Frederic Farrugia (EDHEC 2003) and You to You for the EDHEC Entrepreneur of the Year award

Candidate for the EDHEC Entrepreneur of the Year award

Frédéric Farrugia has had a passion for entrepreneurship since he was a little boy, and it was at EDHEC, in 1999 at the age of just 20, that he set up his first firm: LaGrandeEcole.com. At more than 40,000 visits per day, without fundraising and solely by word of mouth, the website www.lagrandeecole.com went on to become one of the most widely used social networks for students in France, and in 2004 was sold to Blue Média, the advertising agency for www.commentcamarche.net.

After a brief spell with Orange, where he helped launch 3G as well as the first commercial offers of Triple Play (Livebox) in France, in 2007 he co-founded You to You, one of the first digital agencies to specialise in influencer marketing and social media. His vision was simple: at a time when the consumer is king of the social web and can simply click any type of digital advertisement out of sight, it is essential to create moving and viral digital experiences that people want to share rather than get rid of. And so You to You, which symbolises this process of communication by digital prescription between consumers, was born. 

Very quickly the firm recruited an EDHEC associate and then another, and over a period of 8 years You to You expanded at an average rate of more than 50% annually, from revenue of €0 to more than €10 million, ranking it among the top 5 independent agencies in France, boasting clients such as Perrier (globally), Dom Pérignon (globally), Orange, Samsung, L’Oréal, PlayStation and Pernod-Ricard.

Already voted young agency of the year and digital agency of the year, You to You joined the communications group Mazarine in 2014. Frédéric became one of the group’s key associates, with a current value of more than €100 million in revenue in France, China and the United States. On top of creating and managing Mazarine – You to You, this serial entrepreneur also co-founded the web development studio Webqam (staff of 40 and revenue of more than €2 million) and a business offering photography lessons, Photonova, which gives more than 4,000 private classes each year.

And to keep in touch with today’s youth, Frédéric teaches digital business and entrepreneurship in various schools in France and Switzerland and offers his help to young entrepreneurs as a Business Angel. In this capacity, he has helped finance and develop firms such as Guest to Guest – Homelidays, Foodles, ActivCorner, Blue Lions, Click Eat and Soyez BCBG, the last of which was co-founded by entrepreneurs from EDHEC and was recently sold to the 5àsec group.

To find out more: http://mazarine.com/fr