#startups en

This week was the 3rd edition of the Dublin Web Summit (DWS). This major European conference gathered 4000 visitors from 45 countries, including many web and digital experts.

I had the honor of representing Azendoo thanks to a personal invitation from the founder of RudeBaguette. Thank you Liam!

DWS can be summarized as 270 startups that came to showcase their innovations and look for investors. It was said backstage that "Davos for Startups" had more seedlings than any event in the USA.

I must admit that, as an entrepreneur, it was awesome to meet new open-minded people for a few days, and get away from a frankly gloomy entrepreneurship climate in France.

There were tons of Internet stars, regrouped on 4 stages (Main, Digital, Cloud and Developers). Some of which were the founders of Skype, Pinterest, Flipboard, Klout, Yandex, Wildfire, Stripe, Box, Prezi, etc..

Throughout the alleys of DWS, the presentations, including the startup contest "Spark of Genius", were mainly based on several reoccurring topics:

Social: future applications that all have Facebook genes in them,

Collaboration: a wave that affects both applications for consumers and businesses,

Mobile: your phones become the source of all desires. This is the platform of the future and the remote to our lives. As Apple says, "there's an app for that..."

Crowdfunding: a new mode of financing that’s the result of dried up conventional investors and the rise of Social’s influence

Real world: how new technologies interact with the real world and create new uses.

I soon realized that it was too ambitious to make a list of the best ideas I saw, because the range of applications was huge, but I picked out several innovations that I think you'll see bloom in the future. Not surprisingly, they are from various field like; education, recreation, online payment, finance and accounting, food, games, design, journalism, marketing, communications, project management, security or sale...

DWS was also a great opportunity to meet, or re-meet, some startups and CEOs from France. Naturally, we continued our discussion later in the evening around a Guinness!

Here is the stunning difference (and picture quality) between DWS day and DWS night!

I met Fred and Hubert Dokker, Adam CleverCloud Philippe and Bruno Kwaga, Guilhem Marc-David La Ruche Qui Dit Oui, Roman from Wisembly, Thibaut from AllMyApps. There was also Tariq Krim, who launched JoliCloud after making his mark with Netvibes.

One thing is for sure, next year Azendoo be present and represent the French web scene! Cheers!  

I decided to write this article because of an overwhelming desire to share the daily life of the Azendoo team with you.

  The Azendoo office houses thirteen employees and is nestled in the Darwin Ecosystem in Bordeaux. We work in a starup style openspace in that allows us to eat and breathe teamwork. Here at Azendoo, we know all about hard work, but we also know all about having a good time! That’s why we want to share with you our sense of humour, and what it is we love about working at Azendoo.  

  Who is hiding behind your social productivity tool?

  As of today, Friday, May 17 2013, there are 13 fulltime employees, three of which are interns. Of everybody in the office, 2 have blond hair, and the 11 others are brunettes (plus, three have receding hair lines). All of us are Mac lovers (with the exception of an intern but his opinion doesn’t count) We have lit 361 birthday candles this year, which gives the team an average of 27.7 years old... There are 1.2 Nerf Gun battles per day, that last an average of 55 seconds, and the Back Office team usually wins… Everyone rides to work on a bike (because we love our planet), with the exception of one of the interns… but he’s an American, so what he does doesn’t count. Plus, it’s with pride that I am pleased to announce that the Azendoo team has an average of 2.2 syllables per first name (after much debate).     At Azendoo, Male/Female equality is very important to us. We tried very hard to have a balanced team, allowing equal opportunity for everyone. However, as you can see represented by our Men vs Fred pie chart, females are largely outnumbered… 12 to 1…  

Equality: Men vs Fred

So, Who is Fred?