Around Klewel conference webcast solutions

Between the 10th and 20th July 2008, I went to Britanny in order to make the first contacts after receiving the first prize of a french start-up competition (previous post, related journal article).

Britanny in Europe:

I first met Mr Jean-Charles Minier, Managing Director of Cap Entreprises, a local incubator based in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes d’Armor, Bretagne, France).

Presentation Cap-Entreprises (in french):

I had the opportunity to meet the following persons, all partners of the start-up competition:

• Mr Michel Joufflineau, president of ADE Agence Developpement Economique du Pays de Saint-Brieuc.
• Mr Bernard LeDenmat, financial expert at Le Denmat expert comptable.
• Mr Gilles Henrio, CEO of a local agency AXA assurances
• Mr Christian Le Goff, professional customer service manager, at Societe Générale, Saint-Brieuc

Last but not least, I spent an afternoon discussing with Monsieur Jean-Dominique Meunier, Director of the Funding & Cooperative Programs at Thomson. He is also the head of Image & Reseaux, an international cluster for media & network technologies.

• Images-et-reseaux (website in french)
• images-and-networks (version in english).

In two words, the Media&Network cluster is an industry-led initiative aiming at accelerating the pace of innovation to make the convergence between the audiovisual sector and the telecom sector happen and to place the European industry at the forefront of the information era.

Below is the presentation he gave on this cluster:

Y-combinator is a very well known seed stage venture firm for any US IT entrepreneurs. With the Swiss venture leaders 2008 team, we met the two founders Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston at their head quarters in Boston last month. The first one is famous for his nice posts about start-ups as well as his early experience in the web development business (vieweb launched before hotmail!). The second one, Jessica Livingston, is the famous author of Founders at Work (2007), a book of interviews with startup founders. Yes the video quality is not great because we were just their as an informal meeting afternoon.

Sequence 1: introduction

Talking about weather in Silicon Valley versus weather in Boston area; the general dynamics for start-ups; traditional vs new start-up funding; ycombinator collects a lot of data about founder psychology: what is working, what is not. Discussion about investing in people rather in technology. Y combinator invests small amounts of money: 5000$ + 5000$ per founder.

Y combinator, introduction, Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston from Maël Guillemot on Vimeo.

Sequence 2:

The life for a start-up backed by Y combinator. Ycombinator invite speakers for new start-up entrepreneurs every months. Founders are much better speakers than lawyers. Paul’s suggestion: instead of taking care too much about legal forms, intellectual property and so on… his suggestion: Build the damn product! The most important thing: having a product that people like and uses. VCs like when you have a lot of users.
@3min10s: “Start-ups die of suicide, seriously”. Not because of a competitor. Competitors do not kill startups. When entrepreneurs ask him about company image, IP, trade show, patent search… no, make the damn product!

A meeting with Y combinator, , Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston from Maël Guillemot on Vimeo.

Sequence 3:

At the beginning, it is normal that a start-up is constantly on the edge of failure disasters, servers are broken, people tell you are amateurs… at the end: success or die. 1st year (until year 3): entrepreneur should expect disasters. Psychology of founders: Ups and Downs, disasters and then the next day: Super, following day: disaster. Competing product? do not worry! Real problems: if 2 co-founders squeeze then you need to talk and try to arrange things.
What about start-up communication, visiblity? For launching a start-up: techcrunch help to know in the early adopters community. Then blogosphere is very important today. Forget about PR firms (on in the 90′s).
Selection process of start-up @ Y combinator: gettin better in picking the right ones.
You need to be really committed, not only 3 months summer program. Dinner every month for the 3 1st months. Not much structure about Y combinator. As good investors, they will give good advices.

Y combinator, meeting, Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston (continue) from Maël Guillemot on Vimeo.

Sequence 4: conclusions.

Y combinator, meeting, Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston (last part) from Maël Guillemot on Vimeo.

An article about Klewel is visible in page 14 of the mensual magazine Reflex published by EPFL.

This article is made in the framework of a communication of venturelab in the pages “Entrepreneurs de l’innovation”. Special thanks to Jordi Montserrat from VentureLab.

More links: http://www.reflexmagazine.ch | http://www.largeur.com

Also appearing in these two pages dedicated to yound entrepreneurs, Vincent Schickel – founder of Prediggo – and David Weill – cofounder of Primequal – both ventureleaders 2008.

Website of this techcrunch event organized in Zurich.

I had the chance to go there with some well-known Swiss-romand entrepreneurs in the train Lausanne-Zurich: Thierry Weber from CulturePod, Sandrine Szabo from Profession-Web, Cyril Lamblard from Holistis and Julien Visinand from Mixin. Some other faces there were known to me (Ralph Rimet from Secu4, Gilles Floret from Key Lemon, Stephane Doutriaux from DoYouPoken).

Klewel’s 20 second pitch:

All the start-ups:

Special thanks to Remo – cofounder of Trigami – for his invitation after we met at the VentureLeaders programme in Boston.

Remo’s post about the event.

Also, special thanks to Dominik from Wuala as well as Paul from Doodle for the wonderful organization of this event.

Doodle’s related blog of the event

Wuala’s related post.

Photos / Videos / Portfolio
- Portfolio
- Photos
- 20-second pitches
- Video Interviews

A very good article in french presenting all the start-ups:

on Profession-web, by Sandrine Szabo

(Click to enlarge)

Page 12 of the Idiap 2007 activity report.

full article in PDF