Luc Bousquet (EDHEC Master 2010), co-founder of CarJager, shares his passion for his career in entrepreneurship.

Tell us your story

I’ve been passionate about automobiles since I managed to catch Mickey Mouse’s tail in a red car at the funfair. The entrepreneur within me, an urge just as strong, caught up with me on my first day at EDHEC in Lille in 2006 when I realised that the pace of my studies would be different to what I had experienced in preparatory class. I’m now the managing director of CarJager, which I founded in 2018 together with Vladimir Grudzinski (founder of Reezocar).

My first entrepreneurial experiences in 2006 involved a clothing brand that I set up with my sister ("eunué") and a photo-sharing website that I created with my current associate ("ikiltyou"). The former taught me the importance of ensuring balance in any partnership. The latter taught me that it’s possible to have fun while working! I quickly realised that in entrepreneurship financing is the key issue.

The rest of my career has been varied: in 2008 I started working for Crédit Agricole CIB in market finance in London, before becoming a lawyer in Paris in 2013 (having majored at Université Paris Assas). After several stints in law firms, I spent 4 years between 2014 and 2018 at Wilhelm & Associés working in legal counsel/litigation in real estate, as well as supporting the development phase of start-ups (contracts, fundraising, etc.).

One of my clients was the start-up Reezocar (bought out in 2020 by Société Générale), which had been founded by a friend of mine, Vladimir Grudzinski. After 5 years spent accompanying his firm with counsel on contracts and pre-litigation, he told me he wanted to establish a new start-up specialized in collector automobiles. Not only did I accept his offer to be an adviser, but I put my career as a lawyer on hold to set up CarJager with him in 2018. It was a huge sacrifice for me given the legal career that awaited me, but for me it was about fulfilling a dream: entrepreneurship in the market I was most passionate about.

CarJager now has a team of more than 20 and has helped more than 400 clients buy or sell collector cars.

Tell us about your business. What makes it special?

CarJager is the most cutting-edge digital tool available to buy and sell sports cars and collector cars based on community-driven functions. Considered a niche market, collector automobiles represent a global market with a value of no less than €50 billion annually, and no global player has yet emerged in the digital sector. Due to a lack of efficiency, 50% of collector automobiles on this market are sold outside classified ads and auctions: buyers can’t find what they’re looking for and sellers are willing to sell but don’t want to take care of the transaction. What’s more, there is no-one available to accompany buyers (advice, transparency, secure payment).

CarJager meets these needs with innovative digital functions and an offer of support for both buyers and sellers throughout the process.

With a website that sees high visitor numbers, CarJager is building the largest buy-and-sell database of vehicles, and that data feeds into a predictive buy-and-sell digital tool. The high visitor numbers and data have enabled us to be a leading digital broker. For each transaction, CarJager is paid a percentage of the vehicle sale price varying between 3.5% and 6% (incl. tax), depending on the price.

We offer the full range of support services (expertise, transport, professional photography, registration and breakdown guarantees), including finance. These are subcontracted to service providers.

CarJager has raised €2.2 million since 2018 from family offices and business angels including BADGE (Business Angels des Grandes Ecoles which includes graduates from EDHEC).

What’s your target market?

CarJager’s target is the worldwide community of car lovers in the broadest sense. We target experienced collectors just as much as automobile enthusiasts looking to make their first purchase. 50% of our clientele is from outside France, and this percentage continues to climb month-on-month.

Our price range in 2020 was between €5000 and more than €1 million.

2021 is the first year we’re developing CarJager in the US, the world’s leading market for collector automobiles.

What have been your best achievements so far?

The best achievement has been for my associate Vladimir Grudzinski and I to put together a team of more than 20 automobile lovers of exceptional quality. Recruitment is one of the greatest challenges an entrepreneur faces, and I’m very proud of each and every member who has contributed to the success of CarJager. With people in Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Orléans, Bourges, Troyes and as far as Los Angeles in the US and Warsaw in Poland, together we boast a rich and diversified skillset. Someone from EDHEC joined us on a work/study contract in January 2021, and this is only the beginning.

An example of this strength is that we managed to convince 10 people to move from Paris to Aix-en-Provence last year when we changed the location of our head office. And not only that, but we also convinced the whole staff team to go into lockdown in a house together for 2 months in March/April 2020!

In 2018, CarJager received an award for the best start-up dedicated to second-hand vehicle traders at the Etats-majors du VO (EMVO). In 2019, CarJager was selected for an award by the audience at the Grand Prix ACF Autotech, which has been held in France since 2018 by the Automobile Club de France (ACF) in partnership with the ESSEC Alumni Automobile Club (EAAC). In 2020, CarJager won the SEO 2020 IndexWatch award.

What projects and ambitions does your business have?

Our ambition is to become the reference digital platform on the global collector automobile market. To do that, we must continue to improve the SEO numbers on our website, develop the social functions available on user accounts and digitalise the customer journey.

In 2021, we aim to significantly develop our brand image and complete our first transactions in the US.

Finally, having raised €2.2 million since 2018, CarJager is preparing a new fundraising campaign for several million euros for late 2021.

In the long term, we hope to diversify our business model by applying our know-how to other second-hand markets for high-value items (watches, yachts and real estate for example) – no mean feat!

What would you like to say to young entrepreneurs from EDHEC?

I took great value from the wealth of all that EDHEC has to offer. Personally I had the chance to discover the cities of Lille/Roubaix, Hong-Kong (academic exchange), Nice and London (final internship). That opportunity to travel to places far from home was fantastic. I was also a member of one of the many associations (Junior Enterprise) within EDHEC’s unrivalled panoply of activities. That enabled me to learn the true meaning of teamwork, setting shared objectives, delegation and celebration!

With regard to young entrepreneurs specifically, I think it is essential to dare to be an entrepreneur as soon as possible, be willing to take risks, leave your comfort zone, work on your perseverance and learn to live with the bare minimum so you’re not distracted by secondary needs outside your project. I see entrepreneurship as a calling. You have to be willing to sacrifice anything that doesn’t contribute to the fulfilment of your project.

Here are the three primary lessons I’ve learned so far: place great importance on the people you team up with, perhaps even carrying out compatibility tests with a coach / actively solicit your network of entrepreneurs + investors as soon as possible (take part in conferences, ask for meetings) / prioritise execution over ideas.

What are your expectations from the alumni community?

I expect it to continue to enhance the EDHEC brand in companies around the world. At my own small level, I try to do my bit every day by telling people about the quality of the EDHEC education whenever I have the chance, prioritising recruitment from EDHEC and sharing EDHEC success stories on social media. To optimise my networking in the early part of my career as a lawyer, I took part in nearly every pitching session for investors in 2014/2015 through EDHEC business angels in Paris and I moderated a Smart Class EDHEC conference on law & taxation in 2014. Outside EDHEC, I’ve presented at least one conference paper each year on subjects like taxation, fundraising for start-ups, employee incentive schemes and entrepreneurship (e.g. The Family in 2015, 50 Partners in 2016). Since 2017, my public appearances have mainly involved presenting CarJager.

Which of the values CARE, SHARE or DARE resonate with you the most and why?

All three values represent for me a balance that one must be very careful to strike. The one that resonates with me the most is SHARE due to the nature of my entrepreneurial adventure, which is focused on a passion that is permanently shared with friends, families and colleagues. By extension, the notion of knowledge transmission by protecting France’s historic heritage and global heritage generally is something that motivates me on a daily basis.

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