France Newsletter
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Podcast app Majelan pivots to premium audio content around personal growth
French startup Majelan is pivoting a year after launching a podcast player and service. The company, created by former Radio France CEO Mathieu Gallet and Arthur Perticoz, is ditching the podcast aggregation side of its business and focusing on premium audio content going forward.
Like many podcast startups, Majelan faced some criticism shortly after its launch. Aggregating free podcasts with premium content next to them à la Luminary is a controversial topic in the podcast community. Spotify has been going down the same path, but Spotify is also an order of magnitude bigger than any other podcast startup out there.
Some podcast creators have decided to remove their podcast feeds from Majelan to protest against that business model.
Podcasts remain an open format. Creators can create a feed, users can subscribe to that feed in their favorite podcast app. You don’t have to sign up to a particular service to access a particular podcast — everything is open.
“We have decided to stop aggregating free podcasts — free podcasts mean podcasts, period. For us, podcasts are RSS feeds, it’s an open world,” Perticoz said in a podcast episode. “We need an app that is more focused on payment. We can’t aggregate free podcasts given that our strategy is paid content.”
The result is a more focused service that is going to launch on July 7th in France. After a free trial, you have to subscribe for €5 to €7 per month, depending on the length of your subscription. You can then access a library of premium audio content — Majelan rightfully doesn’t call them podcasts.
“Going forward, we’re going to focus on original content, we’re going to focus 100% on paid content,” Gallet said in the same podcast episode.
And in order to be even more specific, Majelan will focus on personal growth, such as creativity, activism, mindfulness, innovation, entrepreneurship and health. According to the co-founders, some content will be produced in house, some content will be co-produced with other companies, and the startup will also acquire existing podcasts and repackage them for Majelan.
That move has been in the works for a while. The startup pitched it to its board of investors back in December. Premium subscriptions have worked well for movies, TV and music. Now let’s see if subscriptions will also take off with spoken-word audio.
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BlaBlaCar partners with scooter startup Voi to launch new BlaBla Ride app
Long-distance ridesharing startup BlaBlaCar announced that it is expanding to scooter sharing. But the company isn’t going to operate its own fleet of scooters. Instead, BlaBlaCar is partnering with Voi, a European e-scooter service that has raised $136 million over multiple rounds.
Voi operates in dozens of European cities, including Paris, Marseille and Lyon. Over the next few weeks, Voi scooters will feature three different brands — Voi, BlaBlaCar and BlaBla Ride.
Existing Voi members will still be able to use the Voi app. But BlaBlaCar also plans to launch its own app, BlaBla Ride. Existing BlaBlaCar users will be able to log in with their BlaBlaCar accounts.
According to AFP, BlaBlaCar says it isn’t a financial transaction — it’s just a partnership that could benefit users of both platforms.
BlaBlaCar has launched several new services over the past couple of years. It has acquired Ouibus and rebranded it to BlaBlaBus. And, it operates a carpooling marketplace for daily commutes between your home and your workplace called BlaBlaLines.
Interestingly, unlike Grab, Gojek and Uber, BlaBlaCar isn’t building a super app to access several different services. BlaBlaLines is still a separate app, for instance. It creates some friction for users that could be interested in multiple services.
The company thinks BlaBla Ride could be a great solution for the last mile of your ride. A bus or carpooling driver could drop you off in the city center and you could then unlock a scooter to reach your destination.
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Headless CMS company Strapi raises another $10 million
Strapi, the company behind the popular open-source headless CMS also called Strapi, has raised a $10 million Series A round led by Index Ventures. The company previously raised a $4 million seed round led by Accel and Stride.vc in October 2019.
Strapi is a headless content management system, which means that the back end and the front end operate totally separately. You can run Strapi on your own server and write content and pages for your site by connecting to Strapi’s admin interface.
After that, the front-end part of your application can fetch content from your Strapi instance using an API and display it to your customers and readers.
There are many advantages in separating the front end from the back end. First, it gives you a ton of flexibility when it comes to displaying your content. You can use a popular front-end framework, such as React, Vue and Angular, or develop your own custom front end.
When you want to update the design of your site, you can just switch from one front end to another with Strapi running like usual behind the scene.
Similarly, it offers more flexibility when it comes to server architecture. For instance, you could also leverage Strapi to build static websites and distribute them using a content delivery network, such as Cloudflare or AWS CloudFront. You could imagine using Gatsby combined with a CDN to deploy your site on the edge. Most of your traffic will go through your CDN instead of hitting your servers directly.
