Why French startup SOAP left Williamsburg for California

One French company we found out about while researching an article on French entrepreneurs in Brooklyn was SOAP, an app that lets you slowly build up a sort of narrative of your own life in short, short videos. Like a soap opera.

Adrien Dupuy of the three-person team (business, design and dev) got back to us about their stop in Brooklyn and why the company has moved out to California, for now, with hopes of making it back here.

Of Brooklyn, he said, “Great places to work, delightful coffees, and people in the streets for instant testings. Getting to Manhattan was very easy if needed. Barbecue on the rooftop was very easy, too, if needed.” We appreciate the idea that rooftop barbecues are sometimes needed.

Screenshot from the SOAP app, via the iOS store.

Apparently, their neighborhood in Paris, Metro Sentier (2nd arrondissement), had some of Brooklyn’s feel.

“After three months in Brooklyn, we decided to move to California,” Dupuy wrote. “At first for a few meetings, and then for the whole summer. VCs are in SF and content creators are in LA so we’ll split the trip between those two cities.”

However, he said that the team already misses New York and plans to be back.

There was never any question of the company developing the app anywhere but America. “Even if we’re French, we built an American product. SOAP is an app for everyone to create [their] own soap opera. You guys invented the soap opera, moving to the US was obvious,” Dupuy explained.

Previously, the team built Znappit, another video sharing app. SOAP is only available on iOS right now, but you can request to join the beta of its Android version now.