From silicon valley to europe and back again. In 3 startups

@gdecugis

From Silicon Valley to Europe and back again.

In 3 startups.

Guillaume DecugisCo-Founder & CEO, Scoop.it#mystartupstory

@gdecugis

In ‘94 I went to Stanford and, being French, this is what I expected

@gdecugis

Of course this is what it actually was

@gdecugis

Upon graduating in ’95, big question: lifestyle or startup?

@gdecugis

Went for lifestyle but… I couldn’t help hearing the music

Stanfo

rd. M

y

entrepre

neurship cl

ass

idea project

idea:

Music

Sagem. F

irst M

obile

Intern

et dem

os. My i

dea

for p

otentia

l applic

ations?

Music

’95 ’97 ’00

Met with

Gille

s and

Nicolas.

Startu

p.

Music

The first Mobile Music Platform

@gdecugis

Exercise: calculate the odds of success for a startup…

+ Launched in 2001 i.e. between the Internet bubble burst and 9/11

× On an idea that required 3G and multimedia phones

… that eventually hit the market in 2004

÷ In France a.k.a. the Silicon Valley of Wine, Cheese and Luxury brands

= 0.0000001% said a lot of VC’s

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We couldn’t raise money so we took it from the only possible source

Customers = $$$

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To do that we had to innovate constantly

2002: mp3 ringtones

2004: full-track downloads

2005: smart radio

@gdecugis

We finally met success

• Late 2002, we painfully raised $5m• 3 Months later, we realized we no

longer needed them by becoming profitable

• We grew to $35m revenue / 200 FTE• Late 2005, Openwave acquired

Musiwave for $121m (and sold us back to Microsoft late 2007)

@gdecugis

Why not being in Silicon Valley didn’t matter

• Carrier relationships (local, regional)

• Music labels deals (local, regional*)

• Mobile phone manufacturers (regional*)

*back then

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Was that just luck or can I do it again?

@gdecugis

Back in 2007, we had a great idea for Mobile Internet

@gdecugis

But so did Steve Jobs

AppStore launch: July 10, 2008

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We iterated the productBecame a social news reader

@gdecugis

We failed

• Distribution

• Business Model

• Stickiness

• Fat Startup

@gdecugis

In 2010, we decided to pivotWe had learned a lotWe had identified a pain point in social mediaWe had trusting VC’sWe had burnt little cash so farWe had built a scalable social media platformAnd…

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We had built a great team!

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Back to (entrepreneur) school

@gdecugis

Information Overload:A big problem and a big

opportunityWho

should I listen to?

How can I be heard?

@gdecugis

The Interest Graph: where Social Discovery meets Search

Relevancy

relevantnoisy

find

discover

Search

Social Graph Interest Graph

@gdecugis

We became Scoop.it: a new way to organize and share ideas that matter

• A publishing platform optimized for content curation

• A big data semantic technology connecting content and people around interests

• A quickly-growing community of curators who develop their online visibility faster

Scoop.it

@gdecugis

3 Share

2 Enrich

1

Discover

Your content curation hub

@gdecugis

Publish once. Be discovered everywhere.

Search Engines

Newsletters

Blogs

Social Networks

@gdecugis

This time we found product/market fit

Monthly uniques

Year-on-year growth

7MM

5x

@gdecugis

Why we moved to Silicon Valley

• Social Media early adopters & influencers

• Partner with the ecosystem

• Halo effect to other markets

@gdecugis

These however were not reasons

• Raising money

• Recruiting engineers

@gdecugis

So what are the take-aways?

@gdecugis

@gdecugis

Roller-coasters are fun…

@gdecugis

… or not.

@gdecugis

Sometimes, the real risk is not taking any

@gdecugis

Teams >>> Ideas

@gdecugis

Super powers not required.

@gdecugis

Enjoy the ride!