France Newsletter
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Workwell wants to be the companion app for your office building
French startup Workwell has released a major update to its platform. The company now provides an app to manage as many things related to your office building as possible from your phone.
The company started with a sort of intranet replacement. You could book meeting rooms, get a map of the office and contact your co-workers from the app. Workwell now wants to create a more flexible platform that expands beyond your company and beyond a single office building.
“The goal is to become the digital layer of every building,” co-founder and CEO Marie Schneegans told me. “We consider Workwell as an infrastructure product for buildings, just like water, electricity and internet. Workwell provides an interface to interact with the building, its services and people.”
Instead of a traditional service-based interface, Workwell is now organized by actions. If you want to book something, you tap on the booking button to book a meeting room, a parking spot or a gym class for instance. Similarly, the inbox has been unified to interact with both people and services in a single messaging interface.
Each person belongs to multiple circles. For instance, you can be part of a company with multiple offices around the world, part of a building and part of a co-working space. Each entity can have its own sets of services and features. It creates a more cohesive experience for the end user. It’s like being able to sign in to multiple Slack workspaces.
This way, you can use the app to badge in when you’re traveling to another city for some meetings with colleagues working in another city.
Eventually, Workwell wants to collaborate with real estate developers to integrate its app from day one. Imagine there’s a new office tower in town. Workwell could integrate with the AC system, elevators and parking sensors to improve the experience for all the companies working in that new building.
Real estate developers can integrate Workwell for free and hand it out to companies working in the building. Companies can then choose to add their own services by becoming a paid Workwell customer. Workwell is already partnering with Hines, Mirvac and Grand Paris Aménagement for new buildings.
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Altice to acquire majority stake in OTT startup Molotov
Telecom company Altice is about to close a significant investment in French startup Molotov — the two companies have entered into exclusive negotiations. While terms of the deal are undisclosed, Altice is investing a large sum of money and should end up with a majority stake in Molotov — it’s more like a fundraising round than a traditional acquisition.
“We’re doing a 60/40 deal,” Molotov co-founder and CEO Jean-David Blanc told me. “Altice is taking 60 percent of Molotov. Existing investors remain shareholders and are even putting more money for some.”
Molotov had raised around $35 million from Idinvest (Benoist Grossmann), Sky, TDF, Cherry Tree Invest and others. This is an interesting move as it greatly increases the reach of Molotov and opens up some new opportunities when it comes to internationalization, content and more.
“Altice is also bringing access to cash, content, marketing and countries,” Blanc said.
Molotov is an over-the-top streaming platform in France. You can find all major TV channels, stream live content and watch replays for free. There are optional subscriptions to unlock more features, such as cloud recordings and premium channels.
The service is available on all major platforms — desktop, mobile, tablet, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Panasonic, etc. It is one of the most popular apps on tvOS and Android TV, always at the top of the stores with Netflix and myCanal.
When I last covered Molotov, the company told me that it has 7 million users in France. Every day, 1.2 million users watch something on Molotov. They stream a total of 1.1 million hours of content. As you can see, those Molotov sessions can be quite long.
Altice currently operates in France under the name SFR, Israel, Portugal and Dominican Republic. Like many telecom companies, Altice and its founder Patrick Drahi also has invested in content and media.
The company owns NextRadioTV (BFM TV, BFM Business, BFM Paris, RMC Story and RMC Découverte). It operates premium sports channels, as the company currently has the distribution rights of the Premier League in France. It owns different newspapers and magazines, such as Libération and L’Express.
Interestingly, Altice has also acquired video adtech company Teads. You could already imagine new monetization opportunities for Molotov and Teads.
As Altice has already negotiated distribution rights with every TV network in France for its own set-top boxes, you can imagine a better offering on Molotov in the coming months. For instance, you could imagine being able to subscribe to Canal+ or BeIN Sports from Molotov. Restrictions on some channels, such as TF1 and M6, will likely disappear, as well.
Molotov is already thinking about new products. For instance, hotel chains have been asking for a special version of Molotov so that they can get rid of their complicated TV setup. Now, Molotov can collaborate with Altice’s B2B division to sell a software-as-a-service version of Molotov.
While the service will remain available to everyone even, if you’re an Orange subscriber for instance, SFR customers will get an extended version of Molotov for free. Altice will keep the name Molotov.
