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Roxanne Varza

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41
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2015-08-10
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2015-08-10
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  1. “I hate this question because it's really hard. Excuse me between my children or something. But okay, I'll pick one that has recently done extremely, extremely well. This is not the first time I talk about them, but they're called remedies. They're an application that essentially does visual face recognition. So you point your smartphone to a photo of somebody and it can tell you who they are and they're linking it to all kinds of databases that will pull up additional information. When they came to Microsoft, it was one person, one algorithm. Today they're a company with a full team. They went through the orange fab accelerator program after Microsoft. They have gotten grants from Buick Telecom, which is a telecoms company in France. They recently signed a great contract with Orange, and they're going to a program in Las Vegas to get more exposure in the U.S. So I'm really, really proud of these guys. And I'm expecting us to see a lot more from them.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Oh, that's hard. I have so many. But actually, I would say that what I do, which tends to work well for me, it's the Dig product, news.me. And that actually brings in articles from my network. So it emails me that every day. And that's actually what I tend to turn to. So I don't have a blog, a media outlet that I read every single day. I'd say probably TechCrunch headlines. I read a lot, obviously my own tech.eu and whatnot as well. And then I still love the economist. I read that too.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “So I think you actually have tons of online resources that are available. You have tons of webinars and MOOCs and things like that. You have a lot of different programs. I think there's the 42 school that Xavier Nell has launched is a great program as well and it's free and it's for everybody of all nationalities. So I think there's some initiatives like that which are really exceptional. But otherwise I actually love to recommend the Le Vagon which is a French program actually very inexpensive and I've heard a lot of people have a really great experience with it. So I think that's a great one. Otherwise obviously I'm a fan of girls in tech intro to code classes as well.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I was not expecting that and I remember my dad was even trying to discourage me. He's like, who's going to read your blog? So I would say, yeah, just any project. And I think being at the initiative, being able to initiate something and really kind of see it from the beginning to the end will be a great experience no matter what. Something that will also allow you to be in touch with people. So if you want to organize an event and invite speakers or invite attendees, I think that will allow you to expand your network. My second thing, which we already touched upon, is obviously change countries and you don't have to live abroad, but I would say there's a lot of people that don't even attend conferences in other countries. If they want to do a startup weekend, they do it in their home country. I would say those tiny experiences, if you do them outside of your country, it actually can really, really help you. And my final one will be learn basics of code, which I should take this advice myself. I've started a little bit but haven't done enough.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So I tend to give three pieces of advice to everybody regardless of their gender, their age, whatever. So I would say the first thing is to launch a project. It doesn't have to be a startup per se. So mine was actually just launching a personal blog, TechBaguet. It was kind of supposed to be a joke, actually, in the beginning, and it ended up getting me into TechCrunch. So something like that.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think he's remarkable. He probably has no idea that of him, but I do. And then the other person in France is. I hope so. The other person in France, which I tend to quote a lot because I think he is really making a difference. And this will come as no surprise to anyone. It's Xavier. So he's the guy behind Kima Ventures, behind the 42 coding school. He has his own telecoms company. He's really just incredible.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So this changes a lot and I think I tend to orient my projects around who's inspiring me. So maybe a few years ago I would have said Michael Errington, I think today there's a couple people in the tight ecosystem in Europe that I really like because I feel like they're doing very ambitious projects. They've launched a company. They're doing investment. They're working on really changing the government landscape. So I will put two people down, one in the UK and one in France. So the one in the UK will be Brent Hoberman.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So I actually really loved it. Yeah, I think I'll say portrait of Dorian Gray, and then I think my all-time favorite book is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “You didn't think so. I cried at the end of this story. Did you? I cried at the end of the book. I thought it's really, it's an amazing exploration of beauty, of betrayal, of, you know, I thought it actually is incredibly deep. Oh dear, I think you gotta.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “This is so hard for me, but I think probably one book that I've loved that I actually didn't read too long ago is The Portrait of Dorian Gray by there.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It is very sad and when you kind of dig deeper you realize that what is presented to them as tech in school so they have some tech classes or how to type and use different computer programs and things like that that they learn but it's not presented them to them in a way that really shows how creative one can be, that really shows everything you can build. This year when they came to us and you tell them, you know, I don't know if you realize this girls, but actually all the applications you have on your phone that you love, Instagram, Snapchat, I don't know what else, this is all tech. And if you guys have great ideas for products like this, you could potentially be working in tech. And that really kind of, that gets them thinking, that gets them reacting. So I almost wonder, you know, maybe we have to completely rethink tech education in classrooms to really make a difference.