Additionally, Strapi can be used to distribute content to different front ends. For instance, you could use a Strapi instance for the content of your website and your mobile app.
Strapi proves that eventually everything becomes an API. Sure, a headless CMS is probably overkill for most projects. But if you’re running a large-scale application, Strapi can fit nicely in your architecture. Companies using Strapi include IBM, NASA and Walmart.
Many well-known open-source business angels have also invested in Strapi, such as Augusto Marietti and Marco Palladino from Kong, David Cramer from Sentry, Florian Douetteau from Dataiku, Solomon Hykes from Docker, Guillermo Rauch from Cloudup, Socket.io, Next.js and Zeit.co, and Eli Collins from Cloudera.
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Algolia gets a new CEO as founder steps down
Search-as-a-service startup Algolia is announcing some changes at the helm of the startup. Co-founder and CEO Nicolas Dessaigne is transitioning to a non-operational role at the company. He’ll still be a board member, but Bernadette Nixon is joining the company to take on the CEO position.
Algolia is building a search engine API. The company doesn’t want to build the next Google. Instead, it wants to power the search box on your website or app with instant letter-by-letter search results.
The company is managing the search feature on Slack, Stripe, Under Armour, Twitch and 9,000 other companies. At its current run rate, Algolia processes 1.2 trillion searches a year. The company says it touches 1 in 6 web users each day.
“The story started right after the Series C,” Dessaigne told me. Algolia raised a $110 million Series C round at the end of 2019. “I was super excited but what was most exciting for me was the potential of the company.”
“Someone with more go-to-market experience would probably be a better person at achieving that potential,” he continued.
I asked more directly whether the decision to replace him as CEO came from the board of the company or not. “It really started on my side. The board was supportive of the decision but it didn’t come from them,” he said.
Nixon was previously the CEO of Alfresco, the company that developed an open source enterprise content-management startup that was acquired by private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners in 2018. In the past, she held various positions as chief revenue officer, executive vice president of sales and senior vice president of corporate sales in different software companies.
As you can see, Nixon has a ton of experience when it comes to sales and operations in general. Her experience will be valuable when it comes to scaling the startup.
“I’m excited to be now part of the Algolia team and to be leading the company as of today,” Nixon told me. Accel, the VC firm that led the Series C round in Algolia, was also an investor in Alfresco.
The transition is going to take a couple of months and Dessaigne will stick around until July. He says that he doesn’t have any concrete plan about what he’s going to do next.
Over the past year, Algolia has been ramping up executive hires. Jean-Louis Baffier joined as chief revenue officer, Ashley Stirrup joined as chief marketing officer, Kristie Rodenbush joined as chief people officer and Iain Hassall joined as chief financial officer. In other words, Algolia is growing up and preparing for the next phase. Now let’s see if it leads to an IPO or an acquisition by a bigger player.
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E-bike startup Angell partners with SEB for manufacturing and investment
French startup Angell has signed a wide-ranging partnership with SEB, the French industrial company behind All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Tefal and others. As part of the deal, SEB will manufacture Angell’s electric bikes in a factory in Is-sur-Tille near Dijon, France.
SEB’s investment arm, SEB Alliance, is also investing in Angell . The terms of the deal are undisclosed, but Angell says it plans to raise between $7.6 and $21.7 million (between €7 and €20 million) with a group of investors that include SEB.
“We originally planned to manufacture 1,500 bikes in 2020,” Angell founder Marc Simoncini told me. “We realized that we were selling more bikes than expected. We now expect to sell 10,000 bikes.”
Angell has accepted 2,000 pre-orders over the past six months — 75% in France and 25% from the rest of the world. But pre-orders accelerated drastically with the lockdown in France. During the month of May, Angell expects to sell three times more bikes than during an average month.
Originally, Angell planned to build its own factory and assemble bikes itself. SEB is allocating 25 employees on the production line and production should start at the end of May. It should definitely make things move faster and reduce potential delays.
Angell unveiled its smart electric bike in November 2019. It has a 2.4-inch touch screen, an aluminum frame, integrated lights and a removable battery.
Like other connected bikes from Cowboy and VanMoof, it pairs with your phone using Bluetooth. This way, the Angell bike has an integrated lock and alarm system. There are also an integrated GPS chip and cellular modem to track it if it ever gets stolen.
But Angell is going one step further with the integrated display. You can select the level of assistance and display information on the screen, such as speed, calories, battery level and distance. It can also display turn-by-turn directions. Your handlebar also vibrates to indicate when you’re supposed to turn left or right.
