When I was living in Paris, just before coming to Hong Kong, I went to listen to a talk by the French entrepreneur Yann Mauchamp.
In that meeting I met Alexis Godais. Alexis is one of the founders of La Cartoonerie, a site that enables novice users to create their own cartoon on the Web. Alexis and other 2 co-founders had the idea in 2002 after finishing their studies. LaCartoonerie is perfectly understood under the scope of Web 2.0. Even though similar ideas have been circulating for many years even before 2002, Web 2.0 has only started to popularize not long time ago. I consider LaCartoonerie very visionary in 2002.
Alexis and his associates had been working in the evenings and during the weekends for 4 years and at that time they were looking for money to create a start-up with a viable business model.
The day after that talk, I went to a conference organized by Microsoft in Paris with Steve Ballmer and many important French entrepreneurs such as Pierre Chappaz, who talked about Wikio. In this Microsoft event, I also met Alexis and we discussed about his project.
Shortly afterwards I left France for Hong Kong. But today, one year and a half later, I read an article in Techcrunch.fr saying that LaCartoonerie has raised a total of 500 000 Euros from Club Invest 77 (a business angel network), Hédéra Scientipole Capital and from other angels.
He may not remember me but I remember him. I admire his straight-forward motivation in his eyes and wish Alexis and his co-founders a lot of luck in the future
