Guide to Creating Your Own Startup with Le Wagon

Working as an employee at a tech company is not the only option available for coding bootcamp grads; you can start your own tech company, too. According to the US Small Business Administration, 31.7 million small businesses were recorded in the US in 2020. In addition, China and the US own the most unicorn companies globally.

Le Wagon, which offers full-time and part-time tech bootcamps in web development and data science, is known as a catalyst for IT entrepreneurs. In fact, up to seven percent of Le Wagon alumni started their own tech companies. At the time of writing, over 210 startups had been created by Le Wagon alums.

How to Turn Your Idea Into a Viable Product with Le Wagon

Find a business partner/co-founder among your Le Wagon peers

The Le Wagon community is an excellent place for students and alumni to find like-minded people and test startup ideas together. During the bootcamp, students learn to communicate, collaborate, and build their professional networks through various group projects and networking events. Many alumni have found co-founders among peers at Le Wagon and started tech businesses together.

For example, Skello, an online scheduling and management software company, was founded by Le Wagon alumni Samy Amar and Quitterie Mathelin-Moreaux. The company has grown rapidly having hired over 200 employees, including 14 alumni. Now, the company has over 7,000 happy customers who have benefited from optimizing schedules with Skello software.

Take advantage of Le Wagon’s dedicated Slack channel for startup founders

The Le Wagon internal Slack workspace connects over 15,000 students and alumni worldwide. Students use Slack channels to pick up technical tips, insights, and strategies to supplement their training, and network, seek co-founders, and obtain assistance with landing freelancing gigs or securing a job in the tech industry.

Inspirational talks with entrepreneurs at Le Wagon

Besides Q&A sessions with the alumni, Le Wagon invites entrepreneurial alums to give inspirational talks and share their experiences in a narrative format. It allows the lecturers to structure their speech and provide students with a step-by-step plan to turn their idea into a product and create a tech startup from scratch.

Le Wagon Outcomes for Entrepreneurs

Le Wagon’s numbers speak for the school’s effectiveness. Around seven percent of Le Wagon alumni started their own tech companies. That adds up to over 210 startups, with 101 of them reportedly having already raised a combined amount of €723,943,479 (approximately $852 million).

Below are only five of the most significant Le Wagon alum-owned companies that move the needle in the IT industry.

1. Cohabs

• Startup Overview: Through a network of sustainable and community-driven shared homes, Cohabs offers adaptable, fully furnished lodging.
• Total raised: €73,000,000 (approx. $73.61M)
• Co-founded by: Le Wagon alum Malik Dauber
  

2. Matera

• Startup Overview: To help co-owners run their own building, Matera brings together lawyers, accountants, and web developers.
• Total raised: €46,500,000 (approx. $46.88M)
• Co-founded by: Le Wagon alum Victor Prigent
• Hired: 13 Le Wagon alumni
  

3. Skello

• Startup Overview: Skello automates payroll processing, team communication, and schedule creation in a few simple clicks.
• Total raised: €46,000,000 (approx. $46.38M)
• Co-founded by: Le Wagon alumni Samy Amar and Quitterie Mathelin-Moreaux
• Hired: 14 Le Wagon alumni
  

4. Qi Tech

• Startup Overview: API for banking as a service.
• Total raised: €42,000,000 (approx. $42.35M)
• Co-founded by: Le Wagon alum Marcelo Bentivoglio
  

5. Hublo

• Startup Overview: the first substitution management tool in the health sector
• Total raised: €23,000,000 (approx. $25.38M)
• Co-founded by: Antoine Loron
• Hired: Two Le Wagon alumni

A Founder’s Journey from Le Wagon to One of the Fasters Growing Scaleups

Before enrolling at Le Wagon, Victor Prigent had just quit his three-month internship in the banking industry. “It helped me know what I did not want to do,” he shared, adding that his brief stint made him realize that his interests lay in starting his company. Particularly one that could help people in their everyday lives.

“We did not want to create yet another B2B SaaS,” Victor said. They eventually learned that 40 percent of Europeans experienced property management issues and that anyone can become a property manager, provided they had the right tools.

To build these tools, Victor knew that he would need to gain technical expertise himself. In search of the right training program, he came across Le Wagon. “I knew it was the most straightforward way to build an MVP and be autonomous to iterate on that MVP,” he said. After seven months of intense coding and networking, Victor and his partners finally secured their initial customers and began iterating.

Their company, Matera, gained high interest from senior developers. They hired a CTO, enabling them to assess the level of interested candidates. In the meantime, Victor continued to code for another year and then switched to product management where he found his coding skills to be “super useful”.

Their product, a B2C SaaS tool to manage buildings in joint property, allows people with no real estate skills to do the same job as a professional property manager and at a lower cost. “Nobody in the real estate [business] thought it was possible to develop a self-management model at scale. We proved the contrary. More than one percent of buildings in France choose Matera,” he shared. In addition, they help PMs and designers to become better at recruiting.

Now, Victor takes full control of the product team. “I spend time with my team, making sure we all move in the same direction and at the right pace,” he said. “We must continue learning about our customers and what they do.”

With what Matera has accomplished so far as proof, Victor believes that having mastered engineering and business knowledge, which is often handled by two different people in other companies, helped him make quick yet prudent decisions for the company.

Bring Your Idea to Life with Le Wagon

Based on what has been shared above, you might have gleaned some benefits of setting up a startup. If so, Le Wagon’s bootcamps can help you fill your skills gap and connect you with like-minded people who could become your business partner or startup co-founder one day.

Don’t wait anymore, go on and become an entrepreneur with Le Wagon tech bootcamps.