Tourism World

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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One of the most famous video blogger Loren Feldman from 1938media was participating at Le Web08 in Paris last week and found some mice running free in the bar of the luxury Intercontinental Hotel Paris where he was staying. He shot that video and hours later Google listed his website and finding on the 3rd position when you search "Intercontinental Grand Hotel Paris". I wonder how you can cope with this problem and bad advertising. Can the hotel management fix this?

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Representatives from Google, SixApart, Facebook, Microsoft and MySpace are there. The panel is moderated by Marc Canter from Broadband Mechanics.

How do we interpret Open (Open platforms, Open ID, Open Social)?

Facebook has recently opened their platform to allow developers to build some tools. The idea is to see vast growth and get a lot of opportunities with about 60,000 developers around the world. With a recent re-design of Facebook, the system is functioning differently now. Users can stream information as they wish to update their friends.

MySpace strongly believes that by buildings open standards, it will work more effectively for the benefits of users.

Difference between OpenID and OpenSocial?

You need both to let users allow to do whatever they want to do with their peers. You shouldn't have to create a separate login for each website (OpenID).
OpenSocial allows third parties developers to build applications within the social website.

The Love should be for the Users:

==> Let the users move their profile data, social graph and content anywhere they want

==> Assume users will want to be members of more than one system

==> Assume users wish to have their favorite apps, widgets and adgets on all their pages

==> User don't live for you, you live for them

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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It's time to talk about different measures the French government has put in place to boost his digital plan presented a month ago.

One of the goal is to get 100% Internet broadband everywhere in France by next year. But also to push the Fibre Optics available in France to have super high speed Internet access.

Also to allow the tranformation from analog television towards digital.

What the government is doing to help start ups in France?

==> deliver high speed Internet to have the right infrastructure for content owners
==> €26 billions investment to SMEs to help them to grow and particularly the Internet start ups

What about the crisis we are facing today?

Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have been the most pro-active politics to respond to this crisis.

Questions from the audience:

1/ How can we make the tax issue regarding start ups in France more flexible?
Shouldn't the funds be used to grow start ups towards Europe (like helping them on the language)

The tax system is quite favourable to help start ups to grow. People who pay the wealth tax (ISF) can invest in start ups and deduct their investment from the tax bills at the end of the year.

France believes the crisis is an opportunity. Because we can use this crisis to catch up with other countries like the use of English in universities. And the education will be more digital and fits more with International exposure.

2/

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Ouriel from TechCrunch is moderating a panel with venture capitalists (Union Square Ventures, Softech, Wellington partners and Martin Varsavsky from FON).

It is a great time to keep investing, says a first panelist.

Another VC says that VCs didn't fear for their own life in 2001/2. Easier to get capital funds. Today, firms are very afraid not to get enough return on their investment. They are more careful and minimize their risk in their portfolio.

You cannot deny a storm is coming up. And VCs need to be prepared with the reality of the market and are cautious with revenue coming from start up they invested in.

VCs come at a later stage in a start up after angel money. VCs can really make new ventures more succeful and Martin is asking (or begging) VCs to keep investing an supporting brillant ideas.

Is not easy to have a constructive relationship between VCs and Entrepreneurs. VCs need to allow Entrepreneurs to make some mistakes and learn from them. But the role of the VCs is to also guide start ups and warn them of serious threats or issues.

Good VCs help Entrepreneurs being better in what they do.

When VCs say "no" to invest in a venture, they should explain why. Ouriel is asking if VCs are going to say "NO" next year more often. The ratio is 10 investments out of 1000 presentations made at a particular. Is that ratio going to change next year? Probably not. So no real reasons why start ups will find more difficult to raise money next year.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Pierre Chappaz, CEO of Wikio (formerly founder and CEO of Kelkoo) is on stage now.

It is not the first time we are living in a Internet crash. We will survive this crisis. Web2.0 services are loosing money for most of them. But growth is still there. Speed of progress with NetVibes is quite impressive (revenue X by 4 in 4 quarters).

So what Wikio is about. A pan European News portal launched in 2005 with a team of 35 people in virtual offices in several countries. It allows users to browse information from traditional media, blogs, video sites. Has used some of the features of NetVibes to enhance the UI of Wikio.

Business model is on merchants links, adsense. sponsoring and advertising.

In November, Wikio has reached 12.4 million users (4M in France alone, less than 1M in the UK).540K€ revenue in Q4 2008 and Wikio is now breakeven.

Few learnings:

1/ Believe in what you do and fight
2/ Manage expenses very carefully
3/ Europe is their natural market and diversity is easier to deals with
4/ Information generates traffic but not enough revenue (shopping is much better for that)

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Morten Lund is chief ideologist at Lund XY Global Ventures and invested in various start ups at early stage (88 in total !!!!!)

In start ups, people is everything, money matters less.

So what is the next BIG thing. Timing is key (think of Skype or Overture). Risk=Return.

To be an entrepreneur, you need to be focused and optimist even on a bad day. You also has to network a lot. Crazyness is ok as well. At the end of the day, best ideas can be leveraged with recruiting good people.

Now time for a chat with Loic Le Meur.

Morten has lost about 30M € in his investment into media recently in Denmark. But that's ok for him, he said. He still has some investment in these 88 start ups and hopefully will generate some nice Xmas gifts. True entrepreneurs never go back to a safe job.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Mike Butcher is on stage and is here to give an update on the start-up scene.

2007 was an unusual year where a lot of acquisitions were made like DoubleClick by Google.

2008 feels very different as the market is becoming more complex. Merger & Acquisitions were made more at a local level. A small UK company acquired by a bigger fish in the UK.

end of 2008, there have been some recent investment trends (networks go niche like Kindo, mobile applications, professionnal content like TVTrip or VideoJug, shopping gets social like Twenga)

There is still a lot of activity in Europe and not everything comes from Silicon Valley (ex: Rummble, Goojet or Kype). Europe start ups start to mature looking at the local European TechCrunch event in Athens or Istanbul

Mobile/3G, Social Applications are one of the strenghts in Europe.

1/ Ability to deal with diverse markets/different languages
2/ Mobile
3/ Governments support start up

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Do you know that a company called 23andme can analyse your DNA with a sample of your saliva for a few hundreds $. The company was voted earlier the best invention 2008 by the Time magazine.

The good news is that 23andme won't share the data of your DNA without your consent. Thank God for that. Can you imagine if you need to borrow from a bank and they could check your DNA. And they can see that you could potentially being diagnosed with a disease and therefore resufe any loan. Scary thoughts.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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