Entrepreneurship is becoming an essential component of business school training, allowing entrepreneurs to launch themselves directly after obtaining their diploma. How to get started in Tech after business school? Grégoire, co-founder of Affluences, answers our questions.
Grégoire Tabard graduated from IMT-BS (Institut Mines-Télécom Business School) in 2014. That year, he launched into entrepreneurship and founded a Tech company with his two partners: Paul Bouzol (IMT Nord Europe) and Micaël Pais Novo (Supinfo). It was also from their experience as students that Grégoire and Paul had the idea of creating the startup Affluences.
Everything you need to know about Affluences
Affluences finds its origin in the inability, for Paul and Grégoire, to find uncrowded libraries in which to study, during their years in engineering and business school. Abroad, the two entrepreneurs were unable to find the right times to visit museums or tourist attractions during low traffic hours. “ Sometimes we waited for hours », explains Grégoire Tabard. This subject is very important for the entrepreneur who also wrote his dissertation on the subject of queue management.
This is how the startup Affluences was born, which is trying to “ to provide a simple solution to this problem », Indicates the IMT-BS graduate. He thus specifies that the start-up makes it possible to measure, predict and communicate attendance in real time, in all establishments that can accommodate the public (town halls, swimming pools, libraries, museums, etc.).
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Getting started in Tech after business school
Is it easy to enter the Tech world after attending business school? It must be said that the challenge is less impressive for a graduate of IMT-BS, an establishment which operates at the heart of a network of engineering schools: IMT. Thus, bridges are created, during the course, between the students of the business school and those of the institution which is present on the same campus: Telecom Sud-Paris.
In addition, Grégoire indicates that the founders of Affluences chose self-financing, a gamble that paid off since the startup quickly found its audience. “ We immediately found our market, our customers who allowed us to be profitable very quickly. » She still chose to raise funds, in 2020, to accelerate its development and launch abroad.
Going international with your startup
More than entrepreneurship in Tech, today, Grégoire’s big challenge is to manage teams spread across different European countries. Building multicultural teams does not scare the IMT-BS graduate who took advantage of the opportunities offered by his school to spend a year in China and six months in Malaysia.
Today, Affluences has around fifty employees located in three offices: Rome, Barcelona and Paris. The startup’s ambition is to recruit 20 new employees by the end of 2022 and reach 100 employees within three years.
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