French Innovation Meets Silicon Valley

Last evening I attended the 4th Annual French Tech Tour event put on by UbiFrance, the French agency for international business development. Out of many applicants, UbiFrance had selected an exemplary group of 15 emerging French companies to travel to Silicon Valley for the opportunity to engage the local Valley start-up ecosystem in a series of events and meetings. UbiFrance director, Gaëtan Gachet, and his team organize a great week for the selected companies, culminating in a Sand Hill Road reception attended by VCs, company execs and Francophiles. The evening’s program consisted of brief presentations by the 15 companies and a panel discussion featuring industry luminaries on what entrepreneurial foreign companies need to do to be successful when coming to Silicon Valley. This was followed by a reception where the participating companies informally presented and demoed their products. The panel was interesting, with good recommendations for entrepreneurs to be open, network extensively, listen and learn when they visit Silicon Valley. Among the participants, CRN Systems Editor, Damon Poeter, provided comments that most resonated with 3Point. “Get good PR. Make sure you engage the media in the right way. Be open, make friends. Tell a story and the whole story. Not only tell the technology story but the whole story of how you came to be and what you are all about.” 3Point agrees with Poerter that the story is key to any company's success and is why our focus is on helping our clients define and tell their stories through our Navigator process.

The 15 companies covered a wide range of technology categories. Some of my personal favorites among the companies included Lexip, which makes a very cool 3D mouse (CEO Eric Delattre pictured left holding his device), and Laster Technologies, which has a fascinating augmented reality solution (CEO Zile Liu pictured right explaining augmented reality). Other well represented categories included mobile -- Arkamys, which has developed technology to greatly increase the audio quality from mobile devices, along with MobileGov and Mobile Distillery -- and cloud computing -- LYaTiss and MLslate. Green tech was represented as well with EcoVadis, which took the top prize of the evening for its pioneering sustainable supply chain management solutions. Names the top start-up of the group, Ecovadis will receive a one-month, all expenses paid stay at the Plus and Play Tech Center in Silicon Valley.

Check out all the companies participated: · ActivNetworks · AlphaUI · Arkamys · Avob · DelfMEMS · EcoVadis · LASTER Technologies · Lexip · LYaTiss · MLstate · Mobilegov · Mobile Distillery · Prim’Vision · Relaxnews · UbicMedia This representation of French innovation was fascinating and whets my appetite for a trip to France in coming months. For you readers out there, what other emerging French companies should we keep an eye on? Bon Weekend!

We Built It and They Came

Silicon Valley

My esteemed colleague Jim wrote on this blog just a couple of days ago that he is tired of hearing about how Bay Area is the end-all, be-all of technology innovation and that for his money Boston is every bit as tech savvy as the nerds in Silicon Valley.

Ironically, that very day, Apple – a Silicon Valley based company – surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable technology in the world! That’s right, a company from Cupertino, CA #1 in the tech industry.

But as strong as Apple has become over the past few years, it is far from being the only formidable technology company here in Silicon Valley. You may have heard of some of them -- Google, Facebook, eBay and Intel. And literally tens of thousands of other companies too. But we’re not just about the Internet and semiconductors any more. No siree!

Just this past week President Obama was in Fremont, another Silicon Valley city, touring Solyndra, a maker of solar panels, where he touted the new factory as an example his administration's efforts to encourage job growth in innovative technologies. Green tech comes to Silicon Valley.

And Solyndra is not alone. There are dozens of new companies developing green technologies here in Silicon Valley, and a number entrenched semiconductor companies, such as Intel and National Semiconductor, are spending big amounts of R&D money on new photovoltaic and solar projects.

Biotech is another area of growth for Silicon Valley. In fact, hundreds of Valley-based biotech firms are expected to vie for $1 billion in new federal tax credits and grants aimed at boosting medical research and generating jobs.

Boston is certainly a vibrant and important market for a number of diverse technologies. But Silicon Valley, like Apple, isn’t going to give up its #1 tech ranking easily. That’s why 3Point Communications is located in both Boston and the Bay Area. We know that if you’re going to provide world-class communications counsel to technology companies, you have to be in both places at once.