Full transcript: Roxanne Varza on London Real
0:00 Okay, let’s do this. This is Silicon Real, the video podcast dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. I am Brian. I also host London Real, which is a similar three-person format. We’ve got guests like Bruce Perry from the BBC series Tribe.
0:37 We had former MI5 agent turned whistleblower Annie Machon on last week. You were here for that. She’s pretty cool. She had just, she just went and saw Julian Assange after she was here. She said, “I’m going to see JA.”
0:48 She said that she said Julian, yeah, Julian first name basis with her. It was crazy, because I asked her about Julian on the show, and then she’s like, where you going next? She’s like, “I’m going to the Embassy.” What Embassy? The Ecuadorian Embassy.
0:59 And I was like, all right, now I get it. So, whistleblower coffee talk over at Theor. Yeah, whistleblowers is hanging out. So we’ve had her on. We had Tim Ferriss here.
1:07 So check that out. But this is Silicon Real. My co-host is entrepreneur Colin Pyle, who comes to London from Toronto. You would have also seen him on television riding his motorcycle across China, the India rides. Coming soon, soon, soon.
1:22 Q1 2014. Travel Channel. Awesome man. Looking forward to that. This podcast was your brainchild many months ago.
1:29 Is episode 16, 17? Gosh, crazy. We’ve been picked up for our second season. Yeah, season negotiations. Yeah, negotiations right now with the YouTube people.
1:39 So that’s very exciting. Our guest today is Ms Roxanne Varza, who holds the title of startup lover. That’s pretty cool. I made that up actually. Is that on your business card?
1:50 No, it’s a startup lead on my business card. Oh, okay. You probably like scratch it out, love. That’s a cool title. You work for Microsoft in Paris, more specifically you work for the BizSpark division.
2:00 Is that right? I work, actually, it’s a different division. It’s called DP. Okay, stands for developer of EOS platform ecosystem. I always get that wrong.
2:10 Okay, and my title, generally what I do is I work with startups, so it includes BizSpark now, it includes actually Microsoft Ventures, which is a new initiative that we’ve launched, and our accelerator program, so everything that has to do with startup. So I thought startup lover, it’s a really clean and simple way to get that message across. Okay. Wow. And for people that don’t know what BizSpark is, I believe it’s a division which provides like free software support and visibility to help startups succeed.
2:32 Is that pretty much it? It’s a program. So it’s a program for startups that are under the age of 5 years old, making less than 1 million in annual revenue. Not a problem for most startups and developing a tech product, and we give them tons of different support, whether that be software, you know, cloud hosting and things like that, and we also have different ways that we help them get visibility and free support and training. Okay, very cool.
2:54 I just want to finish up with you. You were also the co-founder of Girls in Tech both the London and Paris branch. You recently named one of the top 30 women under 30 in Tech. Now, you know my age, I guess we do now say, are you still qualified? And you’re former the editor of TechCrunch France, is that right?
3:12 Yeah, that’s right. That’s quite a resume. Roxanne, welcome to Silicon Real. Thank you. You know you’re one of these people I’m meeting in Tech that has, like, on her Twitter description, has like six things that she’s co-founded or been involved in, and I always get really intimidated.
3:25 Like, what have I been doing with my spare time with these people? So is that Tech thing or what? That is a tech thing. We just got to, like, fit them all in the Twitter bio. And it’s tricky, because I’m like clicking between the Twitter things and one of them, checking out different profiles Yeah, one’s on France, and I’m like, can’t do this, and Google Translate.
3:42 Yeah, you know, we started this show because we wanted to kind of like showcase what’s going on here in London in the tech startup industry. We’re right on the roundabout, and we didn’t think there was a good voice to, like, talk to the people, because we do think it’s really about the people ultimately. But, you know, you live in Paris, you work in Paris. I don’t know anything about the tech startup scene in Paris. We’re always talking about Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley, and we’re not talking about whatever the equivalent is where you are.
4:08 So I wonder if we could just start up, and if you could tell us what is going on in tech startup scene in Paris? Sure. What’s it called? What is it called? So actually the French government has an equivalent initiative of Tech City, which has been kind of loosely called the car numeric, which means the digital district.
4:26 And they’ve made a special name for it, which is prob CAPIC, but this is most likely going to change and become something that foreigners can hopefully understand. I have to relist and say, but, actually, Silicon in it, or I hope it will have some tech. You know, Tech Paris is good for me. So, but we’ll see what the government comes up with. They’re always kind of good at frenchifying it.
4:48 But one thing that I’ve always been kind of, I guess, criticized for, and also what people like, is that I’m really positive on everything that’s been happening in France, and I think that’s something rare. People, for some reason they don’t, whether they be entrepreneurs that are outside of France or even inside of France, there’s like a certain level of French bashing that goes on. I have actually been super impressed by everything that I’ve always discovered about the French ecosystem.
5:13 I got there in 2009 from San Francisco. There was, I think, at the time the first Startup Weekend event happening the end of the year, and it was like almost you felt like almost nothing was going on, and 2010 new funds were being launched, tons of new startups. It just became really trendy to be an entrepreneur, and since then I’ve seen the quality of tech and startups, and you know, they’re getting that you need to be international from day one. It’s completely blowing my mind.
5:39 So I’m very positive on what’s happening there. Okay, but there has been a lag compared to what I don’t know, London, which has probably lagged you know New York, which has lagged the Valley, right? I mean, there was no Silicon Alley really 10 years ago, and I think it’s, I mean, I think it’s natural too, because you know, it’s just a younger scene, so people are always also comparing, you know, France doesn’t have as many investors, but sorry, VC didn’t arrive in France at the same time, so and it’s a different market as well.
6:07 And Simon Cook was on a few weeks ago talking about the tax benefits in France that are actually better than the UK. Now, yeah, there are a couple. Could you, the one that I think people like to throw around the most is the one which is a research tax credit. France has been really good at supporting research. I think what you get as a result is a lot of companies will kind of orient their activity to get that tax benefit, so you actually have people kind of creating products that will get the, that will, you know, be able to benefit from that incentive.
