[France] The founding of Paris-based Creads sounds no different from the success stories of Silicon Valley: in 2008, 23-year-old co-founders Julien MechIn and Ronan Pelloux founded their company with no more than €7,000 and the money in their pockets. Their main source of seed funding was won through a start-up idea competition at France’s Salon des Entrepreneurs – the same event that is taking place this week in Paris.
Two years later, Creads’ online platform has seen top-name companies leverage their creative community of over 10,000 people. The platform allows companies to use the creative talent of the community to develop over 100 different types of brand-related creative competitions, including company names, logos, advertisements and designs. Due to the fact that Creads acts as more of a participative online ad agency than a mere crowd-sourcing site, larger companies tend to draw more readily upon its expertise.
The company opened their first international office in Spain in the fall of 2009 and has just announced the opening of their first Asian office in Tokyo. As trends in Japan change faster than the seasons, Creads hopes to respond to the country’s creative needs with its web 2.0 creative competition platform.
The ambitious co-founders are planning to raise an additional round of funding and set-up shop in the US later this year.