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So I think a lot will actually come down to education. With Microsoft, we actually do this annual event called DigiGirls where we bring in girls that are usually about somewhere between 10 and 12 and we can show them we're trying to show them what they can do with a career in the tech space. And last year was the first year I did this event and I heard some of the most ridiculous cliches you can imagine girls who said, I don't want to work in tech because”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Very popular, so I expect that we'll strengthen all our technical kind of workshops that we do. And then we do the Lady Pitch Night, which is a pan-European women's pitch competition for females-founded startups. And last year, we got a ton of support. We had Cheryl Sandberg, Nilie Crow's, a lot of different people that actually supported. We had some of Europe's top tech conferences, the web, web summit, tech crunch disrupt that actually provided tickets for our finalists and our winners. So really kind of getting these women more visibility and credibility for their startups. And so we're seeing the same thing this year. It's going to be probably an even better event we've already had almost 300 applicants from over 25 countries. So I'm expecting that to really take off as well.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So girls in tech has come a long way in Europe. So I was involved, obviously involved still with France and the UK. And then we have a whole bunch of other countries that are popping up. So I'm expecting many more teams in Europe to pop up. Today we have Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Romania, and we're expecting a few more to come shortly. So aside from team development, I think that we probably have a couple of projects that we're going to see get even stronger. So in the last few years, we've done free coding classes or intro to coding classes, which were wildly successful in France. And that's essentially not about making someone become a programmer, but just about kind of what is code, why should you care about it? What does it look like? And that, you know, we sold out within two hours. We had 80% women because we actually let it, everything that we do is open to men as well. But it turned out to be very...”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “That would have been amazing. So your product essentially allows an eight-year-old kid to make a magazine. And so that ended up becoming the story. And once TechCrunch released, it got picked up by other publications in France. But I think sometimes it can be about looking at a really unique angle of your product. What does it really let people do differently?”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So I think it again really depends on the product and on what you can do with it, the kind of difference that it's going to make in the world. So I remember I had one company and I use this example a lot. I had one company that they essentially would allow you to make a magazine so they had a software that would let you kind of make a magazine and you could print it out. And so I didn't actually find that product to be really that revolutionary. I thought, you know, that's great, but I don't know what I'm going to write about that. And they had something like, you know, several hundred customers, but it wasn't anything really that exceptional. But the founder was a bit persistent and he kept saying, no, come on, I want to meet and I have something, you know, something in there is going to be a story. So finally I said, you know, okay, great, I'll meet you. And I remember when you started pitching me the whole story, he said, oh, well, we've had, you know, customers since this date. And one of our customers was this eight-year-old boy. And I thought, wow, if you had said that.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And so I would say probably I would pay attention to emails that were personalized or that came through a referral. So I had a lot of investors that would tell me, you know, you need to speak to this company that we work with. People that I trust that would send me good content. Otherwise, every now and then you do get a company that will send you a strong email title that will just get your attention. It's usually fundraising or it's usually something that when you see it, you just go, okay, that's a good story. But otherwise, I think smaller anecdotal stories and things like that, it's more when you have time. It's really about hitting the timing more than anything.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, I'll say I've seen literally every strategy for trying to get my attention. I even had one company in, I don't know where they were based, but they called my family in the US, which I thought was, I don't know how they got the number, but that's a bit extreme.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Some publications have a policy. I think TechCrench announced theirs earlier this year. Otherwise, yeah, just contact someone on the team or contact the editor, pitch the idea, so don't write the post first. A lot of these publications want exclusive information, so don't send them a link to a blog post that you've already published on your website. But usually if you get the idea kind of out there with a couple of bullet points of what you want to write about, they might go for it. And that's definitely what we try to do, for example, at Tech.eu.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Great content, and a lot of entrepreneurs are experts in their space and they have great expertise. So the point of a guest post is not to write about your product, but it's to really show that you have kind of a strong vision or a great understanding of a specific topic. So I had one company that published a post on why they chose a freemium model for their business. And that post actually ended up being probably the top post of all time on TechCrunch France.