6:41 But there are also incentives for companies that are under eight years of age, the entrepreneur innovant. They have, you know, they get huge tax benefits for, I think, the number of years has been reduced, but it’s for any company that’s less than eight years in age. And then there’s also tons of public funding that’s available to companies as well. OSEO, for a long time, was a parapublic bank that just about every single company you met was like, oh yeah, we’ve got at least 20, €20,000 from OSEO.
7:10 So you know you have tons of initiatives like this that I don’t know what the equivalents are in the US. Okay, if there, if they do exist, if they do. Yeah. And what about Microsoft? I mean, we know Microsoft, it’s a huge company, but you’re obviously trying to lead, what, the way that they’re trying to liaise with startups, or the way they’re trying to help startups like, what’s, what’s your typical day like, week like, or what’s going on?
7:30 So the project that I’ve been the most involved in since I joined is our new accelerator space, which is now part of the Microsoft Accelerator Network. In France, the space is known as Spark. Okay. Physical space. It’s a physical space.
7:44 It’s 300 square meters. We’re helping companies build prototypes, and we’re actually pretty flexible in terms of, you know, which products they use. But a lot of the companies that come to us want to build products on Azure. So we have a lot of them using our cloud. and they’re building all kinds of different apps.
8:01 We’re helping them for a three-month period, not taking any equity, not making an investment, but we’re providing really cheap space. It’s €49 per desk per month, so that’s about half the price of another desk somewhere else, and they’re getting all types of free support and mentoring. So we have some terrific entrepreneurs that have founded, you know, big companies like Aloina, 24hour, I think is the French pronunciation, van, and you know we have people coming and investing time at least every single week, helping a company of their choice.
8:32 And then we have tons of technical you know mentors that are coming as well to help these people build products, whether they be from Microsoft or from our additional partners, which are we Telecom and Intel as well. Okay. Do you apply to get into that program? Yeah, yeah. We had over a 100 applications, and we’re picking something like 10 teams.
8:52 Okay. So pretty intense. Yeah, and you said Microsoft, so they do this. I know they do it in London, Paris. How many other sort of cities, spaces like this?
9:01 So London, actually, I think they just announced that they’re opening. Germany will be coming soon. We already have Israel, the US, uh, China, and India, and Brazil, and Russia should also be on the map. Okay, so, well, yeah, should be 10 countries by the end of the year. Very cool.
9:15 You know, we ask everyone in here, whether they’ be VC people or startups, just basic questions about their business, and what we usually ask is, like, what have you done, what are you going to do, and why are you going to win? That’s what we usually ask. And I think it still applies for you. I mean, every, a lot of people are starting up incubators, you know, whether it’s, uh, Accenture trying to do fintech innovation lab. We’ve had Telefonica as WEA in here.
9:37 You guys are doing stuff. What makes it different as far as your efforts? Microsoft efforts? I think, actually, it’s really funny, your question. It’s about, it’s like, what’s your win?
9:47 Um, I think we’re actually part of the ecosystem, and a win obviously a Microsoft objective in this space is getting people using our tech, and the companies that are coming to us are interested in using our tech, and we’re making it easier for them to get on our tech. So it’s a win. That’s a win for Microsoft, but in the big scheme of things, actually, we’re hoping to kind of play a really early-stage role for those companies. There’s not a lot of early-stage support in France.
10:12 There’s not a ton of super early-stage seed funding or even business angels, a lot less active than in other countries, so we are making essentially that period more whatever you want to call it, easier for startups to build that prototype and then go onto a bigger accelerator and get the better support. So we’re hoping to also play that role in the ecosystem as well. I don’t think we’re necessarily competing with anyone, and since we’re not taking equity, we’re not looking to, uh, at this stage, not taking equity, we’re not looking for, you know, a huge success or anything like that, uh, necessarily, but obviously we want them to be successful.
10:46 Do you have other people doing the same thing in Paris? Is WEA in Paris? I don’t, WEA is not in Paris yet. No, interesting. Okay.
10:51 I mean, are there other big corporates, or people in the technology space? All the corporates are looking to open these types of spaces. Um, I’m aware of a couple that I don’t think they’ve gone public yet, but uh, we’re working with, for example, Intel and Bug for our space. Um, there’s Luking, which is actually a public space that has done really, really well, and there’s also some new accelerators that are kind of, uh, built around the Y Combinator model, so not actually having space, um, but having, you know, mentorship for equity, or whatever you want to call it, and I think the one that got the most attention is called The Family, and they just got funded by, uh, by Index.
11:30 So there’s, uh, there’s some pretty cool things happening there in terms of accelerators. Are the entrepreneurs, do you find, mostly from France or sort of the Paris region, or are they quite, cuz in London, it’s… there’s everyone from everywhere, right? I think when you compare, like, Paris to Berlin or to London, it is still a lot more French, and even though you don’t, I mean, everybody can speak English, and everybody will speak English. You have a couple odd people that come from different countries or students that want to stay around and build companies, but I think huge majority, which is not something you see here, come from France.
12:04 Now, you went to school in Los Angeles. You come to London a lot. What’s, what would be different if I got on the Eurostar and went into Paris and saw the technology scene? Like, what feels different in Paris than, say, like London or even Berlin? Like, you were saying, like, how would you describe it to someone?
12:21 It’s, you know, I can’t really say that there’s a huge difference. I feel like I should come up with something. The three beards, maybe, the three beards. More, they’re more pointy. Someone told me like in Berlin they still work like a regimented, like German work hour week, and, you know, they’re more prone to certain things, and I just, I don’t know Berlin as well, but I actually have felt that entrepreneurs everywhere, there’s like an entrepreneur culture that everybody has, everywhere.
12:46 One thing I like about Europe in general, which, um, I hope my American friends that have companies won’t hate me for this, but I feel like the motivations are very different. Like, people here, they know it’s harder, especially in France. I think there are potentially more administrative hurdles to get over, and, you know, funding is more limited, and what have you. So it’s a different people who choose to stick around are aware of that. Therefore, they’re not motivated by, I’m going to get rich tomorrow and just sell out and go chill out for a while, or the rock star factor.
13:14 Right, yeah. And so I’ve come across that a lot in the US and less in Europe, but it could also just be a cultural thing. They’re not going to come here and be like, yeah, I’m going to make millions and, you know, go sit on a boat for the rest of my life. Yeah, that’s definitely something we’re coming in contact with. You know, maybe it’s part of the reason we’re here, you know, ’cause there’s so much hype around this.
