Mini Seedcamp Paris was a melting pot of startup activity with the 20 finalists meeting with some of the best entrepreneurs, investors, and experts from all over the region. Mentors commented that the quality of startups was particularly high so we are excited to announce the top five teams (in alphabetical order) as decided by popular vote of Mini Seedcamp Paris participants are…
English Attack! (Paris, France) – an innovative English learning online tool targeted to 15-35 year olds that uses rich media, gaming, and social networking concepts to teach English
Hypios (Paris, France) – an innovative way to solve complex problems for corporates by going beyond the business unit or company. Uses intelligent crowdsourcing to solve R&D problems
Openways (France) – revolutionizes the use of keys to opening doors. Instead of traditional keys (which can get lost) or key cards, people can now open doors with keys from their mobile phones. Think mobile board passes for airlines now as mobile keys for opening doors
Tigerlily (Paris, France) – helps brands manage Facebook pages to start with. A freemium model is offered with monthly and annual subscriptions. 3K people use their FB CMS currently
Tryane (Paris, France) – tools to measure how well your organisation is collaborating – includes the ability to assess stress levels of employees. Based on a software as a service model for organisations of around 2-15k employees costing 1-2 EUR per employee.
The panel discussion focused on early stage investment and entreprenuership in Europe and was moderated by Mark Esiri of Venrex, an early stage fund based in the UK that invest in Internet and often in the e-commerce space. The discussion covered a wide range of issues such as what investors look for in an entrepreneur, the types of opportunities they go after, and what startups should look for in an investor.
Also on the panel:
Xavier Lorphelin of Serena Capital – a new seed fund in France. He has in the past worked for Flextronics and co-founded a company called JSource. These days he also teaches on entrepreneurship in France.
Jonathan Benassaya co-founder of Deezer, France’s #1 music streaming service.
Marc Brandsma – co founder of Netvibes and now also angel investing.
Stefan Tirtey of Doughty Hanson Ventures, who are active in early stage throughout Europe and Stefan is based in Germany.
Congratulations to all the teams who took part and thanks to all the mentors and our sponsors, Microsoft France, Cap Digital, Elias Partners, Sun Startup Essentials, and UKTI GEP.