This week has been very productive (and it’s only Tuesday morning):

First on Monday, VentureBeat published my guest column on the winning pitch at the Founder Conference. It’s worth watching the video and reading the analysis, if you ever wondered why no one calls you back after you pitch your idea.

Then this morning TechCrunch Europe published the write-up of my Founder Institute Paris graduation speech. I received very positive feedback from European entrepreneurs about the points I raise. If you want to help spread entrepreneurship to the old continent, read this and do something about it.

Finally, FrenchWeb became the media partner for the Founder Conference Paris and also did a write-up today (in French).

That’s it!

Possibly the most popular part of the Founder Conference this year was the live pitch feedback, a workshop run by Adeo Ressi. We actually extended its allocated time by 20 minutes because it was so popular.

The rules are simple: you give your best elevator pitch, in less than 1 minute, as if you were pitching an angel investor or a VC. You think you did a pretty good job. You are proud of yourself. And then Adeo tells you what an investor really hears, and how bad your pitch really is. It’s tough, but that’s the best way to learn.

Adeo’s strength is in being able to analyze and deconstruct a pitch instantaneously. Believe me, investors think the same way. The difference is that they don’t tell you what they think. Instead, consider yourself lucky if all you get is an “Hum, interesting…”.

But enough talking, judge for yourself and watch the video!

I’m posting the videos of the Founder Conference here on my blog until we revamp the Founder Conference website… By the way, if you want to be the first one to know about the next Founder Conference, there is a sign-up form on the right.

Here is my favorite excerpt of the panel on getting PR. I was dying to find out: “does PR 2.0 really work?”. Listen to the panel answer. I’m hearing a strong “NO”.

The panelists (from left to right):

• Anthony Ha, VentureBeat
• Ryan Singel, Wired
• Chris O’Brien, San Jose Mercury News
• Hooman Khalili, Alice FM

I’m posting the videos of the Founder Conference here on my blog until we revamp the Founder Conference website… By the way, if you want to be the first one to know about the next Founder Conference, there is a sign-up form on the right.

Should you join an incubator such as Y-Combinator, the Founder Institute or TechStars? Or just go out on your own and raise money like Brian Wong (Kiip) just did at the sweet age of 19? That was the topic of the Incubator panel at the Founder Conference, with Ivan Kirigin of TipJoy (YCombinator Alumni), Lecole Cole of Skydera (Founder Institute Graduate) and Emily Olson of Foodzie (TechStars Alumni).

Beyond discussing underage drinking and how good the food is, we covered more serious topics such as: is giving away equity worth the experience, what you are really gaining in return, and more.

Enjoy the 45 minutes of open discussion.

More videos of the Founder Conference coming soon.

Whenever I chat with friends who still live in Paris, working at the same corporate job often for more than 10 years, I can’t help but wonder. Is the Silicon Valley’s startup culture, despite its crazy focus on work, actually more family-friendly?

It goes like this: in Paris, you work in the office until at least 7pm. You can’t be perceived as the first one to leave, right. So you stay a bit longer. It doesn’t mean you are working especially hard, just that you stay late in the office, because that’s what everyone else does. So you leave the office around 7:30pm. Then you face a horrible commute. If you are lucky, it will take you 45 minutes to make it home (I’m being nice, some people have commutes longer than 1h30 each way). So you are not home before 8:15, maybe 8:30pm. The kids are already in bed, or just about to.

Bottom line: you don’t see your kids during the week, at all.

What about Silicon Valley? You leave the office before 6pm. You play with your kids for a few hours. It’s sunny outside most of the year anyway. Then you put them to bed. Then you work again, often from 9pm until late in the night.

Personally, I like the Silicon Valley approach. But your mileage may vary. In France, at least once you go home, leave your work behind. You avoid the feeling of working 24/7.

In the tradition of the Co-Founders MeetUp of Silicon Valley, the Founder Conference will feature 12 pitches from startups. If you need help to build your startup, you should apply. However, note that this is not the place to launch your startup to the press, or expect to raise money from venture capitalists. Other conferences do that better.

But if you need a co-founder, or feedback on your idea, this is the right place. There will be 250+ startup enthusiasts. It’s up to you to convey your passion. Forget about NDAs: good things happen to those who share.

In practice, you will have 3 minutes and 3 slides on stage to pitch in front of the whole audience. Don’t forget to include your contact info on the last slide, so people can follow-up with you afterward. Be clear about what you need from the audience.

