Sauvegarder

This year within the framework of one course we had to start a new business and to launch a fictive start-up. We were in team of 4 or 5. My team was made of Choa Park, Mathieu Revillion, Sandra Goncalves and myself.

First we had to find a creative idea for our new business. All of us had ideas, the aim was to find a problem in our lives and to try to solve it. Choa as a foreigner thought it was very difficult to book an appointment in a doctor’s office and she didn’t really understand how the French system worked. The team presented the different ideas in front of the class, we presented 3, Choa’s idea, Sandra’s idea, which was to create a kind of Groupon for fashion clothes, the more people like and share an outfit, the better reduction you have, and my idea to cumulate loyalty points for yourself and other people when you go shopping in supermarkets. We asked people to choose the idea they preferred and that’s why we continued with Save U Choa’s idea.

At first Save U aimed at helping all people in France to book an appointment online to a doctor’s office. Developing Save U was not an easy process, we had to talk to many customers, always taking into account what people said, always evolving and always being flexible. After all these steps (and here are only the most important ones), we ameliorated the concept each week, always trying to fit with the reality of the market and the needs of people. We early realized that the target market was too broad and that it would be more efficient to focus on a niche market. During several weeks we worked hard on the project, always putting into questions what we’ve done and if it was the best choice for our customers. When we presented our project to the class the last day we realized how much the idea had changed in a few weeks. At the end we decided not to focus on all people in France but only on tourists visiting Paris, and if we had longer time it would have evolved again, and we would have only focused on premium tourists who stay in luxury hostel. I think it would have been our main pivot.

This experience was very constructive for us. First we never studied entrepreneurship and we didn’t even think about it. Launching our own start-up rather than only studying concepts and theories was the best thing to do. It was much more interesting to work on a real project and manage it to succeed.

I learnt lot of things and the most important is that I learnt what I like and dislike about entrepreneurship. I also learnt new things I can apply to my professional life.

In this paper I am going to start by explaining what I liked and disliked in the project. Then I am going to say how to apply what I’ve learnt to my future professional life. And to conclude I will say whether or not I am going to continue entrepreneurship.

What I enjoyed

I really appreciated this project because I had a lot of fun, it was very interesting to try to manage our own project and also to always look for a business model. This experience was also constructive because it was a real professional experience.

1. First, I really enjoyed working in team, I liked sharing ideas, trying to solve problems together, thinking about new ideas. I noticed that at some point it the development of Save U, one of them was pessimistic, we all were at least once, and the other team members were present to support and help. That’s why being in team is very useful because even if you have a soft shot the other ones are here to help and to manage you to get back up, and the week after you are more motivated than ever.

2. I liked being autonomous. We really had the feeling to manage our own project and to manage it with our own competencies. Mister Savvas was here to guide us and the class was here to comment, but each week we had to succeed by ourselves in order to develop our business. It was our idea, our initiatives, our project, our customers and our success. I think it is one of the first times in my student life I do something by myself, and it was so enriching.

3. I really enjoyed talking to people. I think one of the most interesting things was to talk directly to people. When you manage your own project, you feel very concern by the idea and you really enjoy talking to people about it. But it is much more interesting to talk to people who are also concerned by your project and who are willing to discuss your ideas in order to ameliorate them. You realize you are doing something useful for someone (if not, you have to change your idea and this is why this is so enriching to talk to people). We talked to two different kinds of people. Customers were the one who are directly concerned by the idea. They were really interested by our idea but didn’t hesitate to criticized when we were wrong or when they didn’t really understand how it could improve their everyday life. At first I was surprised to notice that people who really liked the project took time to exchange ideas on the project, it was very motivating. Customers were very useful to always evolve and adapt ourselves to their needs.

We also talked to partners and I enjoyed it because we had to face the real life. I mean that professional are extremely direct when it comes to business. They won’t invest time and energy in something which is not interesting. Professionals were very decisive to know whether we wanted to pivot or not. Pharmacists were our first pivot, at first we wanted to include them in the project but they told us it was not useful for them. Then it was really difficult to convince doctors but by talking to them we understood that a premium clientele was much more interesting for them than tourists.

4. I enjoyed taking initiatives. It was amazing to manage our own business the way we wanted to. It was the first time we could test our ideas. We had to organize ourselves and our time to know whether our idea was good or not. We had to find ways to understand people and estimate if or idea could work. It was great to go outside the building and to do something real. We had to use the tools we leant in an efficient way. I think such a project is the only way to realize that even if you are extremely motivated, you need theory, help and organization. Initiatives are important but only when they are efficient.

5. The last thing I enjoyed is that I finally realized that what we learnt in university can be useful. I enjoy studying, I like learning and always talking in class about new concepts and new tools. But sometimes we don’t really realize that all these tools are also useful in the reality. For example, at the beginning of the experience when we had to choose an idea and we also had to be aware about competitors in order to know if our idea was relevant. Last year we had a whole course about competition:

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