Day One at LeWeb

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Day One at LeWeb. Phew.

If you missed it you can watch the vids here and live streaming here.

What a great day: starting with the enigmatic Karl Lagerfeld announcing an new online fashion startup with Net-A-Porter, then news from Uber of a $32m round from Menlo Ventures and – just in time to rescue us all from the craziness that is the taxi availability in Paris – a new service in the city. Fab!

Where To Sir? Uber planning to expand into 25 new cities over the next 14 months.

Old Friends, and New

You come all this way and you end up having coffee with our neighbors at Silicon Valley Bank; and a bite to eat with Paddy Cosgrave, he of the infamous F.ounders get-together in Dublin where entrepreneurs rub shoulders with Bono, no less. Everyone said this year’s Dublin Web Summit in October was world-class. But then you know I have a soft spot for Irish startups!

Over lunch I received an impromptu demo from Francois, founder of eventpixr https://bit.ly/r5s7IG - which I think is pretty cool. You cannot wander through the Demo Zone without someone cajoling you to come and check out their stuff. Great energy. Talking of which, the Microsoft booth is looking very nice indeed and has a queue of people playing with Kinect and the new Windows Phones:

At the Startup Competition we heard from BizSpark and Azure startup 23minutes.to from Netherlands/Iceland first, then Geowiki and more. Check out the pitching companies here and follow the buzz of the startups on the Twitter feed. I also picked up a few copies of the special LeWeb edition of Informilo which also features an update on BizSpark in Europe and lots of insight into what’s happening in Russia. We’re now off to have dinner with a bunch of VC’s and entrepreneurs.

The fun never ends. Uber on its way!