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Cédric Giorgi - Director of Special Projects at SIGFOX

Cédric Giorgi is Director of Special Projects at SIGFOX. 

As such, he’s in charge of developing and rolling out projects that can be considered as “startups within the startup”. With a small team and with a direct reporting to SIGFOX CEO, Ludovic Le Moan, it’s all about being agile and quick on bringing innovation to the market.

His main projects are:

• Sens’it. A small multi sensors SIGFOX Ready device to demonstrate SIGFOX network possibilities.
  
• SIGFOX Partner Network - A platform to showcase, connect and animate the growing community of IoT Partners around SIGFOX. 

SIGFOX is building a global LPWAN wireless network for the Internet of Things. The company’s network complements existing high-bandwidth systems by providing economical, energy efficient two-way transmission of small quantities of data. 

Cédric joined SIGFOX in 2014 as Head of Startup & Developer Relations, an activity he initiated and build the team for. 

Before that, Cédric was the co-founder of Cookening, founded in 2012 and sold in 2015 to VizEat, a global marketplace that brings locals with foreigners during home cooked meals. Cédric worked at several startups during early years of his career: he was Europe Director for Seesmic and Marketing Director for Goojet/Scoop.it 

Cédric has been highly involved in the startup ecosystem since 2009, as Co-Editor and Conference Organizer for Techcrunch France in 2010/2011, curator and host of LeWeb Brands Track between 2011 and 2014. He’s since 2014 co-founder of NYC-based event La French Touch Conference. Cédric is a regular speaker at tech or business events, meetups and universities. He’s the founder and animator of private community of 2800+ French startupers. 

Cédric has an engineer degree in computer science from INSA Toulouse and a post graduate in marketing and communication from Toulouse Business School. Cédric speaks French, English and German fluently and learns Spanish. 

He’s married to Jennifer and a dad of a wonderful Lina.

Cookening sold to VizEat.

Today, we’re really happy to announce we’ve sold Cookening to VizEat. I will copy here the announcement we sent to the community, but I’d like to focus on two things:

• Our objective has always been to find the best solution for our community. That’s why it took us one year to find it, and we now strongly believed this new chapter will be the best thing for our community.
  
• As an entrepreneur, I’m more than happy to have found such an exit for a project that could have died or stopped several times because of lack of financing and also mistakes we did. 
  

The journey was amazing, we learned so much, and we’re very grateful to all the people who worked with us. 

—–

When we embarked on the Cookening adventure, almost 3 years ago, Sébastien, Julien and I, Cédric, set ourselves a simple mission: allow as many people as possible to discover the joy of sharing a meal at a local home. We have always believed that these meals are amazing opportunities to bring together people and cultures.

Our goal has always been to offer our users the best experience possible and to make Cookening a global phenomenon, in the spirit of other sharing economy platforms which have inspired us, such as Airbnb or BlaBlaCar. Together, we have been the pioneers, but we needed the financial means to continue the development of our website and community.

When we realised, at the beginning of 2014, that we wouldn’t be able to secure external funding, we began searching for the right partner, taking our time. We were looking for a partner that shares our values and ambitions and has the means to offer community the best possible future.

Today, we are delighted to introduce you this partner: VizEat. VizEat is an adventure very similar to Cookening, since it has been founded by Jean-Michel and Camille, who also sought to create a platform that brings people together around a meal. VizEat is supported by investors, and this provides them with the means to develop their website and community.

VizEat has now purchased Cookening. Is this going to change anything? Only for the better:

• The service offered by VizEat is the same as that of Cookening, so you will be able to host or participate in meals just like you’ve been doing already.
• In a few weeks from now, the technical transferring of accounts will be completed. No effort from your side will be necessary.
• There will be some changes, but only good ones, as VizEat will be able to enhance communication and traffic to its website and improve your user experience according to your needs. All hosts will therefore be able to host even more frequently than before or to do so for the first time, and guests will have even more to choose from than before! And VizEat already provides a Host Insurance, underwritten by Llody’s of London, for up to 100,000 €.

Before we finish, a few words from Camille who will be your contact from now on. I will of course still be around, not only because I will continue as a host, but also because I will be advising Jean-Michel and Camille regarding the development of VizEat.

“We’re very happy to welcome the Cookening community within VizEat. Vizeat is expanding very fast and offers every days meals arround the world. With our team, and thanks to Cédric’s help and experience, we want to make sure you’ll get a wonderful experience, either as host or as guest.”

In the name of Sébastien and Julien, as well as in that of everyone who worked by our side on Cookening: Théo, Kim, Wendy, Julien, Lena, Agathe, Sophie and of course Aurel and Sarah-Lou from BeyondCroissant, we’d like to warmly thank you for having joined us in the Cookening adventure and for having given us your confidence. You just had the first course with Cookening, and there’s still an entire meal to come with VizEat!

Cédric Giorgi

Co-founder & CEO Cookening

A new chapter - Joining SIGFOX

Before giving more details to today’s announcement - i.e. the fact that I’m joining SIGFOX as Head of Startup Relations - , let’s have a look to what happened before. 

Two years and a half ago, I decided to finally launch my own startup after a few years working for and learning from awesome entrepreneurs. 

