I went to the Uneed Residency in France

A month ago I went to France for the Uneed startup founder residency. For a week there were 10 startup founders all under one roof working away at their products, sharing advice and getting help from each other. It seems like a great way to really focus on your business and also meet people in the same boat as you.

Thomas Sanlis had been inspired by the Hacker Residency event he went to in Vietnam in October 2025. So he came back to France and set about creating his own event in Nantes where he lives.

I travelled to Nantes to take part in the social night at the end of the week and to meet the residents. Everyone was nice about me also gatecrashing the house for the weekend 😀

It was a pleasure to meet some people I know from X like Thomas, the organiser, Annika from Creem and Dymtro from ScreenShotOne. All the other founders were friendly as well and there was a great vibe in the house. I attended a great talk on how to use TikTok as a founder. There were gasps of surprise as the speaker explained that a lot of Gen Z use TikTok as a search engine instead of just entertainment.

It was a good reminder that the best experiences are really in-person away from a screen. I also caught the tail end of a heatwave and it was a good sign to me that I'm not suited to living in a hot country.

Hopefully I'll attend some more events like this. We definitely need more casual-vibe startup events in Europe. Thomas is organising another residency in October so I will be applying to that.