Going Startup in Strasbourg
This is a guest post by Liam Boogar, a Californian-native writing in English about the French Startup scene on RudeBaguette.com
The attendees broke 130 people before organizers finally turned down participants, and at the end of the first night counted 18 projects. I talked with Yann Klis, one of the organizers, about how he got such so many people from so many backgrounds together: “well, after I turned down an offer from Square to bring my entire company to San Francisco, I realized I needed to kickstart this startup scene in Strasbourg, so I got to work calling everyone in my address book.”
One of the weekends initial sponsors was SEMIA, a local incubator run by pharmaceutical entrepreneur Jean-Luc Dimarcq. The incubator is well dug in to the Pharmaceutical network, having helped get dozens of startups funded over the past three years. SEMIA reached out to the pharmaceutical students in its network, and encouraged them to bring whatever ideas they had to startup weekend. One of those ideas was Alzapp , which wants to improve treatment for Alzheimer’s patients. Backed by a team of 4 pharmaceutical students, a few developers, and some “Biz Guys,” Alzapp wants to build an iPad app which will both test the state of the patient, as well as aid in preventing Alzheimer’s from getting worse. While Alzapp is aware that Alzheimer’s cannot be prevented with an iPad app, they recognized that current care is neglectful, and that a little disruption might just be what Alzheimer’s patients need.
At a time when European cities need to identify their strengths in order to attract European startups to them (and away from the US), Strasbourg has certainly made its claim: for Biotech companies thinking of going to Boston to launch their product, there might just be another way.