Blanc will remain at the helm of Molotov and the company will remain more or less the same for now. “We won’t have employees moving from one company to the other. Obviously there will be interactions between the companies, but they’ll remain autonomous,” Blanc said.
With this open approach, Altice doesn’t just want to integrate the service into its offering. Molotov will remain an independent service and grow independently from Altice’s telecom operations.
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Lydia launches shared accounts for its mobile payment app
French startup Lydia now lets you share your Lydia sub-accounts with other people. The company wants to make it easier to manage money when you’re traveling with friends, sharing an apartment with someone and more.
When Lydia introduced its premium offering back in March 2018, the company completely rethought the way Lydia accounts worked. Users had a single Lydia account and were basically limited to sending, receiving and withdrawing money — it was all about peer-to-peer payments. Now, you can create as many Lydia accounts as you want, move money around, set money aside and top up each account separately.
That was just the first step as you can now share those accounts with other people. This way, you don’t have to create a Splitwise group and track who owes what to whom. Instead of getting your money back after a while, people chip in and top up the shared account directly. Anybody can then safely spend that money.
As always, Lydia is all about getting money in the app and out of the app as seamlessly as possible. When you create a shared account, each user can top up the account using other Lydia sub-accounts, a traditional bank account that you have already connected to the app or a debit card if it’s a small amount.
If your bank account isn’t compatible with Lydia, you also get an IBAN number for this sub-account in particular. So you can initiate a traditional bank transfer from your bank account as well.
Once the account is up and running, anybody can spend money. You can generate a virtual card, add it to Apple Pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay, and associate it with the shared account. If you’re on a ski trip and buying raclette cheese for your group of friends, you can then pay with your phone and debit the shared account.
If you’re a premium user and have a good old plastic Lydia card, you can also use it in any card reader and associate transactions with your shared account. Some websites already let you pay with your Lydia account directly as well. You can select your sub-account when confirming the transaction on your phone.
You can imagine multiple different use cases for such a feature. This is a good way to share an account with your significant other without switching to the same bank. This could be a way to pay for utility bills with your roommates.
“I use it with my son for instance. I created a shared account, I set up a virtual card and he added it to his Google Pay,” co-founder and CEO Cyril Chiche told me. He can then send him money that he can use instantly whenever he needs to.
This feature will become more valuable over time, when you can pay with your Lydia account in more places. Mobile payment systems, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, are slowly becoming more widespread. And Lydia has also been working with popular payment service providers to add support for more e-commerce websites.
It’s a radical way of sharing expenses with friends and family members, but it could become the obvious way if Lydia becomes ubiquitous.
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Mooncard raises $5.7 million for its expense platform
French startup Mooncard raised a $5.7 million funding round (€5 million) from Raise Ventures, Aglaé Ventures and business angels. The company provides a service to track and manage your company’s expenses with the help of good old plastic cards.
Corporate credit cards aren’t as widespread in France as in the U.S. and other countries. That’s why fintech startups have been trying to find a way to streamline expenses for French startups.
Mooncard lets you get as many cards as you want for your team. Managers can set different kinds of rules with different limits and validation processes.
Every time you pay with your card, you get a text message with a link. When you tap on the link, you can take a photo of the receipt, add details and submit your expense. Your accounting team can see expenses in real time and share reports with accountants.
Behind the scenes, companies create a specific account for expenses and top up that account. Mooncard works with Wirecard for the banking integration.
So far, 1,000 companies are using Mooncard, such as Air France, Vinci, Virtuo, Ledger and others. Companies pay between €13 and €15 per user per month, and Mooncard plans to have 200,000 users within three years.
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Wynd raises $82 million for its store management service
French startup Wynd raised another $82 million (€72 million) from Natixis, Sofina and BNF Capital. The company started with a point-of-sale solution for restaurants and other brick-and-mortar stores. It now provides a one-stop-shop for all your digital needs when it comes to managing your offline and online sales.
The startup has raised $127 million in total (€112 million) from today’s new investors, as well as Sodexo, Orange and Alven.
Wynd provides a software-as-a-service platform for everything that can be powered by computers. The service manages your inventory, handles orders and payments and tells your staff what they’re supposed to do to prepare orders for your customers.
Everything is omnichannel, which means that an online sale and an offline sale are handled the same way in the system — there’s just a different parameter when it comes to delivery. Your inventory is unified across your e-commerce websites and stores. And Wynd can also replace your product information management service.
