Loic Le Meur Blog

"Don't know what you've got till its gone"

2008-11-29T21:28:15+01:00

Seth Godin has a very good point and recession is already making lots of cool products or services disappear. And we will miss them. There is one good news though, is that generally we will be less demanding for free products and services that tend to be the only possible option with the web 2.0 disappearing times. Everybody will get used to see cool things disappear and therefore will be thankful to the ones that survive, accepting to pay a small fee to make sure they stay around for a long time.

Entrepreneurs should remain focused on "what is the problem you are trying to solve" (hi, Ben :) and build products that creates enough value for consumers that they will be ready to pay for. In return customers will be a little less demanding as they realize it is not that easy to build and maintain those services.

I really like how Seth described the two responsibilities of the consumers in a new world of empowered consumers:

"It's simple, I think. In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

* If you don't like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change
and
* If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business."

Example of Good PR

2008-11-26T19:36:16+01:00

I received the below email from "**** Agency" which is "eager to fill me in their new strategy to conquer social publishing" because "she is a huge fan of Wired Magazine".

Om Malik received the same email and call:

You may want to check how your PR agency is helping you, unless the whole purpose is to get buzz around how to handle PR...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Loic,

I am writing to see if I can grab a few minutes of your time next week to take a call or meet for coffee with *********. He is a huge fan of Wired Magazine and we are eager to fill you in on our new strategy to conquer social publishing. We unveiled a rebrand last week and debuted a new platform that is based on Facebook's making it extremely user friendly.

Obviously, the push will enable more partners to integrate and gain access
to our 30 million monthly uniques. One such deal with Demand Media's Pluck
on Demand was announced yesterday. We also have a deal with OurTown on the
horizon.

You may be surprised by this but ++++++ was just named a Tech Fast 50 and gets
more than 20,000 new sign ups a day and over 30 million unique visitors a
month. We found out yesterday that Webs got awarded #119 on the Fast 500 for
its 1,700 percent increase in the past few years.

To support the continued growth and open platform, we launched an "All Sites will be Social" campaign to support a rollout of socialpublishing features. Every site on our platform is now capable of features like member profiles, group authoring, comments, pic and video sharing, permission-based accesses, and blogs to complement our existing yet relatively new features such as web stores, wikis, picture and video galleries etc. You might also be interested to know that we have partnered with Cool Iris, Wet Paint, Clicky, YouTube, PicniK and a few other emerging technologies.

Basically, +++++ wants to fill the gap between static sites and social networks i.e. SNs connect people to other people but don't allow for interaction around valuable content.

++++++ will be in the Bay Area the week of December 1st to attend a +++++ conference, as he sits on its board and it was initially his company.

I will try giving you a call later today or tomorrow to chat.

no need to call me :)

Exclusive versus non Exclusive Conferences: How Should We Run LeWeb?

2008-11-26T05:56:17+01:00

I have had an interesting conversation with a few friends recently who tell me that I should reduce the size of LeWeb this year from being able to fit about 1500 people to only 600 to 800 and make it invite only, more exclusive, more expensive to deliver higher end services to the participants. It is not the first time I hear this. I am already getting lots of criticism from entrepreneurs and students who think it is already very exclusive with a price range of 750 to 1700 euros depending when you buy the ticket (early or late).

My pride is that there is not a single week throughout the year that follows LeWeb without a participant email thanking me because he raised funding, made a deal or even sold his company at LeWeb, or even just got inspired. And that makes my day. That makes me run LeWeb at cost not really as a good business. It helps.

I hear every single year these criticism about a ticket around one thousand euros being too expensive. Unfortunately there is no way we can do cheaper with what we provide. The "naked" room in the hear of Paris for 1500 people is about 200 000 euros, the wifi is about 100 000 to make it work for such a demanding group, add video and audio means, the stage, the human resource to build and unbuild all that, add food for all these participants, etc etc and you are just at cost. LeWeb barely breakevens and to be honest with you, we are already quite proud to be able to run it at breakeven with the help of sponsors and participants.

So is it expensive? Yes and no. Yes for unemployed, starting entrepreneurs, students, many bloggers, etc. This year we accepted a lot of them as student price and have had a few "official" bloggers. We will also entirely stream live the main stage, which has a high bandwidth and setup cost, not to talk about ustream costs who we thank to be a partner and will stream it for you. So all the content will be free and if you stay home you can get it all (the startup room will be uploaded online after, could not make it live as well, but the main stage is already not bad, did not have the means to do both).

No it is not expensive given the level of service we have. World class speakers, participants from 30+ countries, a wifi that works, food which is generally not crap and high quality audio and video in a venue in the heart of Paris. While we all like Paris, it is one of the worst place to host such an event given the number of events there: rooms are booked one year ahead with no negociation possible with them and the hotels do not care much about giving deals.

A similar conference in the US in terms of setup is more like 3000 to 6000 dollars a seat (TechCrunch50, The Lobby, Web2 Summit, DEMO, D Conference, TED...), so I do not think we are that expensive given what you get, at all. It is a professional event, not an "expo" meant at the public in the street.

So should I divide the size of LeWeb by half and double the price to make it more exclusive? I could still give away free tickets to the best startups and bloggers and make it very exclusive, like my three reference conferences are, D TED and Davos. I am aiming at their quality while being far from it given their budget and how much they are backed by enterprise, brands and participants who can pay a 3000 to 6000 dollars ticket. How did they do that? Well it took them years. 20 years or more for Davos and TED, unsure how long for D Conference. Or they decided day one it was very exclusive, like the excellent The Lobby which hosts barely more than a hundred people.