When I took this decision, something was really clear to me: my startup had to have the potential of becoming huge, or it couldn’t be at all, meaning that I really wanted to create something new, meaningful and impactful. No copy of an exciting business existing in another country, no “secure” business model, Cookening was/is a pure new concept (That doesn’t mean of course that we were the only ones, since we had soon to realize others had the same idea, and a very close execution).

Being an entrepreneur has always been for me a way to have the biggest impact, to bring something new to the world. Of course it’s also the liberty you have, the challenges you have to face, and let’s not be shy, the dream that you could get some nice money at some point, that makes it so exciting, but first and foremost, it’s about the impact you can have. 

So what do you do when you realize that the startup you’ve created, despite being loved and praised by your users, and even by the ecosystem, cannot have such an impact, cannot become big for the moment? That’s the reality check we had to make recently for Cookening. We have a wonderful community of hosts and guests, they love the service and experience we offer them to have. Each meal is a success and hosts and guests really love what they’ve just experienced. But the market is still at its early beginning, it remains small for the moment. We firmly believe the market will grow, but it needs a lot of evangelization, and for such, you need either time, a lot of money, or someone else well established entering the market. Money is an option we didn’t manage to have (Cf this slideshare where I explain our own mistakes, but recent events such as our main competitor raising from tier 1 VC in the US proves me that the French market is perhaps not well adapted to B2C projects where there’s a bet on a potential market and lots of evangelization to do). Without money (meaning a lot, not just 300k which are useless for evangelization), our best option is to wait.

A few months ago then, we decided to stop focusing 100% of our time on Cookening, and let us the time to see how the market would evolve. Airbnb announcing they’re testing meals, rumors of a big round for a competitor (rumors now confirmed) are good signs someone else will/could spend the money to evangelize the market for all of us. Julien and I kept working on Cookening (mainly internal or external communication needs, no product anymore) and we were happy to see that more and more hosts would join us, and meals keep being regularly organized in France and in our other countries (We have 300 hosts in 30 countries). Beside Cookening, I divided by time between some consulting (had the chance to work on wonderful projects with Airbnb, HelloBank, La French Tech, Danone) and tech event organizations (French Tech Club @ SXSW, Startup Assembly, OuiShareFest, La French Touch Conference). But Freelancing and consulting is not really my thing, I’m a startup guy, so it couldn’t last long.

I knew that if I had to join a startup as an employee, it had to be the most ambitious and challenging one of all. When you’re an entrepreneur, the only reason to join another company as an employee, is when this one can provide you with an environment, with a mission, with a challenge that you cannot get on your own. And this is why I’m joining SIGFOX today. 

As usual, everything started with a random conversation with SIGFOX CEO, Ludovic Le Moan, during which I explained him even if SIGFOX was already on a way to be a massive success, something was missing to me: the fact that SIGFOX wasn’t really a platform for developers, entrepreneurs, with an ecosystem around it (startups that have huge impacts are the ones that generally become platforms think Facebook - Twitter - Salesforce - Paypal - Amazon). Ludovic’s answer was then simple “you’re right, but I need entrepreneurs in house for such things, come join us.” And that was pretty much it. ;)

SIGFOX is the most exciting startup I have met in the past years, not only because I’m joining of course, not only because it’s French and born in Toulouse, not only because Ludovic is the one that “found me” a few years ago and trusted me him and Marc Rougier to become first employee for Goojet/Scoop.it, but because SIGFOX has the potential to become a leading platform for the future of our industry, for the Internet of Things. The cellular network it has created can enable completely new objects to communicate, can create new possibilities for innovators and entrepreneurs, it is a real break through innovation. And here, we’re not talking about the latest trendy mobile app or niche social network, we’re talking about services and objects than can really change our lives. How to say no to an adventure that can have such a big impact? I couldn’t. ;)

Starting today (ok, in reality I started last week) I’ll be Head of Startup Relations at SIGFOX, meaning that my job will be to help all hackers, developers, entrepreneurs that want to launch new objects and services on top of our network. I want to meet all #IoT startups in the world, and see if SIGFOX is of interest for them, and how I can help them. SIGFOX is born in France but is on its way to become a worldwide leader, so I’ll be in charge to connect with startup ecosystems all over the world, and that makes the mission even more exciting. 

And for those of you wondering, yes Cookening will continue, slowly but surely as we say in French, waiting for the market to grow. We’re creating awesome moments and connections, one meal at the time. Perhaps meals are not numerous enough to build a rich company, but each one is enough to have an impact for its participants, and that’s a wonderful reason to keep it going. Also, I’ll keep a few activities on the side, as I’m still a #FrenchTech ambassador, so let’s meet at SXSW at our French Tech Club in March 2015, at La French Touch Conference in june 2015, or in December in Paris for my last LeWeb as co-organizer. I’ll be based in Paris, but with regular travels to Toulouse and countries where we have or will have soon our network (Spain - Holland - UK - US).

Entrepreneur is about entreprendre, as an employee or a founder, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is what you create. 

Update: Techcrunch article about Sigfox and our new objective to better target startups http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/23/sigfox-aims-to-simplify-access-to-its-network-for-connected-objects-hires-cedric-giorgi/