Alexandre Guillot and Gauthier Levha present The Good Gift!

1. Can you explain briefly how your project came about (team, origins and originality)?

We are both graduates of the EDHEC Grande Ecole programme but our paths crossed in January 2017 at a Wagon training course (an intensive 9-week boot camp to learn how to code).

Why this project?
The Good Gift is based on a very simple observation: when it comes to giving someone a gift, we all want to make our loved ones happy but there are many complications: coming up with good ideas, spending hours shopping in stores, buying online but waiting 3 days for delivery, gift wrapping, etc.

How?
Using a simple and intuitive platform, The Good Gift supports you in your mission to make a loved one happy by helping you to find the ideal gift in just a few minutes.

Gift-giving with The Good Gift is all about:
- Discovering a selection of products and experiences that includes established brands as well as innovative products and original experiences
- A unique shopping experience: your gifts are wrapped and hand-delivered by a courier in under 3 hours!

2. What is your initial assessment of this entrepreneurial adventure?

We both started out in major French firms, so the first thing to do was to develop a radically different mentality: produce, test, measure and learn... and start all over again.

This adventure makes for highly varied activities on a daily basis: product development, UX design, partnership negotiations, web development, looking for financing, traffic acquisition, referencing, transaction management, staying in touch with our community of users, etc. We face such diverse challenges that we learn about all kinds of new things every day!

3. Have you ever benefited from the network of EDHEC graduates?

We are in touch with a few graduates from the EDHEC network from whom we get advice, particularly on shared problems and sectors (gift-giving, e-commerce, last mile delivery). We have also developed partnerships with certain brands created by other EDHEC graduates.

4. What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?

Get the first version of your product out there as fast as possible! It’s the only way to get feedback from users and to improve it. A comment by Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) sums it up well: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

5. What’s next for your company?

We are still in the “pre-market fit” phase, which means we’re trying to develop an in-depth understanding of what our users expect with regard to an identified problem (purchasing a gift) so we can bring them THE ideal solution.
What’s next? Fundraising, recruitment and the roll-out of larger-scale operations. Our primary objective is growth.

6. What are your expectations from the community of EDHEC graduates (fundraising, looking for staff, partners, advice, etc.)?

We are constantly looking out for opportunities within the EDHEC network but also in our communities (Le Wagon, LION, Station F).
We have noticed that there is a very strong sense of mutual assistance in the EDHEC network, and we also feel it is important to be available, especially to students looking for feedback.

7. Have you been in contact with EDHEC Young Entrepreneurs? If so, when? And what help did the incubator provide?

We have been in contact with EDHEC Young Entrepreneurs since the project first came about, which allowed us to give structure to our work during the first few months and to launch our MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as quickly as possible!
We were also lucky enough to be part of the EDHEC incubator at Station F, which gives us access to an incredibly rich ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors and institutions. Everything is in place for us to enjoy the ideal conditions for success.

8. More information :

The Good Gift
Website : https://www.thegoodgift.co
Follow us on Facebook !
Email : hello@thegoodgift.com