13:31 We figured we should talk about it too, but yeah, I mean, we talked to so many people here, even the VC guys are like, it’s a 7 to 10 year horizon. You know, it’s not like you get quick flips, and you’ve got lots of failures. Sure. Like Andrew was on last week. Four years, and you know, they’re launching a brand new kind of part of their business.
13:49 So it just doesn’t happen overnight. Yeah, it’s hard. You know, we always ask some hard questions. It’s Silicon Real. We try to get real.
13:54 So I’m going to hit you with one. You, you addressed it a little bit before, but you know, obviously France, you know, you think you don’t think entrepreneurism, you know, you think, you know, old-school socialism. We’re not promoting this startup mentality. Courtney Boyd Myers said that when she was in New York, kind of like in ’07, ’08, she’d say, I was in tech startup, and people like, what the hell are you talking about? Now it’s changed.
14:16 I mean, when you tell people what you do in Paris, do they not know what the hell you’re talking about? And also my question is, will France ever get there, you know? I love the judgment there. Is that judgment leading question? All right, so, um, I’m getting good at this journalism stuff, so I, I can actually, I can bring in maybe, like, a bit of a funny story.
14:35 I went to a school in France, uh, and I was studying economic development, so I was completely off the startup map by going to the school and studying this, and at the time I fell into TechCrunch kind of by mistake or by accident, and, um, people in my class, like, could not understand for the life of me, like, what I was writing about, why I was spending my time doing this, and like, what kind of difference it would make in the world. And so people were just like, no, you’ve got to go work for, like, the World Bank, or, like, some, you know, the European Central Bank, or those are credible jobs. Writing for TechCrunch, that’s like a joke, and you tell people like, I’m a blogger, and they just wouldn’t take you seriously.
15:13 And I feel like in the last few years, the tech community has grown substantially, like, the word startup, people know it. People understand now what it means. Is there a French word? Is there a French equivalent? F*** up.
15:24 Oh really? I thought the French hated the, the anglicized terms. No, not that, but that’s the funny thing about the startup community, is that they definitely idealize the US, and so they will definitely use all the words that they can. Um, but now people get it, and actually the French government, I think, especially with some of their initiatives, like the one that we talked about earlier, uh, equivalent to Tech City, it’s, it’s a thing on people’s radar, and the one thing that I’ve been a little bit disappointed in, and I hope we get those equivalents, um, things like Dragon’s Den and what have you.
15:56 It just helps the general public understand what entrepreneurship is about, a little bit, in kind of like a comedy, whatever type way, and in France, those types of things, it’s business is kind of looked down upon a little bit more, so it will maybe take a little bit longer to get that. Is making money looked down upon? Okay, as well? So, so that gets to my other question then. Is it, is it always going to be kept from succeeding in that way?
16:19 You know, I think it’s changing, and I have to say I give a lot of credit to, um, Xavier Niel. He’s one of the, he is the founder of a company called, um, Telecom company, and he, I think, is the 10th richest man in France, that is putting his money into essentially rebuilding the ecosystem. He has, I mean, he’s the money behind Kima Ventures, which is doing over a 100 angel investments per year. Um, he is, he’s just built a new school called, uh, École 42, which they’re going to essentially educate, I think, it’s a thousand students over three years to make them into developers, and he’s releasing a huge startup space that he’s announced, called 1,000 Startups, I guess, 1,000, or 100, is his thing, um, where he’s going to house essentially the entire ecosystem in Paris.
17:07 So I think looking at what people do with their money when they get there, and having examples like him will hopefully be encouraging to people. Nobody at this stage is going, oh, he’s got too much money and he’s just sitting on it and doing nothing. They’re going, no, look, he’s building. You know, he’s going to build France with it. Well, it’s encouraging.
17:23 I mean, it’s a big country. It’s, you know, G7. It has to have this technology progress. It’s got to come from somewhere. Yeah.
17:29 Um, go ahead, Col. Hit with the question. Um, yeah, do you find the tech startups in France are too France-focused? And if I’m completely wrong, that I think that’s a bias that maybe I have, um, that maybe they focus on the French language and doing it for the France market, and then that makes it difficult, potentially, to scale. Do you, is that just, you know, I think it’s a tricky question, because in a sense the French market is big enough that you have to pay attention to it, and it is still very French speaking.
17:59 If you’re going to launch your project, I don’t know what your product is, but a lot of products, if you put them in English from the get-go, you’re not addressing a lot of the population. I feel like that’s almost a handicap. So they have to, in a certain sense, look inwards. But I do also feel like a lot of companies, when they start, they’re not looking at whether their problem, the problem that they’re solving, is actually that international, or what it looks like in other countries.
18:26 So I do think in some respects they can be too inward focused, and a lot of the time I think also, um, I see a lot of people building copycats and things like that, which I’m actually not against. I’ve, I’ve been kind of a supporter of it, because I don’t think a copycat is essentially not innovating anything. I think you do really have to adapt a lot to the local market, but I think, um, yeah, I think that they do. As a result, they look inwards a lot more than looking outwards.
18:55 One thing I was just curious, um, why did you go to Paris? I mean, did you were just looking for, like, a huge adventurous project? Because you know you went to school in LA. I don’t think you have French like background, because I just think people assume that she, like, was frenched, and then LA, and came back. But what, why was it a challenge, or why go there?
19:14 It was a huge challenge. Um, you know, my parents come from Iran, and Iran before the revolution was very uh, Francophile. So I think I grew up with kind of like, France is a nice place, and, you know, interesting, and I was, I was always interested in it, but, um, one thing, I kind of fell into tech, actually, as a result of my interest in France. So I studied French literature, and then I worked for a French government agency in the valley, and that’s how I was like, actually, I love entrepreneurs.
19:40 Went to the school in France, um, that I was telling you about earlier, and I realized that building the ecosystem in France, and France was, it kind of happened by accident. Happened to be France that I picked as the country, but building the ecosystem is something that I have become really passionate about, so France. I have to say I can’t really explain it much more than that. How did you fall into TechCrunch? TechCrunch.