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So I will tell you that maybe TechCrunch is a bit of a specific kind of universe because I think it's kind of very high level and so we have so much, we had so much incoming information that we could really choose to be picky. But I would say a lot of entrepreneurs think that their product launch is news. And a lot of the time I have to sit down and tell them that's not news. Companies are launching every day. There's no reason why yours is special. You need to find that reason. You need to sell that story. And I often think selling, you know, a specific customer story, something like that, it's not always compelling, but it can be much more compelling than just saying, oh, today we launched our product. Another tip that I actually give a lot of companies when they don't have news, and this worked really, really well for one company at TechCrunch, is actually publishing a guest post because I think a lot of media outlets are still actually looking for really”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, I would say you really have to be asking people. Have that relationship and build that relationship so that if the customer sees something that is not working or they have an idea for improvement,”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “they're actually developing the right product and working with the right product in front of them. So we do a full week where they actually have to go out into the street or call up whoever they're working with and just get tons and tons of feedback. So it's not about asking one or two people. It's about getting actually tens, hundreds of people to respond and to change the product accordingly if they have to.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So, I think we're starting to see fewer companies that have issues with platform dependency. So we've had a couple of examples in France, there was a few years ago a company called Abkratis, and they were in the Apple store. They were promoting different apps and Apple essentially just cut them, and that killed their business. So I think since that one, I think we're seeing fewer companies that choose one platform or one distribution channel. And that is really something that we're looking for and we're encouraging, even though obviously at the end of the day, if everybody was full-stack Microsoft, it would be great, but it maybe actually wouldn't be great in the long term for the company. So we're trying to get that message out. And in terms of customer product fit, that is something that actually we do in the beginning of the ventures program to verify that before they even dive into developing their product further or their customer base further.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “No, actually the whole program is completely free, so we don't take any equity. We're not charging them even for space. It actually comes down to a cloud offer that we're putting in front of them and we're not even really forcing them to use the cloud offer. But for every company that comes into Microsoft Ventures, we put half a million dollars worth of cloud on the table and a lot of companies choose to take that. And that's really just about it.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Well, obviously, we're looking for companies. You know, we have certain criteria that we're looking for, so we want to see, you know, is it a solid team? Do they actually, are they doing the technical development in-house? Do they have actually a technical product? Because a lot of actually startups today are very services oriented, and we're actually really looking for something tech. But then I think what actually gets me personally excited for any startup is really why are they doing what they're doing. And I think you can get any entrepreneur that sees an opportunity and goes after it, but understanding what drives them, what expertise they have that can really make their business a success, that's actually quite rare. So that's what I'm usually looking to hear from them.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Normally five to ten different funds in France that will help us select as well as two partners which are other large French corporations. And so that's a really intensive screening process and we only pick 10 finalists. So that's 10 from 250 companies that make the cut.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Yes, so it's actually a three-step process. So we go through really intensive screening. It's more or less the same in every location. So in France, we receive normally about 250 applications for the online form. So that's the first piece that you have to do. We go through F success. Very basic information about the business, the team, the funding, that kind of thing. And then we do a first interview usually with about 50 or 60 teams. That interview will be done by technical experts from Microsoft to kind of verify not only who the team is, but also what their technical capacity is. And then we invite 20 finalists to pitch in front of us. So the interview is by phone. The actual pitch has to be. We have to meet the team and see them. They only get 10 minutes each and it has to be in English. We're kind of validating that, you know, they have a strong enough English presentation skill that they can kind of go international. And that is done in front of VC.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “And we have some great examples of companies that have come out of that program, companies like ZocDoc in the US. I think it was actually the first company to be in the program. We had companies like Zobni acquired by Yahoo. So we have solid companies going through the program, but it's a distance program. And I think you're starting to see so many, first of all, so many more startups than we did previously, but also a lot more offers that are targeted to these startups. And so we thought we'll develop something that's a little bit more hands-on, the relationship is a little bit more of a stronger relationship that can be built. So we built an accelerator program that's present today in seven countries. So that's the Microsoft Ventures program. So we have globally, China, Israel, India, in Europe, we're in France, Germany, the UK, and in the States, we're in Seattle. And this program is really a three-month program or four months based on the location, and it's really about kind of accelerating a business.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “So Microsoft actually has had a very long relationship with startups. I think it was probably one of the first corporations to launch a proper startup program. So back in 2007, the program was called IDE and it was launched in France. And then that grew to become BISPARC. And today it's present in 165 countries. Yeah, it's quite”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Definitely. I think it goes both ways. I think, you know, when you're going to have a global business, obviously having a local VC in the different markets that you're going to enter is going to be huge. So having a European VC, having an American VC, that's just going to help the business grow stronger.