Oh la la! French, Israeli startups vie for top prize

A delegation of 250 French developers and entrepreneurs, including executives of major French corporations and early stage startups, is attending this year’s DLD Tel Aviv innovation festival led by Axelle Lemaire, France’s Secretary of State for Digital Affairs.

The delegation, organized by La French Tech, will be part of the French TechHouse at the Hatahana venue in Tel Aviv, where a 48-hour hackathon will be held. Ten startup companies, five Israeli and five French, will be competing against each other in fields like mobile, fintech and the Internet of Things (IoT). The 10 companies were pre-selected among the dozens of French and Israeli startups that applied to participate, a statement said.

La French Tech is a community of tech entrepreneurs, engineers and designers and businesses in a variety of sectors, including digital, biotech, medtech and fintech, backed by the government to boost France’s startup economy.

French venture capital industry ranks second in Europe, and the country, which has a strong scientific tradition, produces some 80,000 engineers and 70,000 PhDs per year. The country has the largest engineering workforce in Europe, together with Germany, said Romain Serman, director of Bpifrance USA in a March 2016 article for the Paris Tech Guide.

And over the years France has started developing a new entrepreneurial culture. Paris today has around 5,000 startups, compared with 1,000 in 2011; it creates 1,000 startups every year and is host to more than 40 accelerators, Serman said. France is also building on the Israeli model of setting up R&D activity locally while targeting US markets for sales, he said.

“There’s been a real change in the French startup ecosystem in recent years and I think it’s due to a change in mentality,” said Valentin Pellissier, a spokesman for the French delegation to Tel Aviv. “We’ve always had great engineers and have always been very creative, but we used to be more risk averse. It used to be that a young bright engineer would graduate and dream to have a career in one of the big 40 French companies. Now young people want to be entrepreneurs, take risks and be their own boss.”

“France and Israel have great complementarities. France is a bigger market accessible to Israeli startups once they have proved themselves in Israel,” he said. “Israel has a longer history in entrepreneurship — even though let’s not forget entrepreneur is a French word! There is a lot to be learned in Israel’s success in being known as the startup nation, and we at Le French Tech want people to think of France as the startup nation in Europe.”

During the hackathon in Tel Aviv the finalists will polish their products and then present them to the public. Two winners will then be selected by French and Israeli jurors and announced on September 28.

Among the finalists are Israel’s Paykey, a fintech company that enables secured payments using social network platforms, Mksns, which provides farmers in developing countries access to customized business and budget plans and goals via their phones; WeKast, a fast and easy wireless device that enables users to make presentations using their cellphones on any screen anywhere; and Nextnvest, a fintech platform that enables financial institutions and their retail customers to redirect unproductive funds into more profitable investment solutions,

French finalists include Destygo, a travel agency app that offers a 24/7 personalized concierge service for business travelers; Hostabee, an Internet of Things device for beekeepers that enables remote control of beehives, saving time and optimizing processes; and Etaonis/Smetch, an artificial intelligence startup that allows users to transpose hand-drawn ideas into digital formats.

Winners will get packages including flights and hotel to the CES conference in Las Vegas. In addition, the French transportation corporation SNCF will offer the leading mobile startup access to its business and ecosystem.

The French pavilion’s activities are in cooperation with leading French companies. Conferences and workshops open to all DLD attendees will be held throughout the hackathon, covering topics such as “How hackathons create startups” and “Collaborative investment.”