The company is also announcing a second model this week, the Angell/S. It is a smaller, lighter version of the bike with a step-through frame. Both models feature the same battery, same motor and same electronics. They also both cost €2,690 ($2,900).
Angell now expects to deliver the first batch of bikes in July. By the end of the summer, new customers should be able to order a bike and get delivered within 10 days. Eventually, the company will also roll out a full line of accessories, such as fenders, baskets and mirrors.
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Kairn is a new task manager focused on speed
Meet Kairn, a new startup coming out of stealth today with a sneak peek of what the company has been working on. As Wunderlist shuts down, Kairn wants to prove that there’s still room for an innovative task-management service.
“We’re building a task manager that is smart and focused on capturing tasks,” co-founder and CEO Patricia Bernasconi told me. The startup is backed by eFounders, a startup studio that has been building popular software-as-a-service startups over the past few years.
And it starts with three integrations with third-party services — Slack, WhatsApp and Gmail. If you star an email conversation in Gmail, it’ll automatically create a task in Kairn. Similarly, if you star a message in Slack, it’ll end up in your to-do list. With WhatsApp, you can forward a message to a bot to capture it in Kairn.
“You don’t have to switch apps constantly and you create tasks on the fly,” Bernasconi said.
And you can always trigger the Kairn quick add window on your computer to add a task when you’re using another app. The idea is that it should be as easy as possible to enter tasks in your task repository — Kairn in this case.
After that, you can open the main Kairn desktop app and dig through your task inbox to see what you should do. You can filter tasks by origin application and you can click on a task to look at the context of an email thread or a Slack message, for instance.
Kairn then lets you move tasks to the main list, “My Day.” It works pretty much like Wunderlist or Microsoft To Do — once per day, you can curate a list of tasks and then go through the list during your day.
The product is quite new, as the company started development in April — beta testing will start in the coming weeks. But the idea is to iterate quickly and release new features as soon as they’re ready.
For instance, the mobile app is still in the works. There will be more ways to add tasks in the future as well. You could imagine highlighting text in your browser to create a task based on that text selection.
Over time, Kairn wants to become a full-fledged task-management service. You’ll be able to assign tasks and use it for complex project management scenarios. We’ll keep an eye on the startup to see where they’re heading.
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Biloba lets you chat with a doctor if you have questions about your children
Meet Biloba, a French startup that wants to leverage tech to make it easier to keep your children healthy. The company recently launched a new mobile app that lets you chat with a doctor whenever you want between 8 AM and 8 PM. This way, if you have questions about your kids, you can get a quick answer.
Of course, a text conversation will never replace a visit to the pediatrician. But chances are you have a ton of questions, especially if you’re a first-time parent. Instead of browsing obscure discussion forums, you can go straight to a doctor.
Biloba isn’t working with pediatricians specifically. The company is also partnering with nurses and general practitioners. Eventually, the service is going to cost €10 per month but the company is waving fees during the lockdown.
After just three weeks, the startup managed to attract 4,000 users with around 200 conversations per day. Compared to other telemedicine services in France, such as Doctolib, Biloba doesn’t rely on video consultation. This way, it’ll be easier to deal with a large influx of new patients even with a small group of partner doctors.
The subscription business model is interesting for multiple reasons. First, Biloba isn’t covered by the French national healthcare system. In France, patients only get reimbursed if the doctor knows you already. That restriction has been lifted during the lockdown but it’s probably just a temporary lift.
Many parents probably don’t want to pay €120 per year to chat with a doctor when they could pay €0 through the national healthcare system. But if you can afford it, the barrier to medical advice becomes much lower.
Biloba previously released a vaccine reminder app that lets you enter information about your child’s vaccines and get reminders when the next scheduled vaccine is due.
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Shine adds invoice insurance to its freelancer bank account
French startup Shine is adding a new option today. If you think there’s a chance that a client is not going to pay your next invoice, you can insure that invoice to avoid any bad surprise.
Shine is building a challenger bank for freelancers and small companies. It lets you send and receive money in a separate business account, pay with a MasterCard, create invoices and stay on top of administrative tasks.
It also helps you get started as the startup can fill out all administrative paperwork to register yourself as a freelancer. You also get notifications to remind you that you should pay your taxes and more. Starting accepting freelancing jobs can be confusing and Shine can help you with that.
