While Silicon Valley is home to more venture-backed startups than anywhere else on the planet, the region has no monopoly on innovative thinking.
And while France's economy is often portrayed in the U.S. media as being long on socialism and short on entrepreneurial activity, startup executives from that country do manage to create successful exits for themselves and their investors.
One example is Arnauld de la Fouchardiere, the CEO of Quickeo, whose software lets Web users share multimedia content via private emails.
In 2004, de la Fouchardiere sold Marcopoly.com, an online electronics retailer, to
France Telecom.
de la Fouchardiere will need all his experience as he tries to differentiate Quickeo in a marketplace where most Web consumers use big social networking sites or photo-sharing sites to swap media-rich files like pictures and video.
In this interview, Vator.tv's Bambi Francisco asks de la Fouchardiere how his San Francisco-based firm will compete with the likes of Facebook and Flickr.
He calls Quickeo the easiest way to keep such material private while also sharing it with your email contacts. Check out the company's pitch here.
To see why de la Fouchardiere chose to move to California and base his company there, you can see the second part of this interview here.
