Robin Louvet (EDHEC Intl BBA 2019), from beta-tester to start-up entrepreneur

Robin Louvet (EDHEC Intl BBA 2019) plans to work in the sports event management sector. Besides his studies, he is working on his own start up with two friends: Bourgad, that stems from our desire to create a new way of making donations.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF. 

After majoring in scientific subjects at secondary level in Normandy, I moved to the US for one year as part of a sports grant to study and compete in athletics in division 2 of the NCAA for Maryville University in Saint-Louis. When I came back, I joined the BBA programme on EDHEC’s Lille campus. My first internship was in Brazil as a volunteer working on the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. During my second year, I did an exchange in Slovenia, which allowed me to discover a country that is streets ahead of France when it comes to sustainability. I later did an internship in an events agency (Blacklemon) that specialises in the luxury sector. In my third year I chose the IBT specialisation in entrepreneurship, but I continued working in the events sector, joining the Hospitality & Event Management programme on the Nice campus and later completing an internship at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance to help organise the finance dimension of the G7 summit which was held in Chantilly last July.

Since September I have been at Kedge BS on the International Sport & Event Management MSc programme with a view to working in the sports event management sector.
This doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten my affinity with the entrepreneurial sector: for a while I’ve been working with some friends to develop a start-up known as Bourgad.

HOW DID YOUR PROJECT COME ABOUT? 

Bourgad came about through an initiative between friends: Paul and Augustin Grisel, two brothers who are fascinated with new technologies and realised that the global budget allocated by businesses to online advertising was steadily increasing (and even recently overtook the amount spent on “physical” advertising). The other realisation is that fewer and fewer donations are being made to associations.
In discussions with other students, it became clear that many of them are aware of today’s environmental and societal problems but neither have the time nor the money to help the associations working to resolve these problems.
So the aim was to find a way to finance these associations that wouldn’t cost users any money. The solution: rely on everyday actions and the omnipresent advertising in our lives to fund these associations.
So Bourgad uses digital advertising to collect funds through a simple and trivial action: opening a new tab.
The idea first took shape in November 2018, and a beta version was produced in December 2018. I was one of its first users, and my role was to come up with ideas and give feedback so a definitive version could be released in January 2019.
Since then, I’ve been working to develop this start-up at the same time as studying, particularly trying to increase the number of new users.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS. 

Bourgad stems from our desire to create a new way of making donations. The idea is to make the act of donating more of a “game” and less of an austere gesture. As donations increase, an interactive map with cartoon graphics and various pictograms (trees, schools, etc.) forms a small town, or “bourgade” (an old French word for village), which is where the company name comes from.
The pictograms represent the different associations to which a Bourgad user can make the donations needed to finance them. This is done through unintrusive advertising displays that appear when users open a new tab in their browser.
The money is then redistributed as users wish: members offer their donations to the associations that appear in the interactive map. And so it is Bourgad users alone who determine how the money is to be divided up between the different projects.
Bourgad is a browser extension available for Chrome and Firefox and compatible with Google, Ecosia and Lilo. And so it does not directly compete with these projects; it is simply another way to have a positive impact on society. Our approach involves accumulating means of financing social projects without having a negative impact or being a burden on users: we open a significant number of new tabs every day, so let’s put them to good use!

WHAT IS YOUR INITIAL ASSESSMENT OF THIS ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVENTURE? 

It’s a highly enriching experience which has given me the opportunity to discover many aspects of business I was unaware of. Having a very small team means we all have to do highly varied tasks, be innovative and creative to find ways of achieving quality with few resources.
We are fortunate enough to have knowledge in a wide range of areas thanks to our different academic backgrounds, which allows us to have different perspectives on the challenges we face.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS? 

That they should push ahead and not wait until their product is perfect. We launched a beta version which our friends and acquaintances used to give us feedback and understand the project. They became our first loyal users and now help us improve Bourgad and tell others about it. Little by little, the product has improved, an English-language version has been produced and new functions have been added, with more still to come.
Don’t be afraid to question your own vision, listen to others and discuss your project: that’s how progress is made and opportunities emerge.
Don’t wait too long, it might be a good idea to make the most of your time as a student to take the plunge. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you’re less competent. We have the good fortune to have excellent teaching staff with a lot of experience. Our knowledge is fresh, we can seek advice whenever we want and we have time on our hands!

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOUR PROJECT/BUSINESS? 

We recently launched our own advertising unit so we could break away from Google advertising. That allows us to have closer control over what we display so we can offer Bourgad users better targeted advertising, work with appropriate brands and thereby make greater gains, because when a user clicks on an ad they like, it generates more revenue.
Thanks to this approach, our revenue over the last two weeks equalled that of the previous eight months combined. Our objective is therefore to increase the number of users.

WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FROM THE ALUMNI COMMUNITY? 

We need more visibility but above all new users. So I would invite fellow alumni to try out Bourgad. Then, if they like the project, they can tell others about it, whether colleagues, friends or family members, and thereby expand this community.
Make a donation by opening a new tab – a nice gesture, no?

Join the Bourgad community at: www.bourgad.com !