Loic Le Meur - Sharing is power

With the support of reputable investors, Loic Le Meur is realizing the idea of ​​establishing an online company with many new concepts.

It seems like an advertising tip rather than a way to start a company: setting up a website and allowing visitors to vote on everything from business strategy, hiring staff to icons company. However, Loic Le Meur is taking such work seriously. Le Meur, a French businessman and one of Europe's most readable bloggers, moved to Silicon Valley in August to set up a video social networking site called Seesmic. Over the next few weeks, he will sign more than $ 5 million in sponsorship deals from investors including AOL founder Steve Case, Skype founders - Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, "father" LinkedIn - Reid Hoffman and leading internet entrepreneur Ron Conway of Angel Investors.

Seesmic, intends to start business in March next year, has the appearance of a combination of Facebook and YouTube. Users can upload their narrative videos, then other users will start chatting by posting their video replies.

Since the founding of the company in October, Le Meur filmed himself every day to talk about what he needs to do next. He posted the video on the website www.loic.tv, with 5,000 viewers acting as a special advisory board. In the first video, this 35-year-old man introduced his empty San Francisco office building and asked, ' Do you think someone will agree to work with a French guy? '. That question was immediately answered. Le Meur filmed a recruitment interview with a video editor and then asked if he should hire this person. The answer is yes and he did. When Seesmic needed an icon, Le Meur also asked for help and so viewers organized an online contest that attracted 400 samples from all over the world. Le Meur has awarded $ 2,000 to a Canadian winner.

Le Meur said he is drawing everything learned at economic school and doing the opposite. The traditional principle of business is to keep the idea secret, quietly develop new products . However, he thinks that the Internet has made the method obsolete. He said: ' Sharing is power. The more you share, the more chance you will get . ' Le Meur experiences online life for a long time. Since 2003, he has begun to share his thoughts and much of the work on his blog, www.loiclemeur.com, which currently attracts about 200,000 people every month. In fact, Le Meur is a great network worker, both online and offline. An annual blog meeting he initiated in 2003, now called LeWeb3, has become one of Europe's leading Internet events.

Le Meur said the reason for coming to the US was to build a global company and hoped it would change the world.

Khoi Minh