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Few transatlantic entrepreneurs know both the European and American start-up scene as intimately as Seesmic and Le Web founder Loic Le Meur. So the first question I asked Loic when he came into the San Francisco TechcrunchTV studio last week was what American start-up entrepreneurs can learn from their European counterparts.
Nothing, Loic told me. Except, perhaps, the ability to invite each other out for lunch.
Europeans, on the other hand, have much to learn from American entrepreneurs. Most of all, Loic insists, European start-up entrepreneurs need to think globally and to stop copying American innovation. “DO NOT COPY”, Loic advises the Europeans – although this doesn’t stretch to intellectual property where he sees European media executives locked in the archaic business model of protecting traditional content.
This is the first part of a two part interview with Le Meur. Check back tomorrow to hear Loic defend his record as Seesmic CEO.
Loic to Europe: “Do Not Copy”
Luic. I just made a joke off-camera, but I'll do it publicly. I said if the French had your backbone, then Europe would be a lot stronger.
Thank you. Coming from you it's a great compliment.
Speaking of the French, Louic, you're unusual in the sense that you know both sides of the Atlantic intimately, both the French. So if there is a startup in France you'd know it.
Well, French people will argue that I'm not too French anymore, but sure, keep going.
Well, you're one of the few people able to talk in a very well-informed way, not just theoretical, about why it is that European startup world is so, seems to be struggling to compete with America.
Yep. So here is your opportunity to wax lyrically about what Europeans need to do to improve their startup world.
Well, that's a dangerous question asking me because I don't want to be the one lecturing everybody on how Europe.
Well you can just lecture me.
Succeed while I move to San Francisco. You see there is some controversy here already.
Well let's put it simpler than and maybe balance it. What can Europeans learn from Americans on the startup front on the tech front, and what can Americans learn from Europeans?
Well, that's easy. Do not copy.
Which way? Who shouldn't copy who?
I think Europe has too big tendency to tell entrepreneurs that it is okay to take something that works great in the U.S. and take it as fast as possible to Europe. That's you know what? That is killing European innovation and there's a lot of examples like Facebook had its two different sites in Germany there is, you know, there was Groupon that was acquired then by Groupon but, you see, I know too many startups who don't innovate just because you are focusing on what works here and copying it here.
If you walk around on the street, you have a drink and you say, "I'm copying whatever Four Square", you kind of suck all ready. You see my point? In Europe it's OK. And I think we need to change that.
Second, I think it's because there's no innovation if you keep copying, you're always behind. Then there is the language and the way you think about it. That's what people think about at least I think. Is they always say "Oh, it's more difficult to raise money." I don't think it's true. More difficult to start a business.
I don't think it's true in Europe.
What I think is true is the question of ambition. Here, when someone launches whatever startup even if it doesn't take off well like Color for example or someone launches InstaGram or, they want to eat the world. In Europe we have a tendency to first dominiate our country first or our city even. I hate to say but even in the UKs case if you go you tend to see startups that are too focused on the U.K. or in Germany or in Madrid or in Spain, the same in France, of course by the time you succeed.
So, I like the YouTube example. YouTube, and there is a video startup called BetaMotion in France. They both launched at the same time. Actually, the French started even before YouTube, as far as I understand. And you know what happened to YouTube. Huge success. And that other one is pretty much local, right?
And, no, I don't think it's so big. Why? Because more often the entrepreneurs don't think global, and by the time they think too local, then they say we will extend to other countries, too late.
Here they raise more money. They have more users, and so on. So, that's the other thing they could they could fix, which is more a state of mind and then obviously the governments don't help like the European institution is a catastrophe in terms of hiring people, for example. It's not flexible. If you want to, if you're French which I've been trying to hire someone in Germany, it's awful.
You have to create a subsidiary or you have to have some kind of establishment there. You have to follow, of course, the social rules of Germany. Spain, awful, horrible. I can't believe that we were not solving this. And now, on a positive note, Le Web went from one thousand, two thousand, three thousand people in the last three years.
