The fourth edition of Paris Blockchain Week takes place at the Carrousel du Louvre from 20 to 24 March. Its founder Michael Amar reveals the ambition of this international event.
Michael Amar, founder of Paris Blockchain Week and CEO of Chain of Events. © Damien Bresson
JDN. Paris Blockchain Week plans to host 10,000 people, up 4,000 from last year. Are you sure about this target?
Michael Ammar. We are going according to plan and even ahead of last year’s result. In fact, in this business, most of the tickets are sold in the last two weeks, at the last minute, we hit this last straight and into the nails.
PBW is, first of all, an event dedicated to companies. You often say that during your first stay in the US, you were impressed with the ease of access to decision makers. Is the purpose of this event to bring participants and decision makers together?
In my career as an entrepreneur, I have been to trade shows all over the world and have been able to close a deal with, for example, the CEO of the New York Times because I met him at a time when he was bored at a conference and I went to talk to him. “In real life” I could send 1500 emails, but I would never do it. Only conferences can allow you to meet the biggest names in the industry. And we are trying to offer this return on investment, this is our approach, so that people can find their co-founders, their clients, partner or employee. The idea is to help the ecosystem grow both through conferences on the most important topics, such as post-FTX or the new generation of NFTs that will allow mass adoption, and to allow participants to meet and collaborate.
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There will be many traditional web businesses. At a time when many Web3 companies are vying for alternatives to Gafam, isn’t it ironic to leave so much space for these companies?
No. In fact, it was even a desire, because you have to remember that there was FTX a few months ago. Many people thought that the cryptocurrency was dead, and indeed, many companies closed, many people were fired, the market was very difficult, and in general, it still is. Today there are about 25 million wallets. Progress is very slow. How to take a course to reach a billion users? The conclusion is simple: if you do this only between insiders of crypto conferences, you will not get far. We must go further, support brands, corporations, as well as the largest companies.
Then if we want to upset them, we’ll have enough to do it, but they’ve helped get the billion users we need. In the beginning it was a bit of a fantasy to want to organize an event around moving from Web2 to Web3, I thought it would take two or three years, but today we have Salesforce, MasterCard, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Amazon. , Google who come to speak or are partners. This is very good: Amazon just announced their NFT marketplace, they have a pull that allows for democratization, like Meta that allows 400 million Instagram users to buy NFTs. It helps the whole ecosystem. We must not remain among the lucky few, we must make room for them, that is our point of view.
Ticket prices can please you, especially for the general public and small companies. Are these rates necessary for the business model of Paris Blockchain Week?
Good entrepreneurs are prudent and buy tickets in advance, for example for less than 200 euros of memory for a Web3 day. The same entrepreneurs go to the NFT in New York or London. In Paris there is no need for train tickets or lodging for the French, so no, I don’t think it’s overpriced, even today, at the last minute. We have the best speakers in the world, in the Louvre, in an incredible business environment that can afford a much lower acquisition cost than advertising on the right or left. With all the feedback we’ve received over the past year, the vast majority of people will make deals that will make their investment profitable.
What’s more, this is an event with 10,000 people at the Louvre, with speakers from all over the world, security, organization, we are a company of more than twenty employees all year round in one week of income, we have the ambition to make money, like all companies, at least the ones I invest in.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, on stage at Paris Blockchain Week 2022. © Damien Bresson
The major trade shows have earned their reputation for their ability to host important announcements for companies. Can we expect this from Paris Blockchain Week?
Importantly, we have companies that prepare an announcement six months in advance, their work can be modeled after launch. We will have 400 media representatives and we are helping partners prepare their interviews. We have many eye-catching announcements, whether it’s high-profile luxury and fashion brands, startups announcing their launch project or large corporations announcing a product. This is the fourth edition, so many companies stick to our dates. I can say that I have a very large pile of NDA!
NFT Paris now takes place shortly before your event. Is this a competition at Paris Blockchain Week?
I think we have a very different audience. They have more BtoC and community than we do. We are hosting more BtoB events with higher structural costs, we cannot afford to have so many visits from people who are not in business. Our audience comes to conferences, that’s their job. We may have common speakers, but in general our event is very different.
Back in the mid-1990s, Michael Amar created his first companies, initially in digital marketing and advertising. Between 2017 and 2019, he was taken over by the Cathay Innovation Fund, the French Tech San Francisco Bay Ambassador, and then entered the blockchain sector by creating the Chain Accelerator and Paris Blockchain Week in 2019.