Ludovic Charbonnel pitches ServicesYou to a crowd of tech workers and entrepreneurs from Austin and Montpellier, France at Capital Factory during Startup Week. Photo by Laurent Damiron, founder of the French live video streaming service Plussh.
When we talk about the tech world flocking to Austin, the “world” we’re talking about is often just other American cities. In reality, Austin’s reputation as a high-growth hotspot extends well beyond America’s borders, and the leaders of foreign business communities have taken notice.
That was hard to ignore during Austin Startup Week, when a delegation of 12 startups from Montpellier, France pitched their companies to a crowded room at Capital Factory over hors d’œuvres and wine.
The event was part of Touchdown Austin, Capital Factory’s program for mentoring foreign businesses on how to enter American markets. It attracted companies offering tech solutions for everything from consumer video streaming to sophisticated services like customer relationship management and data architecture.
When asked why they chose Austin to visit instead of New York or San Francisco, many of the entrepreneurs gave reasons beyond the freedom from income tax. Most said they were seduced by a vibrant tech culture that reminded them of home.
Ludovic Charbonnel, founder of ServicesYou, formed the delegation after visiting Austin in March and meeting with representatives from Dell and International Accelerator.
“I saw a very dynamic city with a great ecosystem like the one in Montpellier, with startups, big corporations, a university and accelerators,” he said. “The main goal of this trip was to meet people, learn from them and create opportunities.”
Constance Bost, executive director of the French-American chamber of commerce in Houston, said Americans have a fundamentally different attitude toward risk than the French.
“Here in the United States, there’s a taste for startups that’s almost philanthropic,” she said.
That comparison was echoed by several of the French delegates, whose native term for venture capitalists, capital-risque, emphasizes the risk of investing over the reward of entrepreneurship.
Katia Vidic attended the event on behalf of Nelis.fr, a French CRM solution.
“In France, if you admit to an investor you've failed before, you have already lost them,” she said.
Meanwhile, the American appetite for risk is so fine-tuned in Austin that Capital Factory created Touchdown Austin earlier this year and appointed a director to attract foreign investment opportunities.
The first international startup to join Capital Factory through the program this spring was a Norwegian edtech company called Kahoot!, which provides teachers with a platform for designing quizzes and games based on their curriculum that students can play on their mobile devices.
Around the same time, Capital Factory established a working relationship with Gravity Centres, an Irish accelerator led by Cian O'Cuilleanain in Dublin's Silicon Docks quarter. The move broadened the reach of Capital Factory, whose portfolio companies now have reciprocal access to Gravity Centres as a gateway to new talent, users and customers in Europe.
O'Cuilleanain said he’s hosted several first-time visitors from Austin since forming the partnership in March, including Mayor Steve Adler.
“I’ve found it very easy to plug into a forward thinking ecosystem and feel at home in Austin,” O'Cuilleanain said. “There are lots of big challenges in the world that we believe can be tackled by entrepreneurs and open collaboration.”
