Once the team is comfortable with its initial product, they will explore market expansion, but only after they’ve properly studied and understood those other markets. An unwise decision of jumping in headfirst could be a fatal move, so besides a smart product, the Seald.io team is also making some smart business decisions.

Delivering an easy-to-use encryption product that can protect sensitive data has been a market challenge for years but Seald.io is building a tool that will finally make this a problem of the past.

#8: Olga Egorsheva

OuiStart Media

Episode 8 - Olga Egorsheva - Social media content that looks like you

While working for a major brand covering Asia, the Middle East, and Russia, Olga came to the realization that the image databases available simply did not provide what she was looking for.  Most of the available stock photos were Western European or US-centric; fine for those markets but not very relatable for people outside of those areas.

Those stock photos failed to connect with customers, which inspired Olga to find a solution that would use real photos from real people, living all over the world.  Her goal was to build something more authentic and more diverse, so brands could better connect with their markets. Clients demanded high quality, easily searchable and ready to license content, so Lobster implemented a machine learning-driven solution.

A recurring theme throughout our discussion is the focus on highlighting ease while delivering high quality content. Lobster focuses on ease when it comes to their users’ experience, as well as their choice to headquarter their company in London, as opposed to Paris, Berlin, or other startup-centric cities.

Olga takes us through how Lobster built up their business by balancing the influx of investor money while growing the team. Adding new employees who fit well can be a challenge, but Lobster has had a lot of success with interns who have grown into full-time positions as the company has expanded. Theirs is a multi-cultural team spread across an impressive three countries, and they’re looking for more growth going into 2018.

It’s especially interesting to hear Olga’s thoughts on why Lobster chose to take investor money versus growing organically. She also discusses how and why her go-to sources for advice have evolved over time. There are definitely lessons to be learned throughout our discussion, including some of the challenges that Paris faces with startups who are fatigued with the bureaucracy. This is an opportunity to hear why a cool new startup - that has French connections - chose to locate and build in London rather than Paris.

Startups everywhere can learn from Olga, as she builds out a company that is innovative, exciting, diverse, and international. In addition, there’s something to learn here for countries and cities focused on building up their startup communities.

"Content Natives: Finding and Sourcing Visual Content", Olga Egorsheva, CEO and Co-Founder at Lobster, from Data Natives 2015 

#7: Edouard Alligand

OuiStart Media

 

Episode 7 - Edouard Alligand - Techies are terrible listeners, and other fake news

In 2008, Edouard Alligand decided to make a career change, which is normal for most people at some point in their lives. The problem?  He moved into the banking sector...in 2008. Ouch. That’s a tough market to break into in the best of times and in the worst of times, the transition was difficult.

It was during that time that Edouard noticed that stocks were especially volatile and big money was made and lost because of that volatility. Through talks with customers in the banking market, he noticed that the systems being used could not keep up; so he applied his background in math and system programming to address the issue.

While working with one particular client, he built a new database that was able to run computations on thousands of CPUs.  Making this work would be the difference between financial traders making or losing money, and the stakes were even higher in the wake of the financial crisis.

Out of this chaos, QuasarDB was born. It helped that the initial product was built based on the needs of a client, but Edouard realized that this tool would be useful beyond just that single client, so he raised money, product-ized it and built an early model to sell to others.

Edouard’s story is smart and enjoyable as he walks us through how he leveraged assistance from Business France and IMPACT USA to build out QuasarDB and enter the US market. While Edouard is a very serious person, he also has fun along the way. Launching a startup comes with enough stressful days, so it’s essential to learn how to laugh through them.

Another key point to note is Edouard’s assertion that yes, France has a deep talent base for developing tech products for global customers. That said, the business market in France is lagging behind other countries. It’s an important point and one that we hear from many startups focused on selling to big accounts. French business is too slow moving, they want to build rather than buy and negotiations can be painfully long, if they even work.

For a startup, having prospects who spin their wheels only to not buy anything is a progress-killer. If your early stage startup is trying to build a local market before going elsewhere, it’s a very big risk trying in France compared to engaging with prospects in other markets such as the UK, Scandinavia, or the US. Imagine the possibilities if more local companies here invested in startup technology!

In the case of QuasarDB, they did find local customers but they also learned that prospects elsewhere were more open to new technology companies and engaged with them as a serious partner. Deciding to focus on markets outside of France became an easy decision to make for Edouard.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned here on so many subjects - product creation, listening to customers, obsession with quality, moving to the business to the US, working with an accelerator and more - so you’ll probably want to listen a few times to soak it all in. Edouard has the industry experience as well as proven success, so he’s a wealth of information for all.