KEDGE Alumni Wine Tasting
Created by a KEDGE Alumnus, VAKA optimises your brand's presence on social media
After obtaining his Bachelor's in Business Administration, Milan Poyaud and his associate launched VAKA, a startup that optimises the management of your pages on social media. The project is being incubated at KEDGE's Business Nursery
Hello, Milan! To begin, can you tell us about your educational and professional background?
I pursued a Bachelor's in Business Administration at the KEDGE campus in Avignon from 2008 to 2012. At the end of my studies in 2015, I did a short mission with the French Ministry of Defence in the "software and intellectual property" purchasing department. Although I received a very warm welcome, I didn't see myself working in that type of structure for long. The tasks I was given were repetitive and not at all challenging. So, I moved back to the South, and was contacted by Guillaume, my current associate, who introduced me to VAKA. He needed someone that had gone to business school to help him build his business plan. What was supposed to be a short mission, turned into a real partnership on the project. He is in charge of the technical and marketing side, and I work on the business and administrative side.
Tell us about VAKA, which is being incubated by the KEDGE Business Nursery.
The VAKA project really took off after it won at the Avignon Startup Weekend in 2015. Following the feedback received during the event, we naturally started to develop the VAKA platform, which can be described as follows: an intelligent marketing curation plate-forme to expand your social media presence. For those that are unfamiliar with marketing techniques, VAKA offers to post on social media pages content that is really interesting and relevant to the person or business' activity. In fact, it is the regrouping of several tools and processes that are at the heart of being able to increase your brand's online visibility (curation, brand content, drafting and optimising your publication strategy...). VAKA searches for relevant information to publish on social media, analyses the performance, of optimises the strategy for content distribution.
Several media outlets have already written some great op-eds about the platform:
- Article on Outils Veille (in French)
- Article on La Provence