Finding your North Star in a storm ⭐
How Lakaa used the first lockdown period to rebuild a stronger value proposition…
Some of our incubees are pure digital startups that can weather most storms in the real world and maintain their activities remotely without much trouble.
Other companies however created businesses that became almost impossible to maintain in a COVID world, and these companies must innovate or die. Thank you, Dorian, Baptiste, and Adrien for sharing your adventure of these past few months with Lakaa.
First of all, what is, or rather, what was Lakaa at the beginning of the year?
At the beginning of the year, Lakaa was one of the very first 100% impact event companies. We used to only focus on the organization of team-building for employees of large corporations, through events such as cleanups, tree planting, or climate collages. Since we have created the company, about one year ago, we have organized all our events in collaboration with our 300 partner associations in France. For instance, we launched with Optic 2000 a national campaign of cleanups with all their stores (of which there are several hundred!) and our local associations.
We made a mistake: we were selling our services easily and we took it for granted.
That seems like you must have been on the speed dial of every CSR manager. What was your day-to-day life back then?
In "Le Monde d'Avant", before the pandemic, we were receiving several phone calls per week (as organic inbound demand) although Lakaa was only a few-month-old startup. The demand - notably for cleanup events - was massive and left us little time to properly work on the long-term added value of our events. We made a mistake: we were selling our services easily and we took it for granted. We did not take enough time to dig deeper into our clients' needs and to build something that would have been a must-have for them. We had a nice-to-have service that they would buy when they had some spare cash.
And then the first lockdown happened at the beginning of the year, I imagine your relationship with your customers changed overnight. What were the different phases you went through in the following days?
In just a few days, we had to cancel and postpone all our events because of the sudden lockdown. With Baptiste and Adrien, we decided to be physically together during the lockdown to keep working efficiently, and thus we spent two months in Brittany. This period was quite hard as we quickly became aware that our current added value was not indispensable at all. We never intended to stop our adventure, nonetheless, we understood quickly that we would have to adapt our business, become less dependent on the event industry, and bring much more value to our clients.
Our main anchor was the team, no doubt about that.
Since you are still there today, it seems clear that you managed to bounce back. What was your anchor when all stability seemed to crumble around you?
We did manage to bounce back, yes. Our main anchor was the team, no doubt about that. Despite the uncertainties, the three of us were sure to want to keep working together. Thus, we "just" had to focus on what we wanted to do, the purpose of Lakaa, our mission, and try to work from there. The service or product we wanted to build was secondary, it was all about the DNA of Lakaa, the assets we already had, and what we wanted to accomplish together.
Since you had such solid foundations all along, the challenge must have been in finding the right ingredients to rebuild from that base, how did you achieve it?
We were lucky to already have clients. Therefore, we could still interact with them, dig into their issues, and start to think about how we could help them with anything but physical events. We could also lean on the Incubateur HEC Paris program.
The numerous experts of the incubator with whom we exchanged gave us energy, confidence, and structure. We found these ingredients quite instinctively, we felt that it was helping us change.
The numerous experts of the incubator with whom we exchanged gave us energy, confidence, and structure.
You need to spill the beans now, what were the key findings that made you expand in new directions?
The key finding we made is that all the CSR teams of big organizations struggle to collect and quantify the data of the CSR actions organized in their different locations. We already helped chain stores such as Optic 2000 on the operational side, but we became aware that we could also help them further on the value chain. For instance, we brought value to the CSR team of Optic 2000 by sharing with them what their store managers were telling us when we were organizing events at the local level. We saw an opportunity and decided to develop a platform to tackle this widespread issue. We spent hours and hours with some clients and we qualified the issues they highlighted by interviewing 25 other companies. With all our findings, we were able to sketch the key features of our MVP.
But as you said, the goal of that process was not only to develop a new offer but to improve your company overall. How would you summarize the key features of the new Lakaa you are building today?
The new Lakaa we are building today is much more resilient and robust. We are much more focused on the long-term value we want to bring to our clients. We want to reinvent commitment at the heart of companies. And to reach this goal, we'll soon have a SaaS platform in addition to the operational support we've built since we've created Lakaa.
Communication between the founders is key.
What would you recommend to another company that would see its primary business disrupted?
I would say that the communication between the founders is key. It's super important to hear what everybody thinks to realign on the mission, the primary goal, and not the product or service. Then, one should use its assets: ours were the clients we already have, our network of associations, and the people advising us.
Focusing on these assets helped us navigate during this period and take informed decisions.
Thank you for sharing with us, do you have any last words?
Many thanks for this interview!
To all the readers, you can go on our website or follow us on Linkedin to follow our adventure. And please feel free to reach out at dorian@lakaa.io if you want to discuss anything related to our business!