This KEDGE student's start-up will represent Aquitaine at the CES in Las Vegas!

After doing an ECS prep programme at Grand Lebrun, I joined KEDGE BS in Bordeaux. My goal when I arrived at Kedge was to follow classes that would help me become an entrepreneur, so I chose to take classes in finance and innovation. I have always had the soul of a creator, since I was a kid I had always dreamed about inventing objects that could be useful to a lot of people. I also decided to become involved in the associative world at Kedge, notably as President of the CDA.

 

Indeed, I won't finish my degree until June 2018. It all started when I was doing my gap year, a little more than a year ago. At the time, I never imagined that a year later I would create my own start-up. I had a plan: first an internship as a consultant for a company created by another alumni (Beemybees, created by Franck Roger), then a more traditional internship in one of the big four. During my first internship at Beemybees, a consulting company in digital transformation, I learned a lot about the digital and new technologies field. That is also where the idea for KNOCK was born. During the internship, I met a lot of people, including Benoit Palabre, who was studying Miage and who became my partner at KNOCK. The team grew rapidly, notably in terms of technical expertise (5 people). So we started working on nights and weekends on a project mixing artificial intelligence and real estate. KNOCK is a virtual assistant that helps you find your ideal real estate. Behind this simple sentence is a complex artificial intelligence model. This AI is capable of interacting with humans and to understand them, in order to solve any issues related to their real estate search. Very quickly we realised that the project was gaining steam and couldn't remain a "side-project". My internship at Beemybees was coming to an end, so I decided to turn down my internship offer at an audit firm to dedicate myself 100% to KNOCK. It was the first time I had to make such a difficult choice for my future. We had five partners at the time, no office, no money, and a technologically ambitious product to finish. So, a lot of work. The team was composed of Benoit (COO), Julian (CTO), Thibault (Web Engineer), Philippe (Researcher and Lead IA Developer) and me, as CEO. Then, everything accelerated. We reached out to local real estate actors, launched our communication on social media, and continued to develop our product. A couple months later, we joined the Bordeaux Technowest incubator and launched out beta version.

 

 

A year later, KNOCK is doing well and we have able to recruit our first permanent staff an interns. In order to develop quickly, we have just launched our first fund raising operation. Our product has received attention and we were inited to the Web Summit in Lisbon in November and to the CES in Las Vegas in January. We are currently in the POC (proof of concept) phase in two new countries: Switzerland and Cote d'ivoire.

 

KNOCK was nominated as "company of the year" by the entrepreneur association "Opportunité d'ailleurs". There was also an article published about the company in the newspaper Sud Ouest  and the "Startupper" category in La Tribune. We were also selected by the Fund Truck and appeared on France 3.

 

 

In January, we will launch the solution openly, on a national level. We will also quickly launch a second innovative product in the real estate and housing field. Our ambition is to become a leader on the digital real estate market. I think AI provides a great opportunity to change pre-existing models and to create tools that positively affect the lives of those who use them. We are watching for major changes created by this technology. I am passionate about this subject and am writing my thesis on it. 

 

 
The KNOCK team.

My time at Kedge helped me gain the tools I needed to analyse a situation and be able to make quick and informed decisions. My experience in the associative sector helped me learn how to manage people and projects, which is very useful today. 

 

I would advise them to not hesitate and to go for it if you feel like you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. And to not hesitate to take risks, because that is when we grow the most. Finally, I would tell them to always position themselves as a "learner" because we are living in a time when knowledge evolves at such a pace that you always need to be questioning yourself and integrating new knowledge in order to keep pace.