8 women's journeys that accelerate startup development

Passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship, they make a point of sharing their experiences and rich backgrounds with entrepreneurs to help them develop their projects.

On March 8th, International Women's Rights Day, Paris&Co launched its  monthly list of top inspiring women: from entrepreneurs to experts, they all stand out for their commitment, passion and talent!  

This December, discover 8 inspiring personalities from all walks of life who are part of  Paris&Co ‘s startup support dream team:

1. Louise-Marie Véron - Startup Development Director at Paris&Co. She and her team work together to support the portfolio’s 500 startups on all entrepreneurial issues.

Granddaughter of a post-war industrial entrepreneur, Louise-Marie was not destined to join the world of startups. After studying literature and obtaining a master's degree in European Affairs at Sciences Po, she finally decided, on a whim, to join a seasoned entrepreneur who wanted to start a new project.

At the age of 23, she embarked on an adventure with him and launched Visconti Partners, a firm specializing in executive coaching.

As Associate Marketing Director, she developed Visconti's brand image, as well as its sales processes and coaching methodologies. In five and a half years, more than 60 coaches were launched under the Visconti umbrella and hundreds of clients were coached.

"Seeing the degree to which working with company founders and leaders led to improvements in operational and human development, I decided to continue along this path and join Paris&Co to support founders with their projects as early as possible. It was just before the incubator ecosystem took off; it was an interesting momentum to help industrialize a growing structure like Paris&Co."

Having seen more than 1000 companies come through since her arrival, she helps startups with their commercial, marketing and investor relations issues, and now passes on this experience via courses in the Centrale-Essec Entrepreneurs Master's program.

Today, her team conducts more than 350 expert workshops per year, nearly a hundred negotiated advantages and develops its own digital tools to "scale" the incubation model.

Discover Louise-Marie on Linkedin and Twitter

2. Anne de Forsan, founder and president of StoriesOut, a PR agency specialized in communication for innovative companies. She and her team help men, women and brands to gain coverage and visibility across the French and Anglo-Saxon media landscape on innovation topics of interest to both the general public and professionals.

She entered the communication and marketing business when IT started to be present in schools and companies. When she discovered startups in 2010, she couldn't resist leaving the Open Source publisher where she was Marketing Director to create StoriesOut to allow the future gems of what wasn’t yet FrenchTech to find their place in the media. 

Passionate about rock music and art, intelligence and curiosity, with StoriesOut she explores the latter two relentlessly. To contribute to the development of innovation in France, she spends more than 60 hours a year on pro bono, notably with Paris&Co, Citeo, ITM Starter and Morning.

One of her favorite mottos comes from Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001: "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.” Though not sure if hell exists, she nonetheless helps the women in her personal and professional life realize their full potential.

Discover Anne on Linkedin and Twitter

3. Chloé Cohen-Adad, helping companies with their innovation strategy and the UX design of their products and services for over 10 years. After a career in an agency, five years ago she decided to set up her own structure to make design consulting more accessible. Efficient methodologies should not be reserved for major corporations! Her project? Accompany all types of clients, from multinationals to entrepreneurs, especially when the project aims to have a positive impact on society.

She is close to startup incubators such as La Ruche and Paris&Co, great laboratories to explore training and coaching tools. She likes to pass things on, even when it's challenging. "It's not easy to convince a CEO to listen to his customers when he has staked everything on his initial idea. And yet, it's the basis for moving forward."

This experience has allowed her to accompany several hundred startups in various sectors on very different missions:  repositioning a startup on a market, creating an innovative service, improving a process, designing a product or a place, or improving website browsing, all with a human-centered focus.

When she's not at Paris&Co, she's working on a method to enhance the value of ethical KPIs in managing a company or designing a service that will finally make you want to do sports (yes, yes!)

Discover Chloé on Linkedin and Twitter

4. Claire Castel, investor in Bpifrance's Digital Venture team, which invests from seed to Series B. Her mission is to finance and support French Tech entrepreneurs to become international category champions.

A graduate of EDHEC Business School, her initial experience was in a startup, then as part of the Corporate Strategy team of Dassault Système, where she analyzed markets with a strong technological dimension. Convinced of her interest in Tech and innovation, and attracted by the entrepreneurial ecosystem, she then turned to Venture Capital investment.

It is within the Digital Venture team of Bpifrance that she discovered this profession in 2017. Daily contact with entrepreneurs, supporting French startups towards growth, plus the diversity and richness of the job motivated her to continue along this path. Almost five years later, she has met hundreds of startups and has participated in investing in more than 20 of them, at different stages of their development. Her investment focus is multi-sectoral with a strong interest in SaaS, marketplaces, Fintech, Deeptech, Devtools and Impact Tech.

