Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Rude Baguette's Paris Founders Event @Google. A Success!

A fan of Google maps, it was fun to actually go inside their Paris headquarters as opposed to just see the street view. Last night, April 8, 2014, the 2011-founded blog Rude Baguette hosted its 9th Founders Event (TFE) with a twist. Instead of the usual networking-only soiree, they presented 10 finalists, of which five will get a launch package including assistance in marketing, 1-on-1 workshops at Google and tickets to The Next Web conference in Amsterdam.
By hosting the event, Google and its Google for Entrepreneurs program, hopes to contribute to the development of the truly burgeoning French startup scene. Partnered with TFE were La French Tech and Maddyness. La French Tech is another new association created with the French government and businesses to promote French startups. Their aim is to show the world France is a  "Startup Republic!" Maddyness is a site dedicated to the French Startup ecosystem and focuses on news, analysis, trends and guidelines for entrepreneurs. 
Having been in New York City at the beginning of the boiling point for Internet and web, in the mid-90s, it was exciting to be in this basement auditorium at what feels like the new boom for France.
Google, presented by Martin Gorner, asked "why do Google offices look like a kindergarten?" Because we like to think of ourselves as a creative agency, promoting the idea of developing and wanting to work with developers around the world. He referenced former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's famous tweet  "My New Year's Resolution is to learn code with Codeacademy in 2012." Gorner then talked about how the 2013 winner of the Stanford Challenge was French startup Goopil and that with Cloud computing, Google developers can work anywhere.