I want LeWeb to be around in 20 years and be the Davos of the Web industry, not in Europe, just in general. It will take some time. I want it to have an impact long term because I know it is slowly contributing to changing Europe and that matters to me. LeWeb is inspiring generations of entrepreneurs, that is much more important for me than making is a super exclusive conference especially when many think it is already too exclusive. Now to be honest when I see how much my wife Geraldine and the team of freelancers are killing themselves to make LeWeb a fantastic event, I think it should also deserve to make a significant profit every year, we are not quite there yet, but we give all the participants tons of fun and opportunities.

Remixed by Tiil on the theme of Love

2008-11-25T07:47:45+01:00

Thank you Philippe for having remixed me on the theme of Love, lots of work to do this I guess.

Thank You Skype (and Sandrine!) for the Asus AiGuru SV1

2008-11-24T01:05:53+01:00

Skype just sent me their first approved videophone, the Asus Aiguru SV1and my family loves it. I think I am going to buy a few for my family in France. Thank you Skype!

Why Love Is This Year's Theme at LeWeb: Love and Entrepreneurship are very Similar Obsessions!

2008-11-23T23:48:26+01:00

Many people ask me why we chose Love as a theme this year at LeWeb so here is an attempt.

-we always have content outside of technology, one of the goals of LeWeb is to take the tech industry leaders outside of their traditional subjects to make them think and react differently, as well as get inspired. Two years ago we had President Shimon Peres and President Sarkozy (with a huge controversy therefore a huge reaction!) and last year Philippe Starck. We were not clearly expressing themes in the program before but they were there: politics as a suprise, controversial them and then creativity through design. Love is clearly expressed this year to make participants think and learn on a topic that is important for all of us. If I remember well Helen gives one definition of love as a mix of intense friendship and very strong sexual attraction so expect Helen's presentation to be controversial too!

-I listened and met with Helen Fisher at TED (see her speech) and Davos (see my interview) and "loved" her speech so much I have read a few of her books and that is how I got the idea of Love as a theme, I wanted to share how brilliant Helen is with all of you and share the inspiration.

-LeWeb is all about love of entrepreneurship, it is a very similar obsession as romantic love. Entrepreneurs are breathing their project and will live and unfortunately often sink when they fail with it.

-The Web itself is all about loving each other as individuals: see how much social software and blogs got us together sharing and mixing in a totally new way. Love always starts by sharing (a moment, a dinner, a party) and then finding that you like each other so much a unique relationship is created. We are doing the same all day long on the web: sharing first, loving after, even if it often ends as serious friendship, no sex :)

-Corporations are forced to love each other as well in this new world: mashups are happening constantly to make better services, nobody can succeed alone. Our public APIs are the conduit for corporate love!

-LeWeb is all about love, participants from previous years will confirm that. I do not know any other conference where there is so much sharing (thousands of blog posts, pictures, videos published live each year) and so much willingness to meet each other during two days. It is also the only web conference where so many countries love each other as we have around 35 countries each year!

Love you all. See you in Paris, the world capital of love.

TechCrunch - LeWeb closing party at LeWeb

2008-11-13T19:53:13+01:00

TechCrunch and LeWeb are throwing a closing party tat LeWeb in Paris this year which will both be open to all LeWeb participants and to the first TC readers who get a ticket. The first tickets were gone in 3 minutes! Thank you SFR, HotelaParis, Facebook, 3999.com mypronostic, af83, KonoLive and Faisonsaffaire,com for making this party possible. Yes, there is a recession but we should also all meet regularly and have fun too now and then so I am very thankful to our sponsors. There will be hundreds of VCs and business angels at LeWeb, more important there will also be hundreds of possible advertisers and customers for your business. In fact, it is probably going to be the largest LeWeb ever this year, so see you all in Paris! Oh and thanks TechCrunch and Ouriel Ohayon for partnering with us on this party.

30 Startups finalists at LeWeb Paris announced

2008-11-10T16:46:44+01:00

We have just announced the 30 finalists startups that will demo at LeWeb this year. This year again there will be a dedicated room for them and our judges and the selection was made by our friends at Seedcamp. This is one of the most important mission LeWeb fulfills: help european startups to get in touch with investors and expose them to the influent LeWeb crowd. There is not a single week that I do not get feedback from a company from last years' LeWeb who got financed, did a strategic deal or even was acquired following their presence in Paris.

Thank you Seedcamp and our judges for making this possible.

Seesmic and Seesmik-ers on Japanese TV NHK!

2008-11-08T03:52:38+01:00

See in this video at around 1m35s, Seesmikers on Japanese TV!

Parlons Net sur France Info

2008-11-07T01:55:55+01:00

Merci a David Abiker de m'avoir recu dans son emission parlons net ainsi qu'a Sylvain Lapoix (Marianne2.fr), François Krug (rue89.com) et Eric Mettout (Lexpress.fr) pour leur temps et questions. Pas facile comme exercice face a 4 journalistes dans les conditions du direct, mais toujours passionnant. Je ne m'attendais pas a ces questions politique et je n'etais pas tres a l'aise la tete dans le guidon de Seesmic depuis un an a San Francisco j'avoue ne pas avoir suivi de pres l'actu en France, vous ne m'en voudrez pas trop j'espere.

Loïc Le Meur sur France Info
par FranceInfo