Shine has a built-in invoicing tool. It lets you add a client and generate an invoice directly in the mobile app. After that, you can send a link to your client. You get a notification when your client opens the invoice. They can download a PDF and get your bank details to pay you.
And yet, many clients often wait until the last minute to pay an invoice. It can be a month or two after finishing a job, which means that they also forget about outstanding invoices.
In a few weeks, Shine users will be able to create an invoice and insure it before sending it. It costs you 2% of your total amount on your invoice. There’s no subscription fee, it’s a one-off process.
If your client hasn’t paid you after the due date, Shine will reach out to your client again to try to get the payment. If that doesn’t work, you can file a claim with the partner insurance company.
In that case, if the company is still operating, you get paid 100% of your invoice. If the company has collapsed, you get 90% back. (Of course, that’s without taking into account the 2% fees you already paid.)
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Libeo lets you pay your suppliers without going through your bank account
Meet Libeo, a French startup that just raised a $4.4 million (€4 million) funding round led by LocalGlobe, with Breega and various business angels also participating. The company has built a service that helps you pay your providers much more easily. You no longer have to manually keep track of invoices, log into your banking interface, enter banking information and transfer money.
Libeo targets small and medium companies that don’t necessarily have a dedicated accounting team. It wants to simplify payment processes as much as possible.
It starts by collecting invoices from your suppliers. You can import invoices to your Libeo account directly on Libeo by forwarding emails to a special address, by connecting Libeo to popular services, such as Amazon, or by connecting Libeo with your existing accounting platform, such as QuickBooks or Receipt Bank.
Once your invoices are all on Libeo, the startup automatically fills out payment information based on information on the invoice. It also can identify duplicates and keep track of VAT payments.
After that, Libeo wants to simplify payments. When you sign up, you share your company’s IBAN with Libeo so that it can take money from your account using direct debits. Whenever there’s an outstanding invoice in your Libeo account, you can decide to pay it now or schedule payment for later. Libeo transfers money to your recipient and collects money from your bank account at the same time.
What if it’s a new supplier and you don’t have their banking information? Instead of going back and forth with your supplier to get their IBAN, your supplier receives an email from Libeo with a link. The supplier drags and drops their bank details on Libeo’s web page. Libeo then checks that everything matches with the invoice and automatically adds the IBAN information to the payment.
Over time, if you use Libeo, you get an address book of all your suppliers. You can see how much you’re spending with a specific supplier, track your cash flow and more.
Like modern software-as-a-service tools, Libeo lets you collaborate on your invoices. Multiple people can have a Libeo account with different rights. You can set up an approval workflow as well.
There’s a free plan, but it’s limited to five payments per month. You can then pay to access advanced features and get bigger limits. Five thousand companies are currently using Libeo four months after the initial release. The company has facilitated €2 million in payments.
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Vestiaire Collective raises $64.2 million for its second-hand fashion platform
Vestiaire Collective just closed another big round of funding in the middle of an economic crisis — the round closed in early April. The startup raised $64.2 million (€59 million) and the company has raised more than $240 million over the year, according to Crunchbase. Vestiaire Collective operates a marketplace of pre-owned fashion items. Users can both sell and buy clothes and accessories on the platform.
There’s a huge list of investors in today’s round — Korelya Capital, Fidelity International-managed funds, Vaultier7, Cuit Invest and existing investors Eurazeo (Eurazeo Growth and Idinvest Venture funds), Bpifrance, Vitruvian Partners, Condé Nast, Luxury Tech Fund and Vestiaire Collective CEO Max Bittner are all participating.
With 9 million members across 90 countries, Vestiaire Collective has become a huge marketplace. And it makes sense that an e-commerce website focused on pre-owned items is working well. There has been a ton of backlash against fast fashion over the past few years.
People now also value circular business models as it becomes more affordable to refresh your wardrobe, especially during an economic crisis, and it is better for the environment.
As always, Vestiaire Collective will use the new influx of cash to expand to more countries. In particular, with Korelya Capital as a new backer, the company will expand to South Korea and Japan this year. While the company started in France, 80% of transactions are now cross-border transactions.
Originally, Vestiaire Collective asked you to send your items to its warehouses to check them before putting them on sale. The startup has been betting on direct shipping from the seller to the buyer in Europe and it has been working well. You can get reimbursed if there’s something wrong with what you ordered though.
Direct shipping has been available in Europe since September 2019 and it now represents over 50% of orders in the region. Up next, Vestiaire Collective will introduce direct shipping in the U.S. this summer and in Asia by the end of 2020.
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