Our Story

WHO WE ARE

La French Touch Conference is an itinerant business event that aims at building bridges between entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. Our events promote the dynamism of global entrepreneurship, put forward talented French entrepreneurs and offers a privileged platform for entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, officials, journalists and others to meet.

MEET OUR TEAM

We want to help entrepreneurs expand their businesses around the world and promote France as a land of innovation.

Gaël Duval, Co-Founder & President of La French Touch Conference

Created in 2014 by French entrepreneurs Gaël Duval & Cedric Giorgi, La French Touch Conference started in a single city: New York. It has since expanded in the cities of Paris and San Francisco and has acquired a truly international dimension, with the ambition of exporting the event model to dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystems across the world. La French Touch Conference is also the creator of the world's only flying startup competition, Pitch in the Plane, which gives startups and entrepreneurs the unique opportunity to pitch their concepts in front of investors aboard a commercial flight.

Key Figures

Editions

4300+ Attendees

380+ Speakers

200+ Media articles and news reports

1M+ Euros raised by start-ups following their participation



Gaël Duval - Co-Founder & President of La French Touch Conference


Gaël Duval is a French internet pioneer and serial digital entrepreneur since 1995. He is the Founder & President of JeChange, the first free personal assistant dedicated to the price reduction of energy and telecom bills for private individuals and businesses.


Co-founder of France Digitale, Gaël also supports more than a dozen French startups as a business angel.

In 2014, he launched La French Touch Conference,  an itinerant business event that aims at showcasing French entrepreneurial successes and building the bridge between the French and international entrepreneurial ecosystems. A total of 8 editions have been organized in the cities of New York City, Paris, and San Francisco, with an upcoming 9th edition taking place in Toronto in October 2018.

Gaël Duval is also a member of the “Conseil national du numérique”, the French Digital Council, since February 2016.

Cédric Giorgi - Co-Founder of La French Touch Conference


Cédric Giorgi is the Head of Startup & Developer Relations for SIGFOX, who are 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.

Before that, Cédric was the co-founder of Cookening, founded in 2012 and sold in 2015, a global marketplace that brings locals with foreigners during home cooked meals. Cédric worked at several startups during the early years of his career: he was  Director of Seesmic Europe 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 the private community of 1500+ French startupers.

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

@FrenchTouchConf

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