Event Wrap-Up: Our Latest French Tech Connect

Sydney (NSW)- 04/05/2023

Sharing our notes from a brilliant and inspiring night with a theme specifically relevant to startup founders and the entrepreneurship ecosystem: Success Stories and Fuck up Lessons. A pleasure to host our latest French Tech Connect event in Sydney, in partnership with Ofload on Clarence St.

Event highlight
With over 90 attendees and a mix of French and Australian guests, we’re sure everyone enjoyed the night. If you want to relive it or if you missed it, browse below for the key takeaways.

Different views, alternative paths, outstanding takeaways:
Listening to our three speakers as they reminisced about their journey so far was as refreshing as insightful. Here are a few things to remember:

Geoffroy Henry – Ofload	Many truth bombs, including “you don’t need to come up with a genius idea” to succeed in business. Market research and hard work can get you there too. Even if your initial ideas aren’t great, pivot from them, and keep moving forward. He also shared that “culture should never take a backseat to revenue” and that “you don’t need to be a visionary to succeed”.
Caroline Lepron-Aguesse – Skoutli	Opened up about her personal experience and revealed that her failures were actually instrumental in getting her to where she is today. Her main advice was simple: “if you don’t try, you’ll never know what you could achieve.”
Sylvain Mansotte – Whispli	After experiencing the need to pivot multiple business ventures, Sylvain decided to go all-in and created Whispli. He demonstrated with passion and determination, success is attainable.

A common thread among a broad range of topics

Although our speakers touched on a multitude of issues, we found commonalities despite their individual experiences:

the willingness to innovate or solve a problem
the vision to get it done
similar challenges encountered while building their business or team

So we did hear stories about the good, bad and ugly of working, living and breathing in the Startup world…

As we take into account the different views and alternative paths, there’s more takeaways to this event:

Success doesn’t often come easy. All our speakers faced failures and setbacks before achieving success. Fail fast and fail often, just learn and grow from your mistakes. Build that resilience and continue moving forward.

Fundraising is critical for any business. Keep knocking on doors and keeping investing in the business. Also remember that even VCs have FOMO; they don’t want to miss the next big thing.

Get the right partners on board, at the right time. It’s important to surround yourself with like-minded and talented people to overcome personal blind spots.

Scaling can be challenging, and you’ll find roadblocks on the way. A revolving issue? Finding, paying, and retaining talent. Always keep morale high: “Morale is the fuel that allows people to perform!”

Being passionate and invested by a sense of mission are crucial for your endeavour. Work on projects you are happy to spend time on.

Finally: Go for it! You have time! Why? Because “You will run out of energy before you run out of time!”

We are grateful for our MC for the night:

Romane Delvallée from Startup&Angels

and for our speakers as they shared with us their startup adventures:

Geoffroy Henry from Ofload (raised $60m in November 2022)
Caroline Lepron-Aguesse from Skoutli (formerly at Antler)
Sylvain Mansotte from Whispli

Testimonials from the attendees

“Would love to present at the next event”

“C’était un super event, avec beaucoup de visages familiers, amis, et connaissances, et bien sûr des partages et témoignages inspirants. J’espère être là pour le prochain!”

“Fantastic, appreciate it and would love to present at your next event.”

“Merci à l’équipe! C’était super!”

“Great event yesterday. I hope we will be able to meet longer next time.”
“L’event French Tech était particulièrement intéressant, merci à vous !”
“I look forward to the next event.”

“I’ll come back, that was amazing”
“Merci pour l’accueil! L’event d’hier soir était vraiment top, j’ai rencontré des gens ouverts et passionnants.”
“Hello, merci pour votre message, avec plaisir pour rejoindre l’écosystème French Tech Australien !”
“Le plaisir etait partagé. A bientot pour la prochaine edition.”
“Merci! e’ stato un bell’evento. Great to learn about LaFrenchTech here in Australia, it’s a very good initiative. A bientôt!”
“J’ai beaucoup apprécié cet évènement, il m’a permis de rencontrer plusieurs personnes très intéressantes et je pense venir au prochain.”

“C’était un super événement. Le panel était très bien choisi.”

“C’était un plaisir d’assister à l’évènement French Tech hier soir et de faire connaissance avec l’équipe.”

“Avec plaisir, merci de votre accueil !”

“Encore bravo à vous pour cette belle 1ère edition et succés ! “

“L’event était trés sympa. Je ferai de la pub pour le prochain. A bientôt”

“It is nice to hangout with francophone high achievers”
“Merci d’avoir organisé cet événement”
“Awesome. Will certainly come again!”

THANK YOU

Thank you to the French Tech Connect Team in Sydney (Lorraine Nicolas, Jacques Lépron, Helene Baron, Jerome Priso, Renald Gallis, Julie Autuly) and special thanks to Quentin Dequiret for co-ordinating this great event, to the wonderful Ofload staff (Sandra Perrett-Jones, Kate Johnson, Diana Burleigh, Daniel Cayford) and of course Geoffroy Henry, to Kitchko our caterer, to Jean-Philippe Gilbert for the photos & video and to everyone attending this event or supporting from close or afar.