So, you can see there is a movement to startups and entrepreneurship. And also we received last year five hundred applications for our startup competition.
What about, what Americans can learn from European entrepreneurs? Is there anything? Europeans always say diversity. And it makes me smile honestly, because what there is to learn about diversity I think it's, there is one thing which is clearly the, I don't know.
Nothing?
Well, yeah, it's.
You're never going to be allowed back in Europe, they'll take away your French passport.
I know that. You killed me in Europe forever. I think I wrote a column which is Why Europe Sucks, and I drive a B transport.
I think European entrepreneurs dress better than Americans, don't you?
Well, the lifestyle yes. The way of living is pretty cool. You know what I miss here? Is I miss natural tendency of Europeans to still to take time to know each other. For example, let's take this lunch example again. I'll take you to lunch. Sometimes here, I have people saying this is still very European of me to say, let's go have lunch.
And some people tell me. Why? What do you mean why? I just want to know you. see what I mean, I like that part of Europe where you can get a lot to know someone, and then do business with. Here you do business first. If there is no fit, you know we don't, you see what I mean.
Didn't Mike Arrington once say there that the problem with Europe was that it was all lunch and no business?
Yes, that was a little pushed. I had two months of lunch booked in Paris when I was there, two months ahead.
And how long were you there?
Here, you mean? No, here no lunch booked. That's easy.
As someone in our audience, and this sounds like a movie, Lunch with Loic. What would they have to do? Invite you out?
Oh, that easy. I see as many cool people as I can. I'm very open. I think, I answer on Twitter all day long all week @Loic, that's easy. I think there is a lot of hope for Europe, but it has to forget to its complex. It has to forget fact that it's feeling small already. It shouldn't. You know, if you start a startup in Europe, you need to feel global and don't think in French or in German.
And that's what I did with LeWeb which made it so successful. We have 60 countries going on. It's very global, we didn't try to do a French event.
Why Le Web is a global, rather than European, event
At Louic the father, the founder of Le Web and Louic I made fun of Seesmic earlier in this in conversation yesterday. But it's hard to make fun of Le Web, you've done a tremendous job. So here's your opportunity to tell the world what you've achieved with Le Web, which, in my mind at least is the premier tech event in Europe annually.
Thank you Andrew. Well the numbers speak for themselves. In the last three years we had 1000, 2000, 3000 participants so explosive growth. Sixty countries. And it's not French, it's only less that 40% French, 60% international. And, it's, the reason why it's so successful, actually, I think it's because it was never meant as a business.
When we created Le Web with my wife Charlene, we reallywanted to basically help the scene in Europe. So I wanted to solve my own problem as an entrepreneur, which was, one I don't have, I don't want the copy, I want the original. I want Chad Hurley, I want Jack Dorsey, I want all those guys.
And the first thing was to get them to Europe, to Paris, which we did. We now have a lot of style founders coming every year and it became regular for Marissa Meyer also from Google and very important actors here. And that is the first thing I wanted to achieve, is that European entrepreneurs can get that in Europe once a year.
So we bring this to Europe, and that's very successful. And I think that, that made it successful so it's the fact that it's not really, again, it's not a trade show. There's no cheap expo, with people trying to sell you stuff on stage. If we sell sponsorship we don't get a space to pitch, we're very careful about the content.
We make it like if it was for us basically, what you need as a European entrepreneur. So you need the ideas of innovation, you need the business angels to be there around you. And every year there are companies funded there. You need the VCs of course, they are all here.
You need a lot of coverage, so you need the bloggers, the press and LeWeb was the number one Twitter trend worldwide last year during the event which I was pretty happy about. And then you need a great atmosphere when you can talk. So we won't let it grow more. It's 3,000 people, it will stay at this many, barely more.
And it's always the first week of December, right?
Yes, seven, eight, nine of December. We moved to three days this year. It's a family business, so for us it's a big risk because we moved from two to three days, that means we took, we don't care about that, but we took a room for three days and a lot of people, the budget is significant for us to increase.
