A year without the Rude Baguette

Last month marked one year since I closed the doors on Rude Baguette, a blog I started in 2011 that turned into a 13-person company hosting 10 events for 25,000 attendees annually. We didn’t just shut down, we spectacularly blew up — so much so that I barely had enough time to explain what went wrong in a series called 45 Days before I started working at Algolia.

When I was blogging, I made a point of looking back and looking forward on an annual basis — usually in January, because news flow was light and left time for reflection during the holidays. I’ll celebrate one year at Algolia this month, so it seemed like a good enough opportunity to review how things have been going, but mostly looking at what’s happening with me and in France this past year.

In short, www.rudebaguette.com, along with its email & social media assets, was acquired when Rude Media SAS was liquidated. That means that whatever articles and tweets you’re seeing — and subsequently messaging me about — are coming from whoever bought the property. In all honesty, I haven’t looked up who is behind it. I think it’s a company that owns other media assets, potentially all in the same theme or all bought during liquidation. I gave them GoDaddy access & social media credentials and the next day my [email protected] email stopped working. I took that as a sign to move on, and I did.

What a year to be without a loud-mouthed Anglophone in Paris

A new president, a giant startup incubator, more fundraising raised in the first half of 2017 than in 2016 altogether (almost).

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A new @CBinsights report says VC investment in @LaFrenchTech will surpass $6/€3.5 Billion in 2017. Cocorico, baby https://t.co/jWyJ7uIcji

— @LiamBoogar

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I am amazed at what happened in the last year. Beyond just the continued expansion of FrenchTech, the combined Trump-Macron outcomes has led to a lot more attention on France, its economy, and its startup ecosystem than ever before. StationF has done an amazing job of attracting Silicon Valley’s biggest names, and, quite frankly, Algolia isn’t even close to the only company doing amazing things at a global scale.

• Devialet continues to impress,
• Stanley Robotics is a whole different way of thinking about driverless vehicles,
• WorkWell (NeverEatAlone) & Plato (Birdly) — two startups whose founders once asked me if they could launch their products on stage at Paris Founders Event — have both grown up into beautiful companies with even more ambitious plans,
• and the man who once said “we won’t take risks, that’s your job [entrepreneurs]; however, we will back you up in anything you do” is now President.

I am upset that no one else has picked up the mantle of representing France in English — KissMyFrog & other new Francophone initiatives are cool, don’t get me wrong — but I also appreciate that mainstream economic publishers are looking at France through a different lens, which is worth 1,000 Rude Baguettes.

The reality is that France stopped needing Rude Baguette. In fact, I wrote about it here less than a year before closing:

Rude Baguette is no longer France’s defender. In the past two years, the ecosystem has grown beyond the need for a cheerleader, a role we were never meant to play, and so have we: we now cover France’s technology market the same way Bloomberg covers Japan’s financial market — as outside analysts, weighing in on how key economic drivers will effect business for French & International companies.

At the time what I meant was that, because we weren’t necessary, we needed to prove our value beyond being the only people doing something.

Hindsight’s 20/20, I guess.

Learning to shut up

One of the biggest things I’ve learned in the past year was how to shut my mouth. Algolia has a strong company culture that I fundamentally believe breeds a better environment & better results; however, no one walks in on day one being the embodiment of grit, candor, care, trust & humility. On my end, humility has always been the target in the distance, and I’ve worked hard to look at my words & actions through a different lens this year.

It took me a long time to get back into meetups in Paris — I still haven’t visited StationF or WeWork Paris — I spend more time convincing meetups to let Algolia host than attending other events. When I do get out to events, I catch myself about to say something “Rude” (capital R) and have to remind myself that there are always two ways to get a point across, and poking the bear is never the best option.

I’ll never be the Rude Baguette again. I knew that a year ago. I had the option of building a small operation that would pay me a decent salary, but I didn’t want that.

What’s next?

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m 100% in love with Algolia. Among other things, it affords me the opportunity to have a larger impact on the FrenchTech ecosystem than ever before. While Algolia can’t fill every gap I see in the FrenchTech ecosystem — no job fair, no at-scale startup event, a lack of developer-friendly meetups (that aren’t already in the Algolia universe) — Algolia has a huge opportunity to enable them. If you’re reading this article thinking “who’s this guy and what does he know? I organize X all the time!” then shoot me an email — liam[at]Algolia[dot]com — odds are that Algolia should be spending more time at your event.

More importantly, odds are that I should be at your event. Meeting your friend.

I’ll be reflecting a bit more on how Rude Baguette fell apart later this month at TechLunch, a monthly meetup focused on diving into key topics that tech companies face. The lunch is free, as is the conversation.