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yeah, that is something I've been surprised at. That's something that we mentioned vaguely in our last podcast, but a few months ago I started to feel like I was feeling like a lot of these different US VCs, especially the top tier ones, were starting to look more and more to Europe. So I think there was, for example, Fred Wilson who published a post saying that they've actually had quite a few investments in Europe. We started to see we had, you know, it's interesting to see even just which VCs come over for some of these bigger conferences. I think it's like them kind of dipping their feet in and seeing what's going on out here. And then I was surprised to even see Andreessen has done investment. I think if you look at every single American top tier fund, you will have at least one European investment today.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “There's so much that we can do. So I have to say I love the initiative for the single digital market, but I still feel like it's very vague. They have kind of like the basic kind of lines of what they want to work on. They want to make legislation much more uniform. They want to work on data laws, things like that. But I do think that even when you look at, for example, local lobbies, local initiatives, it still feels like a lot of European countries are competing with each other. And I often use the example of Tech City in the UK and La Frenchte in France, which are more or less equivalent. And I feel like there's so little that they do together. And that is something, for example, I'd like to see more of.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Actually, no, I think there's some environments that we're going to see grow. We had, for example, one of my co-founders in Tech.eu is based in Croatia, and he recently published a piece on how Croatia is starting to see the first VC funds, local VC funds popping up there. I think Europe as a whole is really going to start working together. I mean, we started talking about the single digital economy and things like that. you know you can stay local and do a lot but I recommend building a network and having an experience abroad to really kind of strengthen your understanding”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Talk about the bubble. I think it kind of cracks me up because we're going to know we're out of the bubble when we're out of the bubble. So in the meantime, I feel like it's not worth it for us to get all riled up about it. And I think we are seeing incredibly strong companies come out of this. Think we'll know at the end, but for now I actually see it as a good thing.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Was all of Europe, so we didn't have specific numbers per country. But France, I can tell you just by the sheer number of funding announcements that we've had in the last few years, I mean, we had several 100 million dollar rounds that were done by French companies that that was diesel, Sigfox, and blah blah car, which those all happen in the last two, three years.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Not to the way that the UK does. So we have had, you know, they play, especially when Sarkozy was in the office. There was the ISF kind of tax benefit, which still is available, but they're nowhere near as advantageous as SEIS and EIS in the UK.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Not just the availability, I think the government has potentially played a huge role in trying to make France more attractive. We obviously, France is a place that gets beat up a lot because I think of the different tax regulations and things like that that don't always foster investment”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Oh my gosh, it's been incredible. So I actually tell people that, you know, the Bay Area is very impressive and there's a lot going on in Silicon Valley, but the progress and the development that I have seen since arriving in France has really just outperformed Silicon Valley. So when I arrived end of 2009, I think it was the first startup weekend events, you know, there was not a lot going on in the ecosystem. There were funds, there were startups, and I think beginning of 2010, it just really took off. We started to see new funds getting launched later that year. We had announcements for the first accelerators. And since then, I feel like France has just come an incredibly long way. We now have a minister for the digital economy. They're starting to really pay attention to trying to create a stronger entrepreneurial environment, a place where really businesses can launch and grow. And I think that's something we did.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “So I think it's been actually a huge asset living abroad. Sometimes I think, you know, had I stayed in the valley where everyone is just so remarkable. It's kind of like the top tier is really competing to stand out. I think when you change countries, by default, you actually open yourself up to a lot of opportunities because you're very unique. You have a very different profile. So I think actually moving to especially a non-English speaking country for an English speaker, I got a lot of I think opportunities that I may not have had elsewhere. And then going from there to the UK, I think when you have actually access to different ecosystems, you have a completely different network, a completely different vision. So people oftentimes, you know, they come to me and they say, well, I need your help with X, Y, Z. And I think that would not be the case if I had stayed where I was.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “So I guess that started actually in San Francisco. I was actually, despite having grown up in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, actually never really that enamored with tech. I was actually much more interested by France, so my first job out of university was working for the French government's foreign direct investment agency. So today it's called Business France at the time. It was called Invest in France. And I was responsible for talking to all the American startups, mainly in Silicon Valley, about opening offices in France. And it was through that angle that I got in touch with the different Bay Area startups and started kind of falling in love with the creative, entrepreneurial, overly optimistic kind of ambient that there is in the ecosystem.”

    2015-08-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 061: Roxanne Varza on Pitching A VC in 10 Minutes and Maximising Media Exposure For Your Startup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source