Discover Claire on Linkedin

5. Corinne Previtali, holds a degree in Corporate Finance from the University of Paris-Dauphine; has spent most of her career in the financial and banking sector. From Sofaris (now part of BPI), to Grindlays Bank in Paris where she started in 1988 in Mergers & Acquisitions, the guiding principle of her activities has always been to advise on financing around the creation, development and transfer of SMEs.

After a few years of teaching Finance and International Trade, she joined the Italian banking group Monte Dei Paschi di Siena in 2002 to develop the Mergers & Acquisitions activity within the French subsidiary before creating KANUPA Corporate Finance Advisory, an M&A and financial engineering company serving SMEs, in 2010.

Since 2010, she has also been developing activities to serve entrepreneurship:  by creating, within the Fondation Partenariale de l'Université de Paris Dauphine, a pre-incubator designed to support startups in the ecosystem;  by leading the Dauphine Alumni Entrepreneurs Club for several years;  and by co-founding, in 2011, Fairwest, a venture capital company and entrepreneurial fund dedicated to seeding innovative startups in the Grand Ouest region, which she still co-manages.

In 2020, she created Smartraise, a differentiating offer of support for startups in raising funds, backing, and selling.

Discover Corinne on Linkedin

6. Juliette Censi, lawyer at the Paris bar, founding partner of the firm Farho specializing in employment law. She was sworn in in 2015 and at the age of 29 founded the firm  Farho with Christophe Casado Bolivar and Valentine Toloton. Today, her firm advises and defends companies and employees in employment law.

A French-Swiss woman with a passion for gastronomy and painting, she finally set her sights on law and wants to dust off the lawyer image:  "We often imagine an employment lawyer wearing a long robe, defending a dismissal in labor court - but our role is also, and above all, to prevent litigation. Helping HR to set up healthy, constructive and transparent processes is ultimately the most exciting part of our job - listening to and communicating well with employees neutralizes 80% of the risks".

She is committed to having the most humane practice possible, which deprives no one of a good defense. That’s why she does pro bono work with people involved in the social sector, as well as with incubators within the context of office hours. As a trainer, she regularly shares her passion for employment law by leading practical workshops with CEOs, HR and CFOs of young companies: "If you adopt the right reflexes right from the start, employment law stops being a hassle and becomes a wonderful lever for development and performance!

Discover Juliette on Linkedin

7. Maëlle Dickx, Senior Growth Manager at TheMachinery, an agency that helps its clients find and generate sustainable growth opportunities. Her mission, both strategic and operational, is to help clients, from startups to large corporations, implement growth hacking to find new growth drivers.

After graduating from Toulouse Business School, she started her career as a marketing and communication manager in a startup before broadening her horizons, gaining skills through her missions and via consulting at TheMachinery.

For the past 3 years, Maëlle has accompanied more than 70 clients and dozens of entrepreneurs during workshops, training sessions and through consulting with them around their acquisition issues.

Discover Maëlle on Linkedin

8. Solène Etienne, assists companies with their brand strategy and communication via her brand studio FeuilleBlanche and co-produced 40 nuances of Sista. An intrapreneur before the term was fashionable, Solène created and developed a webTv channel for a private economic research group. She became a specialist in BtoB video brand content and took over managing the production company and the group's communication agency.

After managing this subsidiary for six years, she spread her wings and created her own brand strategy and content agency. She assists startups, SMEs and large corporations with their brand-related issues. She quickly developed the company by transforming the agency into a Brand Studio and co-founded FeuilleBlanche to challenge brands on their narrative and their branding, and to help their messages be heard by accompanying them in creating their own media. 

Aware that a format should be thought of as a brand, Solène has designed and produced many proprietary podcasts and used them as a laboratory to validate concepts and themes for discussion. With Cash out, she gives entrepreneurs a voice on the still taboo and emotional subject of selling their business, in an intimate setting blended with musical tones.  With 40 shades of Next, she introduces the men and women who lead the 40 biggest French Tech champions. She then gave birth to her "little sister" podcast, 40 Nuances de Sista, to feminize in her own way the indispensable Tech player ranking. A nod to the Sista collective, by giving the microphone to female entrepreneurs admired by the Next40 leaders. And because building our future and our future citizens starts at a very early age, she was eager to hear from 7 to 18 year olds about their relationship with the digital world, how they use it, and what they perceive in terms of its weaknesses as well as its promises.

Discover Solène on Linkedin and Twitter