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It’s a place where tech entrepreneurs can get a start, get assistance, get help into
growing into much larger companies.
The place is probably more agile, since a community can change its mind, and probably
can evolve and optimize the process.
I believe a VC owned accelerator would be most interested in very few things, and the
fact that this owned by the whole community will probably open projects and most likely
see more diversity.
Hopefully as a mentor I can be a trusted advisor. That’s my goal. I’ve been in
six ventures funded startups and several others self-funded startups, and it’s hard work.
When I think back at the best mentors I had, I had three very good mentors at my most sucessfull
company.
My challenge [to them] would probably [be]: to work quickly and to be very agile, and
be opportunistic probably too. And to have something very concrete and very fast.
Well, first of all I’m an entrepreneur myself, so I kind of went throught what these people
are going to be going throught, or are going throught right now.
I’m very involve in a international community, most of my user base is in the US, so I can
probably also help them understand what going global means. And also help them to launch
their project not just in France but to a global audience.
Ok, the first time I worked in Paris was in 1985, and we are quite a number of years later.
And I see vast changes.
The first thing is the network is growing, and people get to know each others.
If you’re based in Paris, you are in the middle of Europe, you have access to Spain,
UK, Germany, all sort of very attractive markets. And I would more diversity maybe than in a
single language market.
Le Camping is place to build an infrastructure to create the equivalent of a Silicon Valley
here in France.
It’s fairly interesting to see that you can hire some very good engineers in Paris
for like not even half the price of an engineer in the Silicon Valley or New York for example…
That’s a good thing.
Three things that are happening are: the lower costs -- you don’t need as much capitals
to start a company; the second is that people in France are more willing to take risk --
if you look at the inscriptions at Startup weekend, Seedcamp, all of the different programs
to help you make a startup, there are huge subscriptions in France; and then the third
thing is, you have Le Camping wich is building of an infrastructure that support people that
want to make startups.