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Pourquoi personne, avant Forest, n鈥檃vait r茅ussi 脿 cr茅er un backoffice universel en SaaS ? - YouTube
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[0]
End of 2016.
[1]
We have just returned
from a two-month trip to SF
[3]
and have no more money
in the bank.
[4]
Reality is catching up with us
and we are starting to think
[7]
that we will not have
enough money
[10]
to properly execute our vision.
[17]
I have a tech background.
[18]
I worked as a developer
in many different startups
[22]
but also as a freelancer
for very large companies.
[26]
Time was both my worst enemy
and my best weapon.
[30]
As a freelancer,
I used to imagine and look
[32]
for all possible ways
of saving time
[33]
and industrializing
my development work.
[36]
That's when I started to think
about how I could waste less time
[38]
developing the same back-office
interface over and over again.
[39]
I use a lot of SaaS tools
on a daily basis.
[40]
The SaaS sector has matured
a lot in recent years.
[42]
It now offers support management,
[45]
analytics, CRM solutions...
[47]
but not back-office solutions.
[48]
I realized that the solution
was to simply develop
[50]
my own SaaS back-office.
[52]
So I decided to develop
a prototype and during three months,
[56]
alone in my sofa,
I started to use it to save time
[60]
on my different
freelance projects.
[63]
While I was working on
a startup project at eFounders
[66]
I spoke to Thibaud and Quentin,
the 2 co-founders,
[67]
about the lack of SaaS back-office solutions
in the market.
[71]
They immediately understood
the value of such a tool
[74]
because eFounders has to develop
back-office interfaces
[75]
for each new project
they launch.
[78]
At the time,
I was living in Canada, in Toronto.
[80]
It was there that I started to get
interested in eFounders' projects.
[82]
I was in touch wit
Thibaud Elziere who first
[85]
introduced me to Forest.
[86]
I quickly understood the ambitious
vision behind the project.
[88]
There was something big to create
[93]
so I decided to return to Paris.
[95]
There I met a very energetic person
who could easily convey his vision.
[102]
Arnaud and I have
the exact same background
[104]
and business experience.
[106]
It was a perfect match
between the two of us.
[110]
He quickly trusted me
and placed me in charge
[111]
of all tech matters.
[113]
eFounders was
a true accelerator for us
[117]
as it allowed us to develop
a MVP in only six months.
[121]
We tested a beta-version of
our solution with twenty companies.
[126]
We quickly realized
it was important that we spend
[129]
a few months in SF
to feel the local business vibe
[131]
and also to collect
a maximum of feedback
[134]
on our product.
[136]
At that time,
we were a team of five.
[137]
We decided to rent
a flat on Airbnb
[139]
in which we will lived
all together 24/7 for 2 months.
[143]
We were getting traction
and marks of interest
[144]
from the tech community.
[146]
People were starting
to test our solution.
[147]
We took advantage of eFounders' network
to meet as many investors,
[152]
startups and potential clients
as possible.
[155]
We attended a lot of meetups
to meet with other developers.
[157]
The project was growing quickly and
we were closing more and more deals...
[159]
... but things were not going
as fast as we wanted them to.
[161]
We were starting to feel nervous.
[162]
We could feel
that something was wrong
[165]
and that we absolutely had to
change our business model.
[168]
At that time,
we were targeting developers
[171]
because we knew that they were
the ones who pitched
[172]
the solution to the support
and operational teams.
[178]
Our sole focus became
adoption by developers
[181]
to make sure
[183]
they liked the solution
and became promoters.
[186]
We made sure that
as many people as possible
[188]
used our product.
[190]
We finally decided
to make Forest free.
[194]
I must confess that
we were not ultra-confident
[195]
when we decided
to stop selling our product.
[198]
For almost 9 months, we knew that
we were not going to make a single dollar.
[205]
Barely 6 months
after making this choice,
[206]
all of our KPIs started
to ramp up faster than expected.
[208]
Summer 2017 comes.
[210]
We were managing
lots of very interesting projects
[211]
from companies
with 20 to 30 employees,
[214]
who used Forest on a daily basis.
[214]
We started to offer
[216]
business-oriented features
to allow teams
[218]
to improve their operations.
[220]
We slowly understood
that we would have to
[222]
start targeting
larger companies
[225]
with anywhere
between 30 and 100 employees.
[227]
Forest's major asset
is the real added value it brings
[229]
to the business side
of a company's operations
[231]
and not only for its developers.
[231]
Indeed, the developer is
the person who decides
[235]
to install Forest,
aka the decision maker,
[236]
but the persons
who are buying Forest
[239]
to optimize their processes internally
are the business teams.
[242]
Forest is no longer
a basic tool allowing one
[244]
to develop a simple
admin interface.
[247]
It is now
a professional grade tool
[251]
that can help any team
on a daily basis.
[253]
Efficiency is the most
valuable skill for a company
[256]
to stand out
from the competition.
[257]
To be more efficient,
one of the solutions
[260]
is to perfectly optimize
and manage your internal processes.
[262]
Our ambition at Forest
is to become the tool
[267]
that all web-based companies love.
[270]
Today, Forest is a plug-and-play solution
that can be installed
[273]
on almost any type
of web application.
[276]
Whether it's a marketplace, a SaaS,
a social network, an iOT device
[281]
or maybe one day
a big shopping mall project,
[284]
we want to become
their back-office solution.
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