Loic Needs To Get His Head Out Of His Silicon Valley

I have the hugest respect for Loic Le Meur. Years before anyone was organising a major tech conference in Europe (outside of the dull corporate IT ones) Loic was charging ahead with first Les Blogs, which became the juggernaut of Le Web. It's the biggest tech event in Europe (although, now not the only one, which I will touch upon later). When he moved to the Valley a few years ago, he continued with Le Web and brought the A-listers of the Valley back with him to Paris, France. We are all grateful to him for shining that light. That said, with the greatest respect, I'm going to have to call him out following his interview with Andrew Keen yesterday. His characterisation of Europe as a market entirely stuffed with clone startups is, well, obtuse, to put it mildly. I've even helped develop the startup rally at Le Web at couple of years ago and I simply don't recall any blatant clones even getting through to the competition. This would be hard if all we had was clones. What I think has happened - and it's not really his fault - is that Loic has simply been unable to track what has been happen day to day. Interestingly, there is someone who tracks day to day what is happening with startups and VCs in Europe and he even happens to be on the TechCrunch staff. So maybe one day you may even see my mug opine about the scene in glorious technicolour video. We shall see.

Kelly Carlson Sara Foster Natassia Malthe Victoria Silvstedt Hilary Swank