Next Web Open Office Road Trip Day 2: Paris

Day one of our Next Web Open Office Road Trip ended with two bottles of white wine and great chats with Raphael Labbe and Xavier Blanchot. For those of you who don’t know what the road trip is all about, we – that means Patrick, Arjen, Babette and me – are traveling through Europe this month to see how YOUR office looks like. Yesterday we were in Belgium, today we roam the streets of Paris.

This morning we visited the Parisian edition of Open Coffee and met a lot of young entrepreneurs who all turned their ideas into start-ups. I’ve listed some of those guys below:

Hostmedudes pitch

• Hostmedudes, a social network for people who travel around the world. Through this cool-named service they can meet up with hosts, travel buddies and local buddies. And sure, there’s also space for all your diary needs. The two young founders pitched their service with great enthusiasm, as you can see on the pic, and were delighted with the fact that they already attracted 10,000 users without any marketing activity. As soon as they figured out a way to express their enthusiasm in the site design, I think Hostmedudes might get more viral. www.hostmedudes.com
• myPronostic, do you ever place bets? If so, this site might become a great source of information for you. Co-founder Mikael Benfredj explained me that people can predict the outcome of almost everything, from tv shows to the presidential elections in the US. They can sell this predictions to people who want some more confidence while betting. The better your track record, the more you can ask for your predictions. This ‘wisdom of crowds’ concept might shake up the betting industry in a positive way, since people will feel more confident while placing a bet. www.mypronostic.com
• Train d’union. Just like other Europeans, Virgile Rault travels by train a lot. While doing so, he gets lonely once in a while. At least, that’s what I expect. How else did he come with the idea of a social network for people who travel by train? Travelers who share the same interests, might want to share the same bench as well. And, the community keeps them up to date about the latest news of the place they’re traveling to. www.traindunion.com
• U.[lik]. Our great guide for today, Raphael Labbe, has founded a start-up as well. And a pretty cool one. It’s called U.[lik] and the service allows you to share everything you like. And with everything they mean people, movies, music, books, websites, cities, artworks, games and brands. You can browse through recommendations and find people who love the same things. The only barrier is that you have to work yourself through a list of 200 items first. Yet they’re still working on things, and probably on accessibility as well. www.u-lik.com

Now we’re off to Netvibes and SixApart to check out their fancy offices. We’ll let you know how fancy it exactly was.