20:04 Um, that was my silly blog that I thought nobody would ever read. Tech Baguette, which, uh, I essentially just started writing because, when I got to France, I was like, actually there’s a lot of really cool stuff happening here, and the French people all bash it, so I’m going to write about it, and I’m going to write about it in English, and hopefully somebody somewhere will care. And you wrote in French about it? No, no, of course not. Could you, I ended up having to do TechCrunch in French, so I can write it in French, but I thought that defeats the purpose, like, the point was to write the cool stuff happening in English.
20:34 And, uh, Mike Butcher contacted me a few weeks later, and was like, you should be doing this for us. So wow, and then you made the big leap from journalism to what, what is your role now? What do you do? You, uh, it’s essentially marketing. Okay, it’s marketing to startups.
20:49 That’s a big jump, though, right? It is a big jump. I didn’t see myself being a journalist forever. I think you can always write on the side of whatever you’re doing, and I loved TechCrunch, but I actually thought, I mean, I I flipped to the other side. I left journalism prior to Microsoft.
21:04 I worked for two startups in London, and I got to a point where, um, within working for both of those startups, I loved the experience, but I actually missed having an ecosystem role. That’s what I really liked about TechCrunch, was meeting consistently creative and passionate people, and I think I’ve kind of found that again at my current role. Okay. You know, there’s that famous book, The Tale of Two Cities, you know, and it’s London and Paris, and we have a unique chance here, since you’re in Paris, but what is the relationship between the two tech communities?
21:34 I mean, you’re here today. Am I asking you all the hard questions? But like, I mean, you’re here today. You took the UR over for the day. You know what does this, Paris look up to London?
21:44 Does it, does it, does it look down? Do they communicate with each other? How does it work? I just don’t know. I see it.
21:50 It’s really funny. It’s different, from different ends. So I feel London is somewhat more agnostic to Paris. It’s a nice place, and we go there on holiday, and our, our, you know, economy is better, and there’s kind of like a, not a, like a snobby attitude, but there’s a little bit of a, this Paris and they’re doing their own thing and we’re not, we’re doing our thing. Okay.
22:15 Paris, I think, wants to emulate London, and this is something I, I have to say I don’t really support, um, especially initiatives like Tech City and things like that. I think London has set a terrific example, but I think Paris needs to address its own concerns and not look at, oh, what are the concerns London’s addressing, how did they do it, we should do the same thing here. And I think I have to give Berlin credit for doing some really amazing things there.
22:40 I discovered recently the project that they’re doing with the factory, where essentially they’re bringing the entire Berlin, like, startup community and putting it in one location, with this terrific, with this terrific center that they’re building, and I thought that’s really interesting, because what they’ve decided to do is they looked at Berlin, they said it’s too big, people don’t understand where everything is, and they can’t make sense of it. We’re going to put it in one location and make it make sense for people, and that’s very different to, you know, kind of how London approached Tech City. And Paris is just looking at Tech City and going, we need to do that too, which I think, in its own way, is a little bit silly.
23:17 So Paris isn’t creating kind of one central area. It is creating one central area, but it’s, it’s kind of doing it because it saw London do it. It saw somewhere, it saw Silicon Valley, everything’s kind of in the same location, oh, we should do that too, instead of looking at Paris and being like, well, I mean, maybe it would have been a better idea, because funding is so limited, to have, you know, addressed that first. I have no idea, but they essentially looked outwards and said, okay, we need to do that too.
23:40 Right, this work there, let’s do it. Yeah. What, what gives you inspiration as far as the companies you see in Paris? I mean, if you have to pick one or two sectors, what do you see where you’re like, wow, I think we have a winner here, or we have a winner here? I think Paris has always been really strong in e-commerce.
23:55 Um, part of that comes from investors being less risk averse, and they like to invest in something that they see already generating revenue from the get-go. Um, but the other thing I have to say, which I’ve been recently really surprised by, is, um, I think it maybe comes from, like, French, um, like style and sophistication, in a sense, but like, the gadgets that I’m seeing, and I think there was one project that was recently done on Kickstarter that I kind of fell in love with, called iSketchnote, and it’s just like this really gorgeous, like, you can essentially write on paper, and you put on top of this, uh, on top of this device, and it goes directly to your computer, and they just, you know, they blew away their targets on Kickstarter, and I just thought, you know, building cool and beautiful devices like that, I think that is something that France could definitely be very strong in: design and fashion.
24:43 Right? Yeah, yeah, fashion as well, huge. And what about luxury? Like, ’cause I think of Paris, I’m throwing all the stereotypes. Actually, those are those are ones that do very well.
24:53 The ones that I, I hate it, uh, and they’ve done very well as well, which goes into cliches. Is dating as well? So when I was at TechCrunch I would get pitched a dating company like every single day, and there’s still a lot. I think part of it comes from, um, Meetic, which was you know, the match.com equivalent. I think Match actually ended up buying them.
25:12 But, um, the luxury one, one of the biggest companies there, V PR had, um, had an offer from, I think, Amazon, a few years ago, for two billion. Wow, which it turned down. But, uh, huge decision. Those are, yeah, and they’re still going very strong. Are there any other classic, like French industries.
25:29 Do you think they could, like, grab tech and, like, really win? Whether it comes to more stereotypes, like wine and cheese? I, me, wine is doing well. Food is doing well. Yeah, they’re all doing it as well.
25:41 There’s, like, for example, those boxes that you get in the mail, the subscription-based. I’ve seen a lot doing it with wine. I’ve seen people building machines that essentially let you do tasting at home, and things like that. So you have all kinds of interesting startups in kind of the cliche spaces. I think food was one that I was hoping would do better.
26:02 I think there was a platform a while ago called Reano, and they were essentially bringing local produce. It was a local produce platform where you could buy from, like, a little cheese, you know, a guy making cheese in some farm somewhere, and he would put it online, you could buy it, and it didn’t do very well. And I think it was for logistical purposes, because these guys just don’t have the, you know, infrastructure and the habits of, you know, having to go to the post office and ship, and what have you afterwards.
