As new members to Built in Chicago, we wanted to tell you a bit about how a couple of Parisians ended up in this great city.
Two years ago, we had the crazy idea to build a startup. We envisioned being the next big thing in photo sharing (admittedly, Instagram beat us there). We developed an early prototype and joined the accelerator program Le Camping in Paris. Our website grew to 25,000 users and more than 50% of them were based in the US, so coming to the U.S. was a natural next step.
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Furthermore, raising funds for a pre-revenue startup in the social and photo space is nearly impossible in France. The startup ecosystem there is just emerging, convertible notes are not widely used, angels and VCs only invest in startups that have substantial revenues. We had a mutual online crush on Excelerate Labs (it was on Skype, not on OkCupid...), and last May, we landed in Chicago and joined Excelerate Labs to continue disrupting the photo market!
The first weeks in Chicago were very intense: finding a place to stay, getting use to using English daily, discovering the local cuisine, the Cubs and the 312.... and of course working on our product! Now, we are really enjoying Chicago and we want to stay here, at least until the winter. :)
We really appreciate how welcoming the Chicago community has been to us! With your help, we have launched our product, Pictarine, on Android last week and are growing fast. We look forward to your feedback on the product and continuing to get to know this city.