But that was the number one demand of the participants, which is what we care about. Two days was too short.
And is the agenda set for this winter?
Yeah, we just announced it. It's solomo, which is a term coined by John Dore, which is social local mobile, solomo. And so it's going to be the entire theme of Le Web. We've everything about tablets, of course. And PCs are tracks from Steve Jobs, which he announced last year at the conference.
So we have InstaGram, for example, is a solomo company. It's social, it's local, it's mobile. Right? We have Yelp. Obviously it's local, it's social, and mobile. And we'll hear what the big players have to say about that, Facebook and Google, all of them. And we just started to announce, you know, a few speakers, but this is just the beginning.
We have still six months.
How do people participate if they want to? If you want to speak, what would you do?
Yeah, if you want to, if you are a start up, first we provide a free booth, a table. All free, if you are selected among the 16 that we select, we provide a slot on stage and tickets are free for two people. So that's what we, our gift to start ups. So you can submit to leweb.net to start up competition, we're starting in September for that because we got 500 last year so we're trying to be not too early to catch the trends.
Then if you want to register as a participant just leweb.net, it's available now and it's cheap because we increase our prices like airlines do. Last minute more expensive, very simple. And if you want to speak the best is to use the form there which is suggests speakers or just contact me directly at Luic.
I hope you're not going to be better than Disrupt.
Oh, you know, we don't compete with Disrupt we like Disrupt, we go to Disrupt but then you come to the web and Mike comes to the web. We have a big crew from Tech Crunch last year. There was you, and this year we also have...So hopefully you come back, but Mike, Alexia, MG, we had of course Mike Butcher from Tech Cruch UK...So it's like there is a long friendship from Tech Crunch.
It's been...I think it's been 6...5 years at least that Tech Crunch has been brothering Le Web. No worries unless you start invading Europe and try to kill me. Which will be fine too. It's different.
Why Europe must wake up and protect the future
Louie, you and I were last month in Paris for President Sarkozy's EG8 event, in which Eric Schmidt spoke, Zuckerburg spoke, number of very prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but Sarkozy, so to speak, stole the show in his opening remarks when he talked about civilizing the Internet. And this was extremely controversial.
What is, I know you worked in the past with some prominent French politicians...
Well, him actually.
Him, exactly, I didn't want to name drop too much. What is your opinion of the idea of a politician like Sarkozy being bent on civilizing the Internet?
I think, and I've said it in public a few times, that what we need to do is to protect the Internet from being civilized by the governments.
Jeff Job has actually made that point too.
Yes, I was about to say that, but you were faster than me. But I agree with that, you know, statement of Jeff. And I had my own. First event was awesome, by the way. Great networking with...
Lovely food.
Great food.
Even beat Le Web.
It was in the spring, so it was not cold. Incredible. No. You know, again, I also know those who organize it, so...
It was organized by publicists.
Mostly by publicists, yes. And it was very well organized. And great networking. I had my panel in it, so you see...and that panel was about European disruptive entrepreneurs. So we had, you know, the usual suspects: Brent Oberman, Maxim Ochsiny, and Jacques Ontremeau created like a...Now I hate to say a group like in France because he created it six years ago, ten, but that gives you an idea.
Anyway, all of them agreed that no one should civilize or, you know, make too many, you know, measures....Like, let the Internet free. Basically, that's what we're saying. The head of...he controls like 40% of the French Internet. He's the one...the number one ISP there free said, "I didn't understand my presence on stage, right?" So, basically, I think it wasn't very...I don't know...I respect his point of view, but I disagree.
It would be fair to say though that there are a number of prominent European entrepreneurs who would disagree with you, who are more sympathetic to Sarkozy. The CEO of Vodafone, for example.
Well, that's not a start up entrepreneur. Well, but he's still a powerful business figure.
Yeah.
Do you believe then that the government should have no role in the protection of individual privacy?