26:28 What about the luxury BL brands? I mean, I know, you know, LVMH was early on with, like, their e-luxury website. This is like late ’90s or early, like, 2000s, and a lot of the brands were very hesitant to get online. They were really trying to preserve their brands, preserve their shops in Paris, and make it still like an exclusive experience. Are you seeing more of those open up, or being more open-minded?
26:50 Yeah. I have to say I haven’t followed too much what these big brands have been doing, but I know that a lot of the startups that have been addressing, for example, being able to track a customer within, inside the store, or being able to help them identify a specific product inside the store using different technologies, um, I have seen startups, or startups actually being able to go into some of these stores, and they will use their products. So I think it has taken a little bit longer.
27:16 I think some of these brands were very hesitant, and it’s normal, because luxury and tech, there is a bit of a distance, but I think there, it’s starting to change. Now, luxury tech. Do you think of the Burberry CEO going to Apple? I think that’s huge. I think that’s huge.
27:33 Yeah, that’s a really smart move. Yeah, it’s interesting. What was the position? It was like a newly created position, right? Not sure the exact position she went to.
27:41 Okay, yeah, but they obviously, like, what Burberry is doing with their stores and their brand, so many of these luxury brands now are creating these almost concept stores, where it’s a place to engage with your customer and educate your customer. And sure, sales is a part of it, but there’s so many other avenues to purchase from. So it’s really, yeah, in London you see that, the classic flagship store on whole Bond Street. Bond Street, that I can’t believe they make any profits, but it doesn’t matter.
28:06 It’s just, like, a marketing vehicle. Um, let’s talk Microsoft. What’s it like to work for that company? You know, I’m not putting you on the spot. No, but I mean, like, is it, such a big company, it’s an American company, you’re in France, you know, like, they’re, it must, what’s it like?
28:20 I have to say that’s what I like about it. I like, um, that it’s really international. My team, you would have no idea. I got there, I met the first Belarussian person. I don’t even know if you can call it, a Belarussian, Bellarus person.
28:33 Um, she’s amazing. I have, I used to have a Turkish boss. Um, you know, I just think that it’s so international, and I don’t know if you see that inside of every single company that you walk into in France. Um, you don’t, no, that was my way of saying it. I said I, trouble.
28:50 And, um, but what I actually like about Microsoft and I actually think people don’t have this image about it, and Bindy and I actually discussed this earlier this morning at an event we were at, but it, there is a kind of entrepreneurial culture inside the company, where, for example, with this project that we built, this accelerator in Paris, it was very clear. It was like, we want to build this, go do it, and you just build it, and they kind of give you the freedom to figure out what you’re doing. And I I think that’s also something that’s very rare within a big company.
29:21 So far my experience, I mean, it is a big company, and there have been things that I’m, you know, I’m, I’m learning and I’m adapting to, um, just the sheer size of the place, as one, but I do love the, the entrepreneurial kind of spirit and the flexibility that they give to their employees. And that’s ’cause it’s an American company, you think? Or ’cause it was originally a startup? I’ve heard it’s also our division. I think our division is also a very kind of startup-like division.
29:46 Um, but I do think it also has kept some of its American roots, and I, I like also, we do a lot of our communications within the company in English, and I think in France that’s huge. Um, you don’t see that everywhere, so I like that a lot. And that’s Bindy Kia from Silicon Valley Bank, which was episode five or six or something like that. Earlier, definitely check that out. Um, Roxanne said she’s the Bindy of Paris.
30:09 She said that’s helping people understand my role. The former, those are strong words. I hope I can fill her shoes. And, uh, she’s a legend, and, like, big shoes, and she can jump. Yeah, she, she jumps.
30:21 I don’t know if I can jump beside his… Cool. What? Um, go ahead. Yeah, just a little bit of a tough question, I guess.
30:28 If, if sort of some VC said, listen, I want you to start a business for me, here’s a couple million pounds. Um, where do you choose to start it? So you’ve been, you’re from the Valley or San Francisco, you work in Paris, but you’ve also spent a lot of time in London. You’re putting me on the spot, but you’re not giving me all the details. So I really have to know, what is the industry?
30:51 It’s so, it’s that specific. So it’s not like, so if it’s fashion, maybe you want to be in Paris. If it’s finance, maybe you want to be in London. Um, it’s that specific? You think it’s that specific?
31:00 I think a lot of it also comes down to who do I need to hire from day one? Um, you know, how are we going to go international, you know, ’cause a lot of French companies, it’s funny, but they actually skip London and they just go straight to the US, and if that’s more advantageous, uh, than coming to London and then having to go, well, where do I go next? I mean, I, I really, I can’t, I can’t pick, and I do think people have these generalizations that they love to stick with, London is easier, or whatever.
31:26 Um, I really don’t believe that. Yeah, that’s fair enough. Okay, you know, I’m new to this space, it’s episode 17. You know, I didn’t even know who Michael Acton Smith was when we first started. I still don’t know who he is.
31:37 But, um, where is Microsoft in London? I don’t know. We have an office in Victoria. Okay, huge, huge, very lovely place, and then we also have an office in Reading, which is a… Okay, but where are they in the startup community?
31:49 They don’t have an equivalent of what you’re doing in Paris? We do, we do. We’ve actually just announced, um, it’s going to change shape, I think, beginning of 2014, but they’re currently doing what we’re doing out of another space. I think it’s Central Co-working that they picked in London. Um, we actually used to have a terrific space, and I’m, I’m kind of sad that they shut it down.
32:09 Um, but it was in order to be able to concentrate on the Ventures accelerator called Modern Joo, and it was near, uh, the Google space, near Google Campus, but it was more dedicated to kind of Arts and Sciences, and it was gorgeous, and I think people just didn’t know about it in the startup community, but we had a really cool space for about a year, and so now we’re opening an accelerator space, and um, it will probably go into its own location beginning of 2014. Okay, so they want to be here. They need to be here.
32:38 They are here. Are, okay, good. I just got noticed. Um, uh, I wanted to get your opinion. We ask this for people that come in here, and you’re in a unique place to, to, to give us an answer.
