building and investing in awesome founders at @jointhebridge. writing short stories about early stage founders subscribe below š
Joined July 2015
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This little guy is building the consumer product I've used the most this month.
I met @Nlacombe_ at a cafƩ in Paris last year while interviewing founders for @jointhebridge 's Spring cohort.
He was a lawyer from the South of France with no obvious consumer background, telling me he wanted to build the next big social app. On paper, very little about it made sense.
Iām familiar with oddballs, but this one felt special. The skepticism I walked in with very quickly turned into: Iām all in, how do we help him?
The best and the strongest founder signal that just gave a spark were: despite having no technical background, Nicolas had built something people absolutely loved and was making ā¬15K/month with 3000 paying customers.
All built from instinct. And strangely, that product might never have existed if Nicolas hadnāt been diagnosed with cancer at 24, something he didnāt mention in our first meeting.
So I sat down with him again, this time to understand how all of those pieces became Promethee.
I wrote the whole story here: juliadenoly.substack.com/p/hā¦
āInstead of paying for my flights, can you cover my fuel?ā
@omar_marv drove from Yale to SF for @jointhebridge, stopping at 30+ car dealerships on the way. He grew up on his dadās dealership floor in Morocco.
Now heās building @marvlabsai .
Read about his story in the article below.
Read about the CEO @Nlacombe_ās story growing up obsessively playing video games here juliadenoly.substack.com/p/7ā¦
introducing Promethee, an app that turns your work into a multiplayer game, to perform.
now available for everyone.
promethee.io
Julia Denoly retweeted
introducing Promethee, an app that turns your work into a multiplayer game, to perform.
now available for everyone.
promethee.io
Julia Denoly retweeted
i answered to all your questions regarding
- this accelerator in SF
- how to find a cofounder
- how to apply
- how long is the process
- how we raised after that
- how did it worked for us after that
YC is completely useless if you don't already have a cofounder
i did this accelerator in sf.
it is completely different from other accelerators because you can come without an idea and without a cofounder.
for me it radically changed my life as an entrepreneur. i had the idea, an MVP, but no technical skills, no cofounder, i was a lawyer before. so i:
- met my cofounder xtelegram
- went to sf for the first time, all paid
- met friends, incredible founders, incredible advisors
- 1000X my ambition
special thanks to @juliadenoly @GittardAurelien @vio_bme @antoineduchein @Alicebentinck (Isa and Mike idk your @)
Read about Mehdi's story in the article in thread.
@mehdiamara__ is one of the most commercial founders I know. I think commerciality is one of those traits you either have or you donāt. In French, we say āavoir le sens du commerce.ā It doesnāt even translate cleanly into English, because the thing itās naming isnāt a skill; itās an instinct.
I've asked Mehdi to tell me about his life story and what shaped him until today. It's not surprising to me that growing up in Casablanca, in a family of retailers and manufacturers, one just has selling in his blood.
I've watched him go from genuinely 0 (no co-founder, no idea) to building Seeft in under 4 months together with his cofounder. I helped them meet through our founder residency @jointhebridge.
juliadenoly.substack.com/p/lā¦
Julia Denoly retweeted
2 weeks until apps close for W27!
- $250K first check
- 50 founders
- 8 weeks in 1 house in SF
- be exposed top global 0.001%
- visa, flights, private chef
- everyone can apply!
šø
Julia Denoly retweeted
Building something generational? This winter:
$250K - first check
50 founders - top global 0.001%
One house in SF - youāll live in it
W27 applications are open (link below)
Rest is on you - go! šø
Awesome new release from Joel and Kaspian
Today, weāre releasing screen-aware one-click writing to everyone.
The natural next step after voice dictation.
Press Option in any text field. Goldfish predicts what you want to write from the real context of your work.
Already used 250,000+ times.
Free for a little longer: goldfish.sh
Julia Denoly retweeted
If you're a founder but not US-based, you're already excluded from ~70% of the best programs.
Entrepreneurs First just changed that, only for "non-US" founders.
@jointhebridge is a new SF residency you can join at stage 0. The very beginning stage.
Here's what you actually get:
- $250k wired upfront: not milestone-gated, and they help you close the rest of your round
- You physically move to SF and build next to other stage-0 founders (the network is the real value here, not the money)
- Warm intros to raise from Sequoia, Founders Fund, Benchmark, Index
- Track record isn't theoretical: EF has a $16B+ portfolio including Cleo, Neptune Robotics, PolyAI and many more!
The backer list is also public: the Collisons, Demis Hassabis, Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Nat Friedman, Mustafa Suleyman
Catch: It's highly selective, and you have to actually relocate. This can't work in a remote setting.
Apply Link: join-thebridge.com
Follow @arorabhavyam for content around founders, startups and AI! š«”
OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta are increasingly treating Europe itself as a frontier-talent cluster.
OpenAI ā making London its biggest research hub outside the US.
Microsoft ā explicitly cites Londonās AI talent pool.
Anthropic ā expanding serious research capacity in London/Zurich.
Itās cool!
Found a 2014 post by Sten Tamkivi in the a16z archive telling European founders to raise at home because US VCs backed US startups and European VCs backed European ones.
Since 2015, 1,000+ European companies have secured a US lead investor.
Quite a change in one decade.
ElevenLabs, Lovable and Legora are all elite outcomes of this descision
Silicon Valley has gone from āraise at homeā to doing quite a lot of shopping in Europe.