If you’re already using other services for some parts of your business, Wynd has an API and integrates with third-party services. For instance, you can connect Wynd with your ERP.
Wynd also lets you get detailed reports on your products and your staff. On this front, Wynd competes with Excel and good old static exports. Having dynamic dashboards can help you be more reactive and understand why a specific product is taking off, for example.
And now, big brands are using Wynd to manage their sales, such as Carrefour, Total, MK2 and Monceau Fleurs; 30 percent of the company’s revenue comes from other countries.
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Whyd now helps companies create their custom voice assistant
Y Combinator-backed startup Whyd is pivoting from hardware to software. The startup had been working on a connected speaker with a voice-control interface specifically designed for music. But a couple of years later, it’s clear that subsidized voice assistant devices from Google and Amazon have taken over the market.
Whyd is only keeping its own software platform and partnering with other companies. In other words, if you’re working on an app, a website or a skill for the Amazon Echo or Google Home, you can create your own voice assistant to interact with your content.
This way, your users get the same experience across all platforms and you don’t have to rely on Amazon’s or Google’s services.
“We let you integrate with a database of millions of items, create a custom agent and release it,” Whyd co-founder and CEO Gilles Poupardin told me. You can think about it as a sort of Algolia for voice queries. Instead of limiting yourself to basic queries (“play my favorite playlist”), you can handle complicated queries (“I want to dance to electronic music”).
In particular, Whyd focuses on the cloud infrastructure behind your voice assistant. The company doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel and lets you use any speech-to-text SDK. But Whyd can then interpret your query and give you results in little time.
The startup has already worked with 8tracks on its voice assistant. You can now search for music playlists in the mobile app using a voice assistant. Whyd has developed different models for other verticals. You can imagine a voice assistant for video on demand, e-commerce and other services.
This is what happens between your database and your front end when users interact with their voice:
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Freelancer banking service Shine switches to paid subscriptions
French startup Shine wants to be the only professional bank account you need if you’re a freelancer. So far, 25,000 people have signed up to the service, and the company recently raised a $9.3 million funding round.
Shine wants to help freelancers in France all steps of the way. After signing up, the app helps you fill out all the paperwork to create your freelancer status. You then get a card and banking information.
This way, you can generate invoices, accept payments and also pay for stuff. Creating an account and basic transactions have been free so far, but starting on January 21st, freelancers will have to pay €4.90 to €7.90 per month depending on their status.
Freelancers who generate less than €70,000 (so-called “auto-entrepreneurs”) will pay €4.90 per month, while others will pay more. This is still cheaper than most professional bank accounts. Existing users won’t have to pay anything.
The company mentioned premium plans in the past, but Shine now wants to create a single plan with a unified feature set for everyone. If you’re more serious about your indie lifestyle and generate a lot of revenue, you’ll pay a bit more.
In addition to that change, the startup is working on some new features. Soon, you’ll be able to generate better exports for accounting purposes. You’ll be able to deposit checks, control your account from a web browser, generate better invoices and more.
But Shine doesn’t just want to build an endless list of bullet points with as many features as possible. The company wants to create the best banking assistant for freelancers. You get notifications for admin tasks and you can ask the support team any question you have when it comes to the administrative part of your work.
It’s not just customer support for the product — it’s customer support for French paperwork. And that has some value by itself.
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Ledger announces next-generation cryptocurrency hardware wallet
French startup Ledger unveiled its new hardware wallet to manage your cryptocurrencies. The Ledger Nano X is a Bluetooth-enabled wallet, which means that you’ll be able to send and receive tokens from your phone.
The previous version of the device required you to plug the key to your computer using a microUSB cable in order to execute an order. Switching to Bluetooth and opening it up to smartphones is the next logical step.
Ledger is going to launch a full-fledged mobile app called Ledger Live. You’ll find the same features as the ones in the desktop app. You’ll be able to install new apps, check your balances and manage transactions.
The app will be available on January 28th and existing Ledger users will be able to check their balances in read-only mode thanks to public addresses (in case you’re not using Spot). Ledger has sold 1.5 million Ledger Nano S so far. And it sounds like other companies will be able to build mobile apps that work with your Nano X.
The Nano X looks more or less like the Nano S. It’s a USB key-shaped device with a screen and a couple of buttons. The screen is now slightly bigger.