Minimum. I think it should be absolutely minimum. Like, if I harass you on the Internet or if, you know, your daughter is getting, you know, insane e-mails and you see someone...When we did Seesmic video, we had someone threatening us to hang himself on video. Right? What did we do? We call the police, right?
Because you shouldn't let that happen in real life if you see someone try to kill himself outside on the street, what will you do? Nothing? No. It's the same. I think it's minimum. Like something against the law should be punished same as real life. But we shouldn't try to regulate too much, for sure.
So I don't know about , I'm sure he thinks this way. What about the area of intellectual property because that's part where there's the most disagreement. It was a very controversial panel with Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist arguing very strongly against the idea of a strong defense of traditional copyright, whereas some large media companies that were there arguing the other way.
What is your position on that?
Well, here's what's happening and why it is so controversial. It has been four years. You have an entirely new business model for an industry like music, probably like movies very soon which is taking over the old business model completely. And you can see the new artists must make money not really from selling records.
They don't really sell those but from concerts, from events, from merchandise, from a lot of other things and that's when your business model from a community they create around themselves. That's one example.
And what I think is that Europe, again, is very much focused on protecting the past instead of preparing the huge opportunities of jobs, creating jobs around the new models. So Zynga created two thousand jobs a block away, right in San Francisco. Incredible! I am not saying I'm not comparing, apple and oranges but still you have a new world opening creating thousands of jobs, and another one which is in trouble.
If you're a government it's fine to talk all the time about protecting the past, and yes we need to be careful. But I think Europe needs to wake up and protect the future much more. They don't do that.
Is this something, though, somehow in the water in Europe about protecting the rights of the artist, of the author, of the writer, of the film maker. Is that something that Europeans can never change?
I don't think they can go against a rain that is falling, and if you talk to someone like Paolo Cuelo for example, who spoke at Le Web. He explained that he even has an initiative of boss I thing which is parrot Paolo, where he actually encourages people to take what it does and help create a community.
I think there are limits, of course, but I think offers a way too scared about what's happening to them, as a risk instead of opportunity and those who get it you can see the new bands growing online by getting all this word of mouth, and embracing Facebook and Twitter rather than fighting it. Are going to be very successful while the others will keep complaining.
So I think it's a question of a transition which is very violent, it's not really on transition. I think our government are too focusing on the past again. They should embrace the stock of pick system including run industries, music and video and not doing anything wrong but letting the Internet grow much more, which, by the way happens anyway.
Whatever they try, we have a law that can punish people in France from downloading illegal stuff. Instead of punishing, I think training is much more interesting and looking at the future and all the jobs that can be created. I'd rather see my President talk about creating millions of jobs on a mobile developers - that the young should learn how to code, for example, than focusing on the past all the time.
My kids are 10, 14 and 16 there were last week in Stanford learning how to code iPad and Android apps. I love that. That's looking at the future. There is a total shortage of mobile developers. Here is the future. You know how much is a mobile developer here? If you are a beginner, you get $100,000 plus.
If you are experienced, it can be $160, or $180,000. Incredible, let Europe prepare that more instead of complaining about the past.
Loic is the Founder and CEO of Seesmic. Seesmic is a powerful suite of social media management and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online. With applications on every platform, including mobile devices, and a marketplace of over 80 third-party plugins, Seesmic is the most comprehensive solution on the market.
Loic also founded and hosts the #1 tech event in Europe, LeWeb.net, with his wife Geraldine. LeWeb gathers together...
Seesmic is a powerful suite of social media management and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online.
With applications on every platform, including mobile devices, and a marketplace of over 80 third-party plugins, Seesmic is the most comprehensive solution on the market.
Seesmic is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur.
Few transatlantic entrepreneurs know both the European and American start-up scene as intimately as Seesmic and Le Web founder Loic Le Meur. So the first question I asked Loic when he came into the San Francisco TechcrunchTV studio last week was what American start-up entrepreneurs can learn from their European counterparts.
