Capitaine Train is super useful. The official SNCF (French State owned railways company) site is unusable and tries to upsell you everything but the actual tickets. Capitaine Train has a minimalistic design, fast search and has niceties like .ics to remind you of what you bought.
Yeah, I always wondered how this could be. Capitaine Train is making money just selling train tickets, without any kind of ad at any point of the process, and that's their only revenue.
On the other hand, we have the official SNCF website, which doesn't even have to be financially successful itself (since SNCF already makes money on the ticket itself), but is littered with ads, slow, ugly and unhelpful. And even PDF train tickets come with half an A4-page worth of ads.
How can this be possible?
EDIT: just looked at the train ticket I printed today, well ok, I was wrong, there is no ad on it anymore, but I'm sure there was at some point.
seszett : it probably depends if you're paying for regular tickets or iDTGV which is a separate organization from SNCF, selling train tickets through the same website. They put ads on their tickets, but they're kind of a low-cost train operator.
You're assuming voyages-sncf == SNCF which is not the case. It's a travel agency whose shareholders are SNCF and Expedia. So they are a private company that have a preferential treatment for which they been condemned once IIRC (not that it changed anything ...).
You're wrong. Expedia has no longer Voyages-SNCF.com parts since this "alliance" was condamned by French Autorité de la Concurrence (anti-trust autority).
Nowadays, the only Voyages-SNCF.com shareholder is Groupe SNCF.
I can find references to a fines but nothing about Expedia leaving Voyages-sncf.com capital. Really curious about it, could you point me to some reference ?
I used capitaine train recently, I love how fast the site is (and how it saves my credentials). No mobile site though (voyages-sncf has a great mobile site, in that it's the bare minimum).
Someone was telling me that capitaine train was having a hard time getting real traction though, hope that things turn out better for them.
it bothers me that they wouldn't just make the website usable , which reduces pressure for needing an app (I've had to cancel many tickets at the last minute through voyages-sncf on my really old android with a small screen)
i would also recommend http://pixfirst.com awesome SaaS for photographers it helps photographers sell photos online, they store photos for and you set the price, sends email to client once photos uploaded, you can tag photos and create albums out of those tags so people only see their photos, it is a really interesting startup.
It's easy to find work as a software engineer in France, but it's typically in contracting agencies or large companies. There is a dearth of tech startups for sure.
Should probably include zengularity.com, the creators of the Play! framework.
Not sure if they qualify as a startup; at a minimum they're a highly successful French development team, perhaps the most successful in France (LinkedIn just contracted with them on a major project, for example).
Lot of bright cats on their team based on what I saw at scala.io conference in Paris.
Mh, I really don't want to undermine their work, but what about Dailymotion, or Deezer for instance? That's just two web-companies. If I broaden to development teams, France have several companies with teams who develop the lead product in their field worldwide.
I think that despite the clichés in France (as anywhere else too) there always will be peoples that will try to do new things, different things, by themselves without relying on the old structures, even if they may be a minority. When I'm the most proud it's when I complete a project I set to do by myself even if it's small or if it fails. I literally live for these moments.
Another worthy mention would be Affilae (a 100% pure bootstrapped startup - no incubators, no accelerators, no funds raised and yet already profitable). It's B2B and not B2C though so perhaps not usually featured on these types of lists. ;)
It's a white-label SaaS affiliate and performance marketing platform providing tracking, attribution and analytics for running performance marketing networks and campaigns in-house.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 76.8 ms ] thread(I'm in no way affiliated to Capitaine Train)
On the other hand, we have the official SNCF website, which doesn't even have to be financially successful itself (since SNCF already makes money on the ticket itself), but is littered with ads, slow, ugly and unhelpful. And even PDF train tickets come with half an A4-page worth of ads.
How can this be possible?
EDIT: just looked at the train ticket I printed today, well ok, I was wrong, there is no ad on it anymore, but I'm sure there was at some point.
Nowadays, the only Voyages-SNCF.com shareholder is Groupe SNCF.
In the end I find it easier to EasyJet or LyinAir out of SW France.
Someone was telling me that capitaine train was having a hard time getting real traction though, hope that things turn out better for them.
Machine Learning + Realtime face recognition
I would recommend you to check https://sketchfab.com and https://en.mention.net
Tablets were a chronic flop until the iPad came around.
Not sure if they qualify as a startup; at a minimum they're a highly successful French development team, perhaps the most successful in France (LinkedIn just contracted with them on a major project, for example).
Lot of bright cats on their team based on what I saw at scala.io conference in Paris.
Mh, I really don't want to undermine their work, but what about Dailymotion, or Deezer for instance? That's just two web-companies. If I broaden to development teams, France have several companies with teams who develop the lead product in their field worldwide.
https://affilae.com
It's a white-label SaaS affiliate and performance marketing platform providing tracking, attribution and analytics for running performance marketing networks and campaigns in-house.