32:48 What’s the biggest mistake that you see startups making in general, and then also in France, biggest mistakes I see startups making? Well, I, I host a conference on failure, so I, I should know this, but yeah, expert in failure. You have failure questions, ask me. No, um, I think a lot, that I’ve, I mean, there’s a lot of cliche, like platform dependency, or you know, um, expanding the team too quickly, things like that. I think biggest problems that I’ve heard of, or consistent problems, actually, is co-founder issues, where people are not clear on who’s doing what, or there’s issues with equity, or there’s issues with ego, or, you know, just little things like that.
33:27 So I’ve heard a lot of people, um, you know, just have falling out, and it’s funny, because those are the ones that we can’t really address at FailCon, because they’re very personal stories, but um, that’s, FailCon, that’s what it’s called. That’s what it’s called. It’s actually from the Valley, so we brought it out from San Francisco. Cool, wow. We’ll come to the UK soon.
33:44 Yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea. Yeah, but otherwise I think uh, I think hiring, and probably also people think raising a lot of money is like the end-all. Once you have a lot of money, you’re good to go. But everybody says, actually, I raised too much money too soon, or I didn’t use it wisely, or it made me careless with this and that. So I think, um, finance is actually another one probably to pay attention to.
34:07 Was it Hussein Kanji that said, like, show me you know how to hire? You see something like that. It’s great if you have a product, but show me that you can hire. Yeah, that’s what he said, because if you can attract the two or three guys, especially if you can get them away from other companies, that’s what they want to invest in, and hire people that are better than you. Yeah, and they’ll stick around.
34:25 Yeah, building a good team. How is the human resources in France? You get, is there, you know, everyone here is looking for a CTO. Yeah, everyone in France is looking. Everyone everywhere is looking for a CTO, aren’t there?
34:37 I think it’s cheaper in France. Um, there are actually pockets of really good technical talent. France has some really amazing engineering schools. Um, I think actually we were talking about this this morning as well, is that you have these communities of technical people, and for some reason they just don’t seem to connect with the business people. So trying to figure out how to make that happen and facilitate that is a question I think every ecosystem needs to ask itself.
35:02 Um, but otherwise I think I think actually I haven’t noticed anything necessarily missing from France’s ecosystem. And is immigration? What’s immigration like in France? Immigration, favorite topic in every country I’ve lived in. Um, is that because it’s been tough for you to immigrate?
35:17 It’s been tough for me. Yeah, okay. Why? What’s your citizenship? My citizenship is US.
35:21 So getting over here was hard. Here was actually easy. I got the post-work study, whatever it was called, visa. Um, which doesn’t exist anymore, now, in the UK. Um, no, actually, there is an equivalent of the entrepreneur visa in France, which is poorly named, the comp, which I think nobody would ever know that that is a… entrepreneur, not from France.
35:44 And it’s actually, I know a few people that have it. So the funny thing with the entrepreneur visa, maybe you guys know people that have it in the UK? I haven’t met somebody that’s got it, even though everyone says it’s amazing. You have it? No.
35:55 I know what, uh, Jennifer Cy who runs Inch? Okay, I don’t know. She got the entrepreneurship visa, I think? Okay, yeah, but that’s something that they’re looking to do, and whenever the French government is looking to do something, it takes a little bit of time. So hopefully they’ll roll that out within a reasonable amount of time.
36:11 But um, at the moment there’s something that exists. It just, people don’t know about it, and people don’t know how to go get it. And the one that I liked in London was also the entrepreneur looking for investment visa. Um, I don’t know if that one still exists, the six months that you could come to the UK and seek investment and then decide if you want to stay or not. But from what I’ve you know, followed from the visas in the UK, it doesn’t look like it’s that much better than the French situation.
36:36 Yeah, I’m on an ancestral visa. Okay, so my grandfather was born here. Okay, but it’s only five years, and then I’ve got to figure out… yeah, I was on a work visa, and then I got citizenship. Otherwise it would have been tough. Yeah, I know.
36:49 Yeah. Um, what kind of immigrants would you want in Paris? What, what are you trying to get? The Yanks? Are you trying to get people from India, or what?
36:56 Who can’t, all of them? I think actually, and, um, some investors in France have confirmed this for me, French companies would be more attractive, uh, for American acquisitions if they had more Americans on their team. So bringing over, and I think France already has the disadvantage of being a French-speaking country, so you are more likely to get Americans coming to London. Um, so if they could make the visas a lot easier. I mean, France is an attractive place to live, so it’s not like people don’t want to live there.
37:21 It’s just, do people want to live and work there? So that’s something I think that France needs to think about. But I would, I would definitely say increasing English-speaking population would be huge, and maybe also increasing, you know, you want to have Indians and Chinese people that can do all kinds of other things, and maybe take companies even more international would be hugely beneficial as well. Does your pro-English stance get you in a lot of trouble?
37:44 Pro-English stance, meaning in, in France? Oh, language-wise? Yeah. Not anymore. I can get away with it, ’cause I’m American and I speak decent French, so people don’t mind.
37:53 I made the effort to learn their language, so they don’t, they don’t hate me for it. Um, I have gotten tons of people at conferences that come to me and they go, we all speak French here, why are we doing this in French? And I go, hey, it’s better for you. Why we doing this in English? Yeah.
38:07 Okay, so you’re getting over that. They’re getting over it? Yeah, they’re, I’m forcing them to. I, I had a quick question. So, is, is you see Paris a lot of tech companies?
38:19 Um, we had Tommy D’s from Nigeria. So I know Paris and France has, you know, connections in Africa. Is there a lot of tech sort of taking place, sort of the technology part of building it in Paris for maybe the African market? Is that happening at all? I’ve seen very few French companies addressing the African market, which is surprising, because there’s, you’re right, there’s a huge relationship between especially North, North Africa and France.
38:45 Um, I have, there are a lot of, um, North African entrepreneurs in the French startup community, and they tend to actually have, uh, tech teams in Tunisia or Morocco, or what have you. So I think we’re going to start to see more and more of that. Um, but for the moment I haven’t seen a lot of it. Yeah, all right, I’m going to hit her with the advice question. Cool, are you ready?
39:07 I’m ready. Okay, if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Roxanne and give that young lady a bit of advice, uh, what would you tell her? Wow, 20-year-old. What was I doing then? Um, God.
39:20 I would maybe almost tell her not to have done a master’s degree. Oh really? Okay. I would tell her not to do a master’s degree. The other thing is, the master’s degree got you to France.