To apply, send a draft of your 3-slide presentation to alain.at.fairsoftware.net.

At the end, the audience will determine the two best pitches:

• “Most Likely To Succeed” Award
• “I Want It” Award

I had to try a little bit of advertising for the Founder Conference on August 17, to see if I could spread the word beyond our usual partners such as Startup Weekend, VentureBeat, Startup Digest and so on. I had used both Google AdWords and Facebook Ads in the past but it was a good opportunity to revisit both.

I’ll give you the conclusion first: FaceBook rocks. Google was completely useless, managing to generate a grand total of one click in two weeks.

How can this be? For my purpose, FaceBook ads had two killer features:

• The allowed text is long enough to put the key benefits of the conference. With Google AdWords, I just couldn’t find a way to make a compelling case with its meager two lines.
• Targeting is laser-focused, when Google is keyword-based (as in, 20th century technology). On Facebook, you can put an ad that will only be displayed if someone is a current Grad student at Stanford, less than 30 years old and likes Techcrunch. On Google AdWords, you can specify that your ad runs for the US. After looking around a lot, I finally discovered that you can target a city or region by using one of the advanced and unintuitive features.

So here I am: with Google AdWords, no matter how much budget I specify, I can’t get any clicks. FaceBook brings me a steady stream of people who are nicely targeted and often register for the conference. Exactly what I wanted.

Privacy concerns? Sure. But very impressive.

Steve Jobs. Guy Kawasaki. Paul Graham. They draw crowds every time they speak at a conference.

When I put together the Founder Conference (August 17th in Silicon Valley, in case you haven’t heard yet), securing a line-up of great speakers was very important. I am trying to help as many aspiring entrepreneurs build the best startups possible. If you are like most entrepreneurs, you’ll be focused on what is being said on stage. There is great insight to learn that way.

Waiting in line at WWDC

However, you almost certainly make a very common mistake: you’ll ignore the other people in the room, asusming that they are not as interesting as the famous speakers on stage.

You’d be wrong. If I told you Steve Jobs was sitting next to you, I bet you’d have a heart attack. Transport yourself back to 1980 (virtually of course). Steve Jobs was around. He just wasn’t famous yet. But I’m sure he was just as smart as he is today.

Conferences for entrepeneurs self-select their attendance: everyone in the room has the passion and the ambition to build something great. 5 years from now, the newbies of today will be the stars. Why wait? Get to know them today, genuinely, for who they are, before they become famous. You will learn just as much as watching the stage.

I have met many people like this, who at the time I liked, and were nobodies. It’s not about gaming the system and networking for the sake of networking. You should genuinely be interested in the other attendees: after all, they share your passion.

The Founder Conference 2010 is going to be big! (More on that later). If you want to get in for free because you are on a budget (like all founders), here’s a way: design the t-shirts for the conference, and get 2 tickets (presumably, for you and your co-founder) free.

Plus you’ll earn the right to brag that you designed the t-shirts.

If you are interested, simply send me an e-mail or post a link to your design in the comments (if you don’t mind making it public).

The community will pick the winner in two weeks.

Thanks!

My startup needed to raise $500K to expand our marketing efforts and get the word out. Raising the money was quite easy: I issued some new shares and listed them on StartupIPOs.com. It’s a marketplace for accredited investors. Startups that need funding list their offerings, and people buy their shares. The price is set by the market, which is fine with me.

It works because they force you to use YCombinator’s standard terms, just as if this was Ron Conway investing. So the investors know they are dealing with professional startups and receive all their usual protections: a board seat, preferred shares and so on. But since everything is codified and standardized, we avoid the exhorbitant legal fees (often north of $25K), which really hurt when raising small chunks of money.

Being able to use this service allowed us to continuously raise money. In effect, it’s as if we could IPO for free every time we needed more cash for operations. The need to go through VCs as gatekeeper pretty much disappeared.

It’s pretty cool!

And it’s also a fantasy. Such a site doesn’t exist yet. Partly because it would be illegal in the US of course (you can’t offer equity for sale to the public, and reporting requirements when you have a large number of shareholders are prohibitive). Partly because building a healthy market, where both sellers (the startups) and buyers (the angels) behave properly, free of scams, is not so easy.

Do you know a way to make StartupIPOs.com? If so, please do it, for all startups’ sakes!