A KEDGE student, and already an entrepreneur: discover "Very Good Prof"

Since my parents live there, I went to middle school and high school in Angers. Once I got my high school diploma, I decided to go to IUT GEA, still in Angers, with the strong intention to pass the entrance exams to get into a business school. I learned a lot during those years, the programme is both practical and theoretical and prepares you to manage a company. I followed that with a year in a license work-study programme in management at Skema, I wanted to have one foot in the professional world, and I wasn't disappointed. It was a great experience. Finally, I passed the entrance exams, and decided to join KEDGE, the school's reputation and life in Bordeaux where the main reasons I chose the school at the time. And I don't regret it! 

 

I have always wanted to try to start my own business. It really fits my personality. I am independent but at the same time, I really need others to move forward. Starting your own company is a collective adventure after being a personal choice. It's a risk that you share, a feeling of freedom that I never tire of feeling every morning when I wake up! A hard drug, I think... ;) My brother Albéric and I talked about this ambition together, we had the idea to create our own company in the back of our heads. In high school, I was terrible at math unfortunately. Like a lot of other kids, I had a personal tutor at home. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great experience. I didn't get to choose the professor and it was pretty expensive. Thinking back to that experience, and at the same time Albéric was working as a tutor at the time, I thought that we could probably do better. We could say that these initial thoughts were the start of the Very Good Prof adventure! 

 

 

I know how after school support can be be beneficial and quickly imagined what a digital platform could bring to the table. Albéric immediately like the idea, Louis joined us later, and it wasn't difficult to convince him either! I think that is really when the adventure started for real! You could say that we are really a complementary team. I am in business school, Albéric has a law degree and Masters degree and Louis is a developer and is finishing his degree at King's College. This diversity in our profiles is a real added-value that we appreciate even more as time goes by. Louis worked a lot over the summer with the help of Alex, who also joined the team to help build the website. We are very proud of it, it's an original creation. Louis thought about everything, and together we looked at the different changes that needed to be made and the functionalities that needed to be put in place. After eight months of development, it's a real accomplishment. 

 

 

The concept? We wanted a platform that connected students and parents. Parents are looking for tutors for their kids, and students want to work as tutors to share their knowledge and earn a little extra cash. Since we enjoy it ourselves, we provide a lot of freedom to our users, the connection is made free, and it is up to them to organise sessions. You don't have to provide your bank information after two clicks, you don't have to register: Freedom. We trust our users because we trust our world. In addition to the tool the website provides, we do a lot of work beforehand, with recruitment for example. The selection of the professors is very rigourous. We meet all of the candidates in person, they have to take knowledge tests, and participate in an interview to show their motivation. That provides the assurance that the tutoring they provide is high quality and shows a privileged relationship with us. Although the classes are high quality, they remain reasonably priced, and below the average. Indeed, we offer classes to parents for 14€50/H after a tax deduction. 

 

Concretely, that means that we take care of everything so that parents can benefit from a 50% tax deduction, because we have the personal services accreditation. To summarise, 29€ initial cost brought down to a final cost of 14€50. That is also an important part of our work, we carry out all the administrative procedures for the parents (billing, fiscal declaration).

 

Finally, we can't talk about Very Good Prof without also talking about our solidarity commitment. From the beginning, we have thought about how to integrate our company in society and to make it useful. We need to have a purpose to our work, and we have found it in the freedom I mentioned, but also in this commitment. It is really important to us. We wanted an extra touch of soul with Very Good Prof! So we put in place a unique service. We offer all of our tutors to engage with a partner non-profit organisation by donating 1€ per class, if the tutor makes a donation, we match the donation with another 1€. So, we collected 2€ per class for the organisation. The organisations we have partnered with all work of equal opportunities. We care about this deeply, especially since we know that private tutoring can also contribute to inequalities. It is an important aspect of our entrepreneurial commitment,  Albéric, Louis and I are very invested in this issue. Very Good Prof is therefore THE website you can trust for at home tutoring services, a website where you will find the best teachers at a reasonable price. There are services to discover, so check it out ;-)

 

 

We launched the service in Bordeaux at the end of December and we already have our first clients who are satisfied. So we are too, Very Good Prof still needs to make itself know in Bordeaux, but we quickly want to expand to other cities. Paris, of course, but also Angers, where we are from, Nantes, Lille... It is not as easy as for other platforms, because as I said we interview all of our candidates in person, and that requires a lot of logistics. That is the price for quality services. We want to maintain our freedom for the moment, because it is important to us, but we may eventually conduct a crowdfunding campaign to grow Very Good Prof. Once our service has been deployed in France, we will start thinking about expanding abroad. We really believe in the potential of Very Good Prof, it will happen quickly I am sure!

 

We have been lucky to receive several prizes for our project. We receive the coup de cœur prize and community prize in the framework of a competition organised by Xavier Hollandts. Then we received the first entrepreneur prize during the KICK START Weekend in Marseille. The endowments we received helped us invest in order to make the service more comprehensive and legitimate. The pitch is a special kind of exercise, it required a lot more work than you think, but it is very rewarding when you win the competition.

 

Go for it! It is something you need to live once in your life, creating a company, it's like having baby. Like a baby, it looks like you, it develops, it learns, it makes mistakes, but it brings a lot to the people around it. It's a personal and collective experience. You can't be afraid to fail, that was yesterday's world. Today, you have to accept it and promote it even (yes, yes, even in France). There's only one condition: you have to give it your all!