Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, born 1977, ex-Hec, is one of the most influential entrepreneurs in France. He is founder and CEO of Priceminister group, the leading e-commerce site in France with around 9.5 million members currently selling 150 million articles around Europe with websites in Spain and the UK.
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Olivier Mathiot, Justin Ziegler and Pierre Krings, were the original founders and eight years afterwards they held around 40% of the capital of Priceminister and have considerably developed the automobile, real-estate and travel parts of the company. The age of the founders is 32, 38, 39, 40 respectively and their wealth was estimated in 2008 to be around 120 million euros. PriceMinister had planned to do an IPO during 2008 and had expected to raise about 500 million, but decided against it due to the economic situation
Priceminister guarantees transations for both the seller and buyer, receiving payment from the buyer before the product is sent and only releases this payment to the seller on successful reception of the product by the buyer. Their platform is free to use and their business model is based on a percentage of any eventual sale.
Pierre was elected president of the ACSEL ("L'Association de l'Economie Numérique") by its board of directors on the 3rd July 2008 and is one of the four presidents of ASIC (Association des services internet communautaires) He is an active member of the Internet community in France and is a member of Renaissance Numérique (list of members (PDF)) and IE-club (Le club des acteurs de la ITech Economie) among others. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Pierre's sister, is currently French Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for the Digital Economy. Pierre who speaks French, English and German fluently, has co-written a book that will be available during May: "Le pouvoir de vente : la saga Price Minister"
Pierre was working with Capital One in the US when he returned to France to set up Priceminister in August 2000, soon after the dot.com crash. Of its current 9.5 million members, three million are sellers and of which around 15,000 are active professional sellers. The new status of Auto-Entrepreneur in France should raise this level of professional sellers by tens of thousands accordin. The most popular products can be seen by the number of products in each category, which shows for example that there are over 65 million books on sale. Over 200,000 new products are put online every day and there is video service where sellers can show videos of their products.
Within those broad areas you have several websites such as "A Vendre, A Louer", one of the biggest real-estate websites in France. They started off with CDs and now you can sell almost everything. Their best selling products are books etc. Most money is made from the sale cars and video games.
They have 10 times more products than eBay in France, furthermore it is for free. So after quickly registering, put up a product and try it out. The price comparator is very useful, both for the buyer and seller as it gives a recommeded selling price.
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