39:34 Master got me the visa. I wish I’d gone after the visa. I mean, that’s probably a bad way to look at it, but that’s essentially what it was. Um, you know, I think I would have actually maybe liked to start things sooner. Maybe I waited too long to actually dive into tech.
39:50 I was, you know, dancing around, what do I want to do, uh, a little bit too long. I was, I went back to Silicon Valley from Southern California, slightly after. So maybe I, I should have just, you know, gone for it. I think the other thing I tell everybody now, uh, coding is becoming really trendy. I still have no idea how to code.
40:09 Should have gotten my hands dirty back then, learned how to code. Really? Yeah. So you’re saying it’s trendy, but it’s trendy for a reason. It’s trendy for a reason.
40:16 It’s going to be the, like, new foreign language. I think everybody’s going to have to speak English and understand a minimum of code and programming in the future. There’s still time left. You’re young. I’m going to do it.
40:25 Don’t worry. We were with Catherine Parsons from this morning. You register, and, uh, I, I’ve actually participated in one of her things. It’s intro, it’s day one. Okay, I’ve got to go way farther than that.
40:35 Yeah, yeah. I, I have to do. I want to do that. Actually, yeah, we’ve heard that advice before from a few people here. Everyone.
40:40 Yeah. On that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Um, take a risk. Do it. Yeah, I think, um, for example, when I was going to even start something like blogging, everyone was like, oh, don’t blog, you know, there’s so many blogs, nobody’s ever going to read your blog.
40:58 Like, don’t do it. And don’t name it Tech Baguette. That’s ridiculous. You don’t forget it. Yeah, no, it’s, I think it’s a name.
41:05 Do you have, like, a picture of you on a bike with a baguette? I should get that done, branding. Yeah, but yeah, everyone was like, oh, don’t do that, and I asked a few people, and I think actually I should, people should listen to their gut more. So yeah, just take the risk. Just do it if it’s something you want to do and you’re passionate about it.
41:22 Just go. Okay. And finally, to the 20-year-old listening out there, male or female, that kind of want to get into the tech biz, or want to grow up and be like Roxanne someday and be one of the 30 under 30 in tech, what advice do you give them? Um, I would tell them, actually, to be present as much as they can in the tech community. Go to events, blog, uh, talk to people.
41:46 Don’t be afraid of asking questions. I don’t know how many events I used to go to where I would just sit there and listen, and actually, like, you go and talk to people. That is the best thing that you can do. Make those connections. People underestimate the value of knowing other great people, and I think, uh, you could meet your potential co-founder.
42:04 You could meet, you know, the next person who’s going to found an amazing company. You’re going to be number two. I have no idea, but you know, I just think people should go out there and get involved in whatever it is that they want to do, and that’s the advice that I would give them. Good advice. Good advice.
42:19 You, you mentioned this whole rockstar factor earlier, and you were, you were part of, like, the, the, the tech journalistic community, which gets, you know, gets a lot of garbage, you know, from people on here that say, yeah, what? I mean, we had, you know, Max Neer offer, who was saying these guys blow, you know, take these companies to new levels. They’re like, look at this exit, and everyone thinks, you know, it’s like you said, it’s cool to be a startup person, maybe in America or even here.
42:42 What do we, how do we address this issue? What do you mean, like in the TechCrunch life? No, just in general. Like you said, a lot of people seem to be doing a startup for the wrong reasons, and don’t understand that there’s hard work, and there’s failure, and it’s almost just as hard as starting up a bakery, as opposed to an online bakery. Oh, it’s everything’s going to be easy.
43:00 I don’t think it’s a problem, to be honest. I think you need that. I think you, people, whatever their motivation, having more startups, is that hurting anybody? You know, you’re going to have more failures. It’s going to happen.
43:12 Um, hopefully Max and other investors can recognize who they should be investing in, but I think they’re doing that. So, um, I actually think even if you have the entrepreneurs doing it for the wrong reasons, you need them, and you have them everywhere. You’re going to have them in the Valley. You’re going to have them in Israel. You’re going to have them in Paris.
43:30 So I don’t think you need to cut out the crap necessarily all the time. All right, fair enough. You know, just, just finally, you talked about failure, and it’s something that’s been talked about here in England, and England has, like, a tendency, if you look at the media and stuff, to, like, drag people down and be like, oh, they failed, now they’re, they’re rubbish. And some of the entrepreneurs that have sat here have said they really like the American culture, where it’s more of a badge of honor.
43:53 What is failure like in France? Oh my God. So take England and, like, just make it as bad as you can. W, I make, I make the comparison. I actually use my school experience, ’cause I went to school in the US, in France, and in the UK, and in France you’ll write something wrong on a piece of paper, and you’ll get comments that, just like, when you see it, it’s in red, and it’s like circled, and there’s, like, a no with, like, three exclamation points, and you just look at it and you’re like, what did the poor guy think when he saw my answer?
44:22 In the US we’d be like, oh, good job, like, nice try, or, okay, or, no, it’s not correct, and they write the correct answer for you so you can know it. Um, and in the UK, I got, I definitely have written a paper where I did minimal amount of work, and I got a comment back that was very kind of sarcastic, and like, oh Roxanne, I noticed you didn’t do very much work for this paper, and I think that shows you very well, kind of the three attitudes to, um, to, to failure, essentially. And in France, it’s a huge stigma.
44:49 You cannot go out there and openly talk about your failures. And we did the FailCon conference. We did it first in French, and we had people come on stage, and they were all, you know, on board, with yes, we need to talk about failure, this is a great initiative, and then you go, well, can you share a personal failure story? And they just freeze, and they’re like, well, I’ve never failed. I was, you know, top of my class, and I’m an investor, and I’ve never had a failed investment.
45:16 You’re just like, who are you? Like, of course you’ve got a failure. And we redid the conference a couple months later, um, in English, with foreigners. I brought people over from Canada, from Portugal, and we talked about failure stories, and that’s when you really got people being like, yeah, I shouldn’t have, uh, put all my, you know, eggs in one basket when I launched my product only on Facebook, or I shouldn’t have done this. And that was, that was something new.
45:40 But there’s still a huge stigma around failure in France. What’s your failure story? My failure, I probably have loads, actually. Um, I actually think, um, some of my failure stories have been, I’ve got a lot of different initiatives, so I haven’t founded a startup, but I do Girls in Tech. I’ve done Girls in Tech in France and in the UK.
46:01 Um, I’ve done a lot of different blogging things where the team organization has, for the most part, worked, but I think probably the biggest failure stories that I can think of are, um, team-related, co-founder-related. And I started a blog, uh, with someone in France, Tech Baguette, which was, both of us coming on board. Liam Booger is now, uh, running it, and we both came on board kind of, I felt, with an equal understanding of what was going to be involved, and we, we didn’t have the same vision, and we should have sat down and hashed that out, and as a result, um, we’re no longer working together, and I, I feel badly about that, because it was a project that I think I, I believed in.
46:39 So that’s, that’s my failure story. I think it’s very, very, very team-related so far, but maybe I’ll make a terrible investment in the future. God knows. It’s a good value. How do you prevent that whole co-founder you were talking about earlier?
46:49 Like, some of the biggest mistakes you make, how do you, how do you vet a co-founder? I mean, should you put something on paper, like you said, like a statement? I think you know, I’ve seen, I’ve heard some different stories from different startups. Um, I have a good friend, uh, Cedric Georgie in France, that he started a company called Cooking with two guys that he didn’t know prior, and he said that they actually did a startup weekend for a totally different project, just to see if they could work together and build something in a weekend, and how they manage under pressure.
47:17 And he said that experience kind of told us a lot about each other, but they were all on board that we need to test each other before making that step. I think, um, I’ve had other, you know, there’s other examples of, for example, equity. Um, another friend of mine, who’s the founder of all my apps, said that when he got together with his co-founder, um, he gave the co-founder more equity, because it was not his idea, but he gave the co-founder more equity than what he asked for, knowing that if he came on board already satisfied and already thinking that, you know, he was getting more than he was already thinking he was worth, he was going to work harder.
47:48 So I think people that get people, and they can put themselves through different tests like that, um, that can make a huge difference. And I think one of the things that, um, I potentially failed to do in my situation was really sit down and hash out what is our vision, what are our different roles, kind of what’s expected from each person, and I think, uh, those are things that can make or break a company or a project. That’s good advice. We haven’t heard that one before.
48:14 Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the co-founder stuff is, and you even see it, you know, the Twitter co-founders had in early days, and, and a lot of people think, or saying, BlackBerry, a lot of its failures is, is co-founder issues too. So yeah, it’s, it’s huge for me. I’ve done a few companies.
48:30 It’s always like, just be as open and honest as possible. Never sort of keep things, and if you have a problem, just hash it out. It’s the only way to get through it. Yeah. Last question.
48:40 Um, five years from now, 10 years from now, do you think you’ll be operating in a, in a startup? I mean, we ask people a lot that are involved in incubators if they want to get in and get their hands totally. Really, totally. I tell everybody, it’s been, I’m so embarrassed now to say this. Like, 5 years, everyone goes, what do you want to do in the future?
48:56 I’m like, I want to start a startup. Um, I don’t have yet that idea, and people tell me it’s not the idea that counts, but you need to wake up every morning wanting to care about that product, or whatever it is that you’re, you know, problem you’re solving, and I haven’t found that yet. If it’s not the entrepreneurial community, so hopefully, I mean, I do, I do really love also working in a really small team, and I like building stuff. Um, so definitely I’ll be part of a startup somehow.
49:24 So you’re actively looking for ideas and co-founders? Just, I’m always in the back of my head looking for, you know, things happening. Yeah, amazing. People, great people, approach you all the time. Yeah.
49:36 So you’re just kind of waiting for that right one? Yeah, definitely. Would you like to give your notice to Microsoft on… definitely no. Guys, keep me. No, I, I love what I’m doing at Microsoft.
49:49 I think, um, I’m really fortunate in some of the other projects that I work with, for example, the Girls in Tech team that we have in Paris. Um, the co-founder, Muna, she’s a really good friend, and if she ever, she used to have a startup in Morocco, if she ever decided she wants to start something again, I can see myself working with her. Um, I’m just surrounded by people that I’m really inspired by. So that’s maybe a benefit and a drawback. Again, it’s always about the people.
50:13 It always comes back. It’s like a regular thing. Um, what did I miss? Colin, anything? No, I think it’s, it’s good.
50:19 There’s an action-packed episode. Yeah, that was good. A lot of hard questions. A lot of good answers. Um, news: this is episode 17.
50:26 If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can see all of our beautiful faces on the YouTube channel, Silicon Real. Check it out. Yeah, we’re on Twitter at Silicon Real. Always looking for guest suggestions, ideas, people that want to help out with bizdev. Yeah, still looking for some help.
50:39 So if any, you know, some young guys in the ecosystem or girls are interested in getting involved with what we’re doing? Uh, again, every, as our catalog grows, it’s more and more work to try to keep the promotion up and get new guests and, and all that sort of stuff. So reach out, give us a shout. Roxanne, how do people get a hold of you? Twitter is my favorite, really.
51:00 Yeah, okay, or email. My email is very public. So we got you on Twitter. Someone suggested you on Twitter, and okay, that happened. And what is it?
51:08 Roxanne Varza, Roxanne Varza, one word. And my email, arara at either microsoft.com or gmail.com. Okay, fantastic. Thanks so much for being here. That was a lot of fun.
51:17 Best of luck in Paris. I can’t wait to see the Microsoft, you know, incubator here in this neighborhood maybe. Oh yeah, it is. Uh, yeah, it is actually. Yeah, and it will hopefully stay there.
51:27 Okay, cool, awesome. Um, until then it’s about the people. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you. All right, take care.
51:33 What if, what if Nike calls you up and we’re like, we want it, we want Tribe Sports. Here’s 100 million, here’s the check. What do you guys do? ‘Cause there has to be a price where you know, for your investors, you exit, right? I, who knows?
51:48 Who knows? I think it is a hard, it is a hard question. Who turning down 100 million? I don’t know too many people, but, but it would be tricky. It would be tricky.
51:58 You’d have to really, you know, it’d have to be the right fit. You’d have to sell it
