Entrepreneurship is getting younger – even in France ! I just learned that a 17-year-old French high school student, Andrés Talavera, is developing a TechCrunch mobile app for the Windows Phone 7 competition hosted by Microsoft France.
Andrés is going into his final year of high school in Strasbourg, France, where he’s currently specializing in information systems. Apparently, he’s been passionnate about everything Microsoft since the age of 14. As a Microsoft Student Partner since October 2009, he’s also been in the process of puting together his own startup, Crésus. The website, www.cresus.net, should go live on September 1st and the company will most likely be a service provider and distributor for various Microsoft products. Go figure.
Back in 2008, even before the idea for Crésus came about, Andrés was pitching ideas to the Microsoft team to develop personalization software for Windows Vista. He was 15 at the time.
So where did the idea for the TechCrunch app come from? Apparently from reading the TechCrunch RSS feed – and the fact that he’d just learned how to display XML content using C#. His application is currently one of the 70 that have been submitted to the competition (all apps are displayed on the event Fan Page). Steve Ballmer will be making a stop in Paris on October 7th to crown the winner, alongsite some of the hottest faces in French tech – including Jacques-Antoine Granjon of Vente-privée, Marc Simoncini of Meetic and Jaïna Capital and Ouriel Ohayon, the former Editor of TechCrunch France.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, the development of the application is not funded or sponsored by TechCrunch. In fact, the idea is 100% that of a loyal, French TechCrunch reader. :)