While the health crisis is taking a toll on employment growth, the Devinci Start-Up incubator program is on the right track. To help EMLV alumni create their jobs instead of looking for it, the Pole Leonard de Vinci’s entrepreneurship support centre has organized a series of training workshops focusing on how best to use tools for business and job creation.
“What if the very unusual context that we are experiencing together in the context of the health crisis turned out to be an opportunity for you to start your own business? ” Inspired by this topical question, Devinci Start-up invited the alumni of the three schools, EMLV, ESILV and IIM, to a one-week event dedicated to the best ideas and practices for an entrepreneurial career. Sessions focused on helping the Pole Leonard de Vinci’s graduates draw inspiration from entrepreneurial techniques to optimize their job search.
Alumni First, an opportunity for entrepreneurship
As part of the “Alumni first” week, from 2 to 6 November, the graduates of the 2019 and 2020 classes were able to attend a series of live videoconference sessions aimed at answering the following questions: Which way to go after graduation? How to create a job in times of crisis?
In an unprecedented format, more than 100 alumni from the three schools of the Pole Leonard de Vinci attended the event organized by Devinci Start-Up: “You are looking to create your company, but you don’t know where to begin? You don’t have an idea yet, but you would like to launch your company one day? You are a graduate (or almost), and you are looking for a job or an experience to share?”
“If your answer is “yes” to one or more of these questions, sign up for these three webinars, tailor-made by seasoned entrepreneurs and former students of the Pole”.
There is no such thing as a good idea
Led by Franck Dupont, a graduate of ESILV, class of 2015, serial entrepreneur, this first talk of the week aimed to demystify entrepreneurship and to give concrete guidelines for taking action.
“When you set up a company, it’s in your best interest to sell before creating it. Today, there are so many tools on the internet, allowing you to test an idea, to find a market, without spending any money or recruiting.”
Franck Dupont offers the cluster’s entrepreneurs a new mindset, which consists of selling before creating.
“Market research has taken on a new form, which is to go to the market, directly, through social networks. Share your landing page on social networks to see if people buy or not. It’s essential to know whether you should continue the project.”
His clues for testing a business in 24 hours? A landing page or a showcase site that allows you to present and sell your product thanks to “call to action” buttons and targeted paid or free advertising via social networks.
“You can join Facebook groups relevant to your fields of activity and publish the name of your site, check if users are interested or not. An Instagram account for your product will allow you to describe your products in your bio. You can make stories every day and reply to comments about the hashtags you are interested in. It’s a perfect way to get early adopters for free”.
How do you get feedback from your customers? By creating an “incredible experience”.
“Entrepreneurship is an act of personal growth and emancipation. An entrepreneur is a rebel, someone who disagrees with the world he lives in, with the rules that the world imposes on him. “
Before looking for an idea, you have to look for a need. Focus on a problem. Once you have defined the situation well, you think about the “what”: what you are going to do, how you are going to build. Don’t be attached to the “what”: it changes all the time.”
Design your product showcase site in 24 hours
Guillaume Besnard, a business coach who graduated from the IIM, class of 2015, spoke about a range of tools used today by startup companies to create their showcase and e-commerce websites.
“It is necessary to make the difference between a showcase site (the equivalent of a business card) and a retail e-commerce site, which enables you to acquire clients, and requires extensive work on SEO or advertising”.
The three types of solutions for creating and managing websites are classified according to the degree of sophistication of the website design projects:
- The “DIY solutions: website creator platform such as Strikingly and Shopify, web hosting services such as OVH, O2Switch
- CMS (WordPress, about 33% of the world’s sites are made in WordPress), which offers a better degree of freedom in terms of features, but requires training to understand and use tools
- Tailor-made sites which are developed from A to Z
Ten entrepreneurial techniques to find a job
Marouane Ouaddah, class of 2020, has just graduated from EMLV and is the founder of the startup YoumannJob, a matching platform between employers and young candidates, with an approach based on the alignment between the company’s values and those of the candidates.
The aim of his webinar was to teach the alumni of the Pôle Léonard de Vinci how to “sell themselves” using a list of 10 techniques startup inspired and to find a job that really will give them a sense of satisfaction despite the current context.
This session helped participants to improve the efficiency of their Linkedin applications, using contact scrapping and lead automation tools and solutions such as Dataminer, Simple Scrape, Instant Data Scraper, Lemlist, Phantombuster, ProspectIn.
The very first step in starting a business is to find the e-mail addresses of prospects to embark on an inbound sales approach. The same approach applies to those who are looking to find the contact details of recruiting companies, using tools such as SalesQL, Phantombuster, ColdCRM, Dropcontact.
Devinci Start-up supports the students and alumni of the Pôle Léonard de Vinci in the creation of companies. The support offered takes various forms: coaching, thematic conferences and workshops, partnerships with incubators, banks and numerous companies.
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