Startup of the Day - Mpoware

The company of the day is Mpoware, based in France. They provide SaaS solutions helping world-wide companies to quickly build and run Rich Internet Applications for the Cloud. You will find below an interview with Frédéric Queudret, the founder of Mpoware. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.mpoware.com.


Interview with Frédéric Queudret, the founder of Mpoware

Who are you?

I’m Frédéric Queudret, the founder of Mpoware. We provide SaaS solutions helping world-wide companies (from small to large) to quickly build and run Rich Internet Applications for the Cloud.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘company of the day’ per Microsoft?

At Mpoware, we feel very proud and honored to be the most promising ‘company of the day’. This reward gives a great value to the hard work already accomplished by the team and an incredible positive feedback from a company such as Microsoft, thanks to the BizSpark program.

What did you do before creating your company?

I’ve worked for 14 years in the software industry as a software architect. Before founding Mpoware, I’ve worked at Microsoft France for 8 years as a senior consultant and then as an MTC Architect specialized on Application Lifecycle Management, Service-Oriented Architecture and Enterprise solutions based on .NET.

How did you get the idea? What s the genesis?

From a software development aspect, software industrialization and automation is far from being successfully achieved. Another economical aspect is that the Cloud computing represents a great opportunity for companies to leverage their business on the Web and get benefits from the economical model it provides.

Having software industrialization and automation solutions for the Cloud computing is clearly what we are working for.

What do you sell? What is your company’s mission?

We provide an Integrated Development Environment for pragmatic developers that help to quickly build and run Rich Internet Applications for the Cloud (Microsoft Windows Azure, Google App Engine…) without deep expertise. This Rapid Application Development IDE is free and help small to large sized world-wide companies to find the right competencies at the right price to successfully achieve software development on time.

Our solution is designed to be widely available from the Web without any pre-installation steps.

What is your market?

Our market is defined by the companies (small to large, independent software vendors, system integrators, freelances…) who are looking for a solution to quickly build software for the Cloud without having strong and deep expertise in technology. Pragmatic developers can use our solutions to build software for those companies from anywhere in the world.

Any clients? References? Partners?

We are at a step where we will define an Inner Circle program to involve high potential customers and partners (SIs and ISVs) to share our plans and priorities to be aligned with the market needs.

Funding history? VCs? BA?

Until the beginning, Mpoware was self-financed through technical projects based on .NET. Today, we announce the release of our first showcase that will help us in building our Inner Circle program.

The next step is to find strong motivated VCs who will support our ambition.

Growth? Internationalization?

Our growth strategy is based on platform adoption by international customers and globalized projects realizations.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

Mpoware is still a very small sized company (5 employees) due to its self-financed capacities.

Are you hiring? If yes, what? Where?

We plan to hire software engineers when our Inner Circle program objectives will be achieved.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

We are building our platform on .NET 3.5 / ASP.NET 3.5 (4.0 as soon as it will be released to the market), Silverlight 3, .NET RIA Services, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008/IIS 7 using VSTS 2008. We have chosen the Microsoft platform and tools for the richness and the coherency of the technologies it provides, and the productivity it gives to our development team.

For the same reason, our first deployment target is Microsoft Windows Azure and IIS 7. The second step is to replicate our application design model to have a PHP and a Java version for Google App Engine and other Cloud platforms.

Thanks to the Microsoft BizSpark Program, the acquisition of Microsoft products and licenses is nearly free and it is a great innovation support for us.

Do you have any Software IP? Is there something that you’re the only one to do on the market?

With the integration of all the Software Development Lifecycle aspects for the cloud, we provide a unique solution that other vendors are not currently offering.

Who’s your role model?

Bill Gates, Henry Ford and Bernard Charlès.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet areas?

We see opportunities in the business models that emerge from the Web 2.0 such as Software-as-a-Service or S+S and the new ways we have to consume usage and not only tools.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

Yes, we will look for funding when our Inner Circle program will have achieved its objectives (before end of 2009).

Our first expectation is to find VCs to fund 500K / 1M.

What about the BizSpark Program? What do you think? Are you going to join? Why?

We joined the BizSpark Program from its beginning and became BizSpark Network Partner very quickly to support other start-ups who are willing to join the program.

We think that the BizSpark Program is an incredible chance to innovate without any limits: One of the best programs Microsoft has ever done!

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

"Vision without Execution is Hallucination."

Anything else you’d like to say?

Since 2008, Mpoware is a member of the French Start-Up & Incubation Program of AGORANOV.

Today, Mpoware received the French label “JEI” (stands for Young Innovative Enterprise) and participates in a French government RFP for Web 2.0 innovative services.