A View from Abroad

Design Your Own Car & Drive It Home: Local Motors

Huge shout out to @duffalex for this one, a design your own car company, Local Motors, based in Massachusetts.  Follow the founder @johnbrogers on Twitter.  

  

Mike Butcher Day/The Old Married Couple

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch joined us on the 26th and 27th of November at Sofinnova to meet some French start ups -- we called it his "French Start-Up Speed Dating Day."  The list included:

• Sprice

• JeChange

• MotionSponsor

• Square Clock

• Linked Influence

• Believe

• Deezer

• Owlient

• Silentale

• Liligo

• BlueKiwi

• NavX

• Awdio

• NotreFamille.com

• TellMeWhere

Later than night, we had cocktail at my house, but those pictures are NSWF, as usual.

Apply To Seedcamp Now!

The key event for all European early-stage start ups:

Seedcamp Application

Deadline is August 10th, see you in London.

Ballou Pont Party - June

Last week was the first Ballou PR Pont Party of the summer and luck was on our side and it turned out to be a beautiful day. Much fun and wine were had by all. Watch this space for the date of our July Pont Party.

Jérôme Bouteiller mentioned the party on his website:

Jérôme Bouteiller post on the June Ballou PR Pont Party

Thanks to our dear friend Adrian Johnson who put together a slideshow of images from the Pont Party:

See You At Le Web 3

Most of the BPR team will be at Le Web 3 and the events surrounding it Monday-Wednesday, so we hope to see you all there. Many of our clients will be there, and both coComment and goojet are sponsors.

Even More July Pont Party Photos

I know my posts are getting a bit lame.  I have no excuse, I just haven't been having any great insights lately.  Saving them all for our clients, it seems.

Mad props and a big ghetto thanks to our buddy Leafar of u-lik for the fish-eye photos of our July Pont Party.  Warning:  they make you feel kind of queasy after a while.

September Pont Party: The Forbidden Video

Okay, not really.

Many thanks to Franck Perrier of Eyeka for the investigative reporting, asking the hard questions at what may be our last official "on the pont" Pont Party of the season.

Cyber Crime More Lucrative Than Drug Trade

In a keynote address at the InformationWeek 500 conference, McAfee CEO David DeWalt informed attendees that cyber crime is a US $105 billion dollar industry, surpassing the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide.

There have been a lot of highly-publicized incidents:  recently, Internet stock trading company TD Ameritrade Holding had one of its databases hacked by a thief who obtained personal information on some of its customers -- all of the company's 6.3 million accounts opened before July 18 of this year were exposed.  There have also been corporate data breaches at companies like Citigroup and Bank of America.

Let's look at the bright side:  this is progress, crime is evolving.  Why risk getting capped for ten bricks of heroin when you could be bilking a grandmother out of her life savings in the comfort of your own home?

Oh, and for all you naysayers out there: it's also irrefutable proof that the U.S. is winning the War on Drugs.  Definitely.

TechCrunch 40 Outed

This is simply hilarious -- read the list of the TechCrunch 40 on Blognation before the official announcement, and remember:  the banner should go up last, bozos.

I Almost Cried at Seedcamp Today

The Seedcamp winners were announced in front of all the participants today, and I swear I almost lost it when Ryan Notz of Buildersite, a web marketplace for construction services providing homeowners and tradesmen with a trusted venue for transacting business, got up there and showed such deep emotion and passion about seeing his dream come true.  He told a story about how, as a stonemason, he would drive hours to jobs to make only $12/hour and how grateful he was that he could now improve the state of things in the industry.  Here is a guy who is excited about solving the problem -- helping artisans help homeowners, trying to keep the bad apples out of the system -- and not just about making money or addressing a market inefficiency.

For more on the 6 Seedcamp winners, check out Techcrunch.