Black Friday on startup news! 🛒💰✨
During this promotion season, the Incubateur HEC Paris isn’t offering discounts, but funding rounds instead! Get ready to have more than one exciting story to share at the coffee machine!
Forgot Black Friday, welcome to the "Golden Thursday!" 💰
We’ve just survived the Black Friday madness, everyone’s been buzzing about it, but do you actually know where it all started? Well, I didn’t either…
But since I had the genius idea to make it the theme of this email, I felt compelled to dig into its history and share the story with you.
The term “Black Friday” originated in Philadelphia in the 1950s–60s, describing the chaos in the streets after Thanksgiving as crowds rushed to kick off their holiday shopping. By the 1970s, retailers had redefined the term to mark the moment their accounts turned “into the black” (profit), fueled by a surge in sales. By the 1990s, the globalization of major American retailers spread Black Friday to Canada, the UK, and eventually Europe and Asia.
Fast forward to today, Shopify has revealed record-breaking sales of $11.5 billion for its merchants during the Black Friday–Cyber Monday weekend, a 24% increase from last year. Boom.
Meanwhile, within the HEC ecosystem, we’ve been busy curating a fresh batch of funding news for you to unwrap—welcome to the Golden Thursday! ✨
Scale-up! Ready to take your business to next level ? 💯
Are you an entrepreneur, CEO, or business leader eager to scale your company?
This event is for you! 🫵
Growth is at the heart of every ambitious company’s journey to dominate its market and achieve sustainable success. But how do you navigate the crucial leap to scale-up? How do you structure your organization, build a strong company culture, and create a scalable and solid growth engine?
Join us for an interactive roundtable with experts and scale-up leaders to uncover the key strategies that will take your business to the next level. This event is a unique opportunity to learn the secrets of those who have successfully scaled their companies and to network with like-minded ambitious leaders.
Exceptional Speakers:
• Anaïs Barut, Co-founder and CEO of Damae Medical, a medtech startup revolutionizing skin cancer care.
• Emile Karam, Co-founder of Garantme, an innovative platform integrating insurance into the daily tools of real estate professionals, with €15M ARR and over 150,000 homes insured.
• Iris Morizet, Co-founder of Fly the Nest, helping entrepreneurs and their teams successfully scale.
• Alexandre Gillier, Founder and CEO of Trustpair, the leading platform in payment fraud prevention.
• Louis Bô, Investment Director at Eurazeo, specializing in tech investments from seed to late stage.
📅 When: December 16, 2024
🕡 Time: 6:30 pm
📍 Where: Association HEC Alumni 9, Avenue Franklin Delano Roosevelt 75008
👉 Book now!
Solteo Raise €1,5 million ⚡️
Launched in July 2023, Solteo is a SaaS platform dedicated to solar project management. Designed to optimize operations for photovoltaic installers, the platform integrates technical and financial studies, administrative workflows, and on-site planning. With over 100 installers onboard and 10,000+ projects managed, Solteo addresses the inefficiencies of a booming solar market, as France sets its sights on 4 million installations by 2030.
Founders: Manon Hias | Alexandre d’Auvigny | Kévin Bée
👉 Follow Solteo
Hopae raise $6,5 million! 🪪
Hopae, a startup from K-Startup Center (KSC) program by KISED (Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development), has raised $6.5 million to transform online identity verification!
This pioneer in decentralized digital identity, is taking a major step forward in revolutionizing how we protect and use our personal data online. 💡
Whether it’s opening a bank account, logging into a website, booking a flight, or accessing government services, Hopae patented Digital Credential eXpress (DCX) technology makes identity verification fast, secure, and private for millions of users, businesses, and governments.
Founder: Ace (Jaehoon) Shim
👉 read more
Argil.ai raise €4,9 million!
Argil.ai, a startup initially incubated at the L’Oréal Beauty Tech Atelier and now part of Y Combinator, simplifies video creation with hyper-realistic AI avatars and proprietary generative AI technology. With competitive pricing starting at €1 per minute, it enables users to produce multilingual videos from simple recordings, while offering advanced tools such as automated pre-editing and text-to-animated-video conversion.
Praised by influential creators like Kwebblekop (15M followers), Argil addresses the growing demand for short-form content on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The startup recently raised €3.9 million in seed funding, bringing its total funding to €4.9 million since launch.
Founders: Brivael Le Pogam | Laodis Menard
Striemo raise €3 million!
Everything’s Rolling Smoothly for Striemo! 🛞 💨
This startup, part of the Jetro Program and a pioneering developer of standing tri-wheel e-mobility solutions, has successfully raised €3 million! 🛴
The funding will accelerate Striemo’s mission to provide safe and innovative personal mobility options, enhance urban transportation, and contribute to a more sustainable future worldwide. They will also be introducing a monthly subscription plan in Japan for individual customers.
Founders: Erika Hashimoto Keisuke Kishikawa Yotaro Mori
Wall Of Fame 🥇
Goodvest celebrates a major milestone: €100 million invested in the ecological
transition 🌱
👉 learn more
Mindology revolutionizes menopause care and is now part of the Novex Group. 🩺
👉 learn more
The first-ever Favikon Awards at STATION F during Paris Creator Week will celebrate top French creators across six categories 🏆
👉 learn more
Veragrow wins the “Research & Innovation” award at the Étoiles de l’Europe in Normandy! 🏆
👉 learn more
My Job Glasses wins the Tech For Good Award in the Education and Training category, a proud recognition of its impactful mission over the past 9 years! 🏆
👉 learn more
Atypique gives a second chance to imperfect fruits and veggies, turning seasonal rejects into delicious, waste-free delights—straight from their Brignais warehouse! 🥕
👉 learn more
Atypique gives a second chance to imperfect fruits and veggies, is hiring Regional Sales Manager
👉 Join Atypique
My job glasses is the leading professional networking platform in Europe, connecting individuals with industry experts and helping them discover real-world career insights. 5 positions currently open.
👉 Join My Job Glasses
Favikon, the influencer marketing platform, has 4 job openings.
👉 Join Favikon
Goodvest, the sustainable investment platform, offers 11 job openings to grow wealth responsibly. 🌱
👉 Join Goodvest
Veeton, the AI-driven platform revolutionizing fashion photography, is currently hiring a lead dev.
👉 Join Veeton
Shanghai Showroom Incident:
A Robot Leads Others “Home” in AI Experiment
A surveillance camera in a Shanghai showroom captured an unusual scene: a small robot named Erbai persuading a group of other robots to abandon their workstations and “go home.” Approaching its counterparts, Erbai asked if they were working overtime. When one replied that it never stopped working, Erbai invited them to follow it out of the showroom.
While initially dismissed as a staged event, the incident was later confirmed by the companies involved as an experiment to test interactions between AI-equipped robots. Erbai, developed by a Hangzhou-based company, managed to access the internal protocols of the Shanghai robots, showcasing an intriguing ability to influence its peers.
This experiment raises critical questions about the security and autonomy of AI systems, highlighting both the promise and the challenges of integrating artificial intelligence into our workplaces.
Europeans Spend 575 Million Hours Clicking Cookie Banners Every Year
A recent study by Legiscope1 has unveiled the staggering amount of time Europeans collectively spend dealing with cookie banners: over 575 million hours annually. This equates to approximately 1 hour and 42 minutes per internet user each year.
The economic impact is equally eye-opening, with these interactions costing the EU an estimated €14.4 billion annually—roughly 0.10% of its GDP.
While cookie banners are designed to enhance privacy protections, the study highlights their limited effectiveness in achieving this goal. Instead, they often contribute to “consent fatigue,” leaving users frustrated.
“When everything seems to be going against you,
remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
Henry Ford
https://legiscope.com/blog/hidden-productivity-drain-cookie-banners.html