One of the main issues with the Nano S is that you were limited to 18 different cryptocurrencies. You can now store up to 100 different crypto assets on the Nano X — the device supports 1,100 different tokens overall.
Just like other Ledger devices, the private keys never leave your Ledger wallet. It means that even if your computer or mobile phone get hacked, hackers won’t be able to grab your crypto assets.
The company is presenting the new device at CES, I’ll try to play with it to see how it works when it comes to pairing, battery life, etc.
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Spot is a cryptocurrency app to control all your wallets and exchange accounts
Meet Spot, a beautifully designed mobile app to control your cryptocurrencies. Spot looks like a portfolio-tracking app. But the company has built a strong foundation to add more features in the coming months. Spot wants to be your unique gateway to the world of cryptocurrencies.
“Spot’s vision isn’t to build a portfolio tracker — we went a bit overboard with this feature,” co-founder and CEO Edouard Steegmann told me. “Eventually, we want to become the app to manage all your cryptos, a sort of Revolut but with a crypto DNA.”
When you first install the app, you can connect it to your existing wallets by adding public addresses. Even if you store your tokens on a hardware wallet, Spot can read the public details of your wallet to show them in the app.
“We have our own nodes on Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Stellar and others to recover the amount on your wallet,” Steegmann said. Data is also cross-checked with third-party services to make sure that everything is fine.
Spot also lets you connect to an exchange account using API keys. Right now, the app supports Binance, Kraken, Bitfinex and Poloniex, but the company already plans to add more exchanges.
The app then gives you a detailed overview of your holdings across all services and wallets. You can see detailed charts, and discover which token is performing better than the rest. It’s also one of the most well-designed mobile apps I’ve seen this year — the animations and interactions are gorgeous.
But Spot doesn’t rely on an API to get pricing information for each token. “We’ve rebuilt CoinMarketCap from the ground up, and we’re one of the few companies that have done it,” Steegmann said. The company stores pricing information for dozens of tokens across 150 exchanges. That’s a lot of pairings.
If you tap on the Spot logo at the top of the app, you can see the maximum value of your portfolio if you cash out on exchanges with the highest prices for your tokens. The company makes sure that there’s enough volume to show you coherent prices.
Spot thinks that controlling your own data is too important to rely on API calls. When you have your own data, you don’t have any API rate limits, you don’t have a major dependency and you can scale more calmly.
Up next, you’ll be able to trade directly in the app. The company isn’t going to build its own exchange, but you can expect to buy and sell tokens on a third-party exchange without having to visit the website.
“We think that many things will be tokenized and that there’s no user-friendly interface to transfer, receive, buy and sell,” Steegmann said.
The company raised a $1.2 million round (€1.056 million to be exact) from Kima Ventures and business angels, including Eric Larchevêque and Thomas France from Ledger, Jean-Daniel Guyot, Thibaud Elzière, Eduardo Ronzano, Nicolas Steegmann, Sébastien Lucas and Nicolas Debock.
Disclosure: I own small amounts of various cryptocurrencies.
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Dataiku raises $101 million for its collaborative data science platform
Dataiku wants to turn buzzwords into an actual service. The company has been focused on data tools for many years, before everybody started talking about big data, data science and machine learning.
And the company just raised $101 million in a round led by Iconiq Capital, with Alven Capital, Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital and FirstMark Capital also participating.
If you’re generating a lot of data, Dataiku helps you find a meaning behind data sets. First, you import your data by connecting Dataiku to your storage system. The platform supports dozens of database formats and sources — Hadoop, NoSQL, images, you name it.
You can then use Dataiku to visualize your data, clean your data set, run some algorithms on your data in order to build a machine learning model, deploy it and more. Dataiku has a visual coding tool, or you can use your own code.
But Dataiku isn’t just a tool for data scientists. Even if you’re a business analyst, you can visualize and extract data from Dataiku directly. And because of its software-as-a-service approach, your entire team of data scientists and data analysts can collaborate on Dataiku.
Clients use it to track churn, detect fraud, forecast demand, optimize lifetime values and more. Customers include General Electric, Sephora, Unilever, KUKA, FOX and BNP Paribas.
With today’s funding round, the company plans to double its staff. The company currently works with 200 people in New York, Paris and London. It plans to open offices in Singapore and Sydney, as well.
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