FACE Paris: first edition, stimulating entrepreneurship through success
June 23rd, 2008 | by Laurent FP |
Even if a small ecosystem of entrepreneurs already exist in France, what you hear on the street, in the media and in the mouth of officials is that it needs to be stimulated to reach a level that we can see in other countries. And who are better than north american startups in Technology and Life Sciences to demonstrate a significant number of success stories, to exhibit the breadth and the reach that some brands can experience? Sometimes it’s about the financials, sometimes it’s about adoption, sometimes its luck but everytime there is an entrepreneur’s vision, energy and commitment behind it.
This week, founders will be converging to Paris for the French-American Conference of Entrepreneurs (appropriately shortened to FACE). These people may not all be current CEOs but they have one thing in common, each of them founded known company or technology. FACE is the first event of the Global Entrepneurship Week that will be held to instigate creativity, initiatives and innovation in cities across the world in November of this year.
Of the 55 speakers present from both technology and life sciences sector, there are two worth mentioning:
In 1982 Janet Baker co-founded Dragon Systems with her husband James. Dragon was a company based out of Newton, MA that made voice recognition systems accessible to all. The technology was issue from their research and the company grew to 400 people and became the leader even defeting IBM’s own attempts at addressing that market. The last few years were more difficult, Dragon was acquired by Lernout & Hauspie for about $500m in an all-share transaction, then L&H went under chapter 11, then was bought over by ScanSoft, who then acquired Nuance (a small voice recognition startup from Montreal) and finally renamed itself Nuance Communications. I was lucky enough, about 10 years ago, to be a software engineer intern at Dragon. At the time, I was part of an international team, a small group of people working at preparing and adapting the technology for each of a dozen languages.
Will also be presenting is Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn. The largely successful social network that we all know. Reid Hoffman is now chairman, president and evangelist to the company and, in early 2007, left the CEO chair to Dan Nye. Just last week, LI realized a new round of financing of $53m indicative of a $1 billion valuation. Today, Reid is an adviser, investors and board member to many startup companies.
Other speakers will include Larry Sanger founder of Wikipedia, Craig Newmark founder of Craigslist, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet founder of PriceMinister.com and Martin Eberhard founder of Tesla Motors.
As an entrepreneur, networking and thinking internationally is absolutely essential for imposing a global product, brand or technology. Being locally focused may work for some (PriceMinister), but most of us are reaching far beyond the traditional frontiers of our countries and the only limiting factor is how we have been taught to think.
What: French-American Conference of Entrepreneurs
Where: Paris, Musée du Louvre and CCIP
When: This Thrusday and Friday, June 27th and 28th
Web registration: www.face-paris.com
More details: Hugues De Revel @ hderevel(at)advancia-negocia(dot)fr
Update: Also, a few non-entrepreneurs will be speaking, including Ouriel Ohayon from Techcrunch France, Florence Ribes from IRIS finance and Eric Shine from Inc.Magazine.
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.