The EDHEC Entrepreneur of the Year prize is awarded to an Edhec entrepreneur who has decided to take a leap into the unknown and has contributed to EDHEC’s image as a creator of talent by their taste for risk and adventure.
Their daring and sense of innovation will have impacted on the winner’s sector or region, or on the vision others have of the sector. .
How can I vote?
If you are an EDHEC Alumni subsciber, log on to your profile to connect: Access here
You can also vote on our Facebook application: Click here
and share your vote with your friends to support your preferred candidate!
Patrick Amiel (EDHEC GE 1996), founder of Wengo
What do you do when need the advice of an expert or the help of a good professional? The Wengo website enables individuals to choose the right professional based on the opinions of previous clients and to contact the professional with a single click.
Back in 2006, after spending six years in digital marketing with major advertising agencies like DDB and McCann, Patrick Amiel decided in the space of 24 hours to switch to the entrepreneurial route. He then joined Wengophone, a subsidiary of Neuf Cegetel offering an internet-based telephone solution, a sort of “French Skype”. He teamed up with the four other founders to completely overhaul the company’s positioning and business model. As of today, the telephone platform is used to put individuals and professionals into contact with each other, with Wengo charging a commission for each consultation. The mechanics are well-oiled. Individuals registered with Wengo can choose from among 2,500 specialists by viewing their profiles, their price rates and availability, and especially the opinions of previous clients. After entering their bank details, they are called by the professional of their choice and billed according to the time spent in consultation. Wengo verifies the expert’s credentials beforehand (for lawyers, for example, Wengo checks their professional membership card and their registration with the chamber of lawyers).
Since being launched in 2007, Wengo.fr has been consulted over 2.7 million times. With the system thoroughly tried and tested, Wengo is expanding via a strategy of partnerships with other widely-used sites like Aufeminin.com or Yahoo!, and by a series of targeted acquisitions geared to broadening Wengo’s domains of expertise, e.g. Astrocenter in 2010, Juritravail and Netiris in 2012, DevisPresto (2013) and SansRDV (2014), with two further acquisitions currently in progress.
Wengo now operates in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Brazil and plans to start up in Turkey, Germany, Denmark and Norway this year. The company is now owned by Vivendi, employs some 150 staff and posts €40m in sales.
During his time at EDHEC, Patrick was President of the EDHEC Student Union (1994/1995 - Nice) and founded the EDHAIGLE association geared to helping 10-16 year olds placed under legal protection procedures for youths and minors.
For more information : http://www.wengo.fr/
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Jérôme Callec (GE 1994), Founder of Linkeo and Socket Blues Production
Graduate of EDHEC in 1994 and of Université Dauphine, Jérôme started his career with Vivendi in London before spending several years with Cegetel in Paris.
He founded linkeo.com on March 2000 and is currently CEO, board member and shareholder. He sold 50% of his shares in early 2014.
After starting from scratch less than 15 years ago, linkeo.com is now France’s leading creator of websites for VSMEs with:
- over 700 employees, of whom 50% work outside France,
- over €40m in revenues and €10m in EBITDA in 2013,
- over 30,000 clients
- and, for the last five years, linkeo.com has been expanding rapidly in international markets (Canada, Australia, USA) and running production centres in Mauritius and Madagascar.
Linkeo.com has found a winning blend of rapid organic growth and consolidation in the French market via two successive acquisitions in 2009 and 2010.
The challenge over the next few years lies with international expansion, particularly in the US.
As a music lover, Jérôme also founded Socket Blues Production in 2010, a production and publishing company for musical artists in whom he believes. He is currently promoting an album for Garner, a group he has supported and produced for the last four years.
Jérôme is a pioneer: he was a member of the first class to graduate from the Nice campus, which is celebrating its 20 birthday this year.
Linkeo, a first success story, built on tenacity, humility and creativity!
- 1994-2014...20 years it took Jérôme to go from ...zero, from nothing, from cardboard boxes, from his garage, to €40m in revenues, an international company employing over 700 and a genuine media group that is shaking up the leaders in the sector.
- 20 years to create and re-create: Jérôme organised his partial withdrawal from the group in 2014 in order to embark on new projects.
Jérôme is passionate about the creativity of others and about music!
As a business angel, Jérôme now helps others to express their creativity, as witnessed by his first active participation in Vivienne Investissement, a quantitative investment fund. He assists start-ups...and especially innovative projects in the music and artistic spheres.
For more information: http://www.linkeo.us/
Béatrice de Montille (GE 1999), founder of Mercimaman
Béatrice de Montille founded Merci Maman from her base in London in 2007. She imagined a series of personalisable gifts for women, men and children. Customers can have all sorts of messages written on Merci Maman jewellery; birthday greetings, congratulations for a newborn baby, personal messages, loving words, all kinds of messages and sentiments fit with the Merci Maman philosophy.
Her business has more than tripled over the last 12 months, thanks notably to a major public relations campaign undertaken after Kate Middleton wore one of her pendants. More recently, her prize for winning the UK’s Great Retail Revival competition was a two-week concession in May in the House of Fraser department store on London’s mythical Oxford Street. Along with her 10-strong team, she is also working on developing Merci Maman in France, helped by a report in the French TV programme, Envoyé Spécial, which showcased the Merci Maman success story on 1 May.
As a real “Mumpreneur”, she reconciles the expansion of her business with the demands of her four children. Her husband, a former City banker, also boarded the Merci Maman ship last June.
The team already comprises several Edhec alumni and Beatrice hopes to have many others join her in the Merci Maman adventure.
For more information:
http://www.mercimamanboutique.com/cart/
https://www.facebook.com/MerciMamanGifts
Interview : http://businessofeminin.com/rencontre-avec-beatrice-de-montille
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