ubi i/o Silicon Valley Startup Acceleration Program – Concord’s Success Story
Concord: A Silicon Valley Startup from France
Every company has a story to tell.
Every entrepreneur, including those with wildly successful IPO exits and those whose brainchildren simply make them a decent living, can identify moments of success, milestones, mentors, and other influences that helped form the foundation and framework of their businesses. Each of these businesses is normally conceived and launched into a world of competition and expectations that has a tendency to be menacing, harsh and unforgiving. Sooner or later, the entity must somehow figure out how to survive and ultimately thrive.
Concord has its own story. Ours has many similarities to lots of other tech companies, but we also have a story that is uniquely ours. Our version of what has become a Silicon Valley startup must give some credit to the ubi i/o program. Concord is a 2014 graduate of the ubi i/o program, and some portion of our success can be attributed to the existence of that program and the efforts and expertise of its sponsors, French business enablers Business France, a government organization that supports the international development of France’s economy, and bpiFrance, a France-based public investment bank that assists innovators and entrepreneurs develop their business ideas into reality through financing.
The Silicon Valley Startup Culture
The Silicon Valley – the nickname given to the area around the southern areas surrounding San Francisco, California in the 1970’s in reference to the use of silicon used in semiconductors – has been the playing field for technology startups since originals like IBM first began using semiconductors and revolutionized how the world communicates. Thousands of companies, including the likes of Salesforce.com, Adobe, Apple, and Oracle, have either started in Silicon Valley or have re-located there to take advantage of the resources and energy that pervades the area.
Silicon Valley and Concord’s SaaS model were a perfect match, but that pairing needed some matchmaking. Enter ubi i/o.
UBI I/O
ubi i/o is an acceleration program sponsored by Business France and bpiFrance. ubi i/o helps French startups to accelerate their development within the United States by providing support for several of the most important facets of building a business in the US, including:
- Marketing
- Growth Strategy
- Funding
- Revenue Growth
- Visibility
- Logistics
The ubi i/o program lasts ten weeks. Candidates apply to the program, where judges review their business plans and leadership teams and evaluate the respective applicants’ probabilities of succeeding. Once accepted, ubi i/o startups enter an intensive 10-week phase that takes them from incubation stage to fully-operational startups.
Concord’s ubi i/o Experience
The influence of ubi i/o on Concord’s development cannot be understated. Our CEO, Matt Lhoumeau, explained it this way: “Right now we are 100% in the U.S., established and growing. ubi i/o gave us the context for accomplishing these milestones.”
Under our former name of Contract-Live, Concord benefitted by the ubi i/o experience by being introduced to new clients and savvy investors, and through fully establishing itself as a US-based company, which positions the company to expand in the US market and to other markets worldwide. ubi i/o‘s leadership and mentorship provides a calculated and focused push forward for French companies.
From Silicon Valley to Silicon Slopes
After raising its first round of funding, Concord has now set up a marketing and sales office in Utah, a technology hub of its own that borrows its own nickname, Silicon Slopes, from a reference to the success of Silicon Valley’s startup scene, which Utah’s startup environment in many ways is modeled after. Utah has its own international appeal, and will soon host the largest part of the Concord team.
From humble beginnings, Concord expects to soon become a truly legitimate multi-national organization, filling a need for contract management that exists in the US and internationally. The company will always appreciate the opportunity afforded it ubi i/o to quickly expand from France into a well-funded, rapidly-growing, US-based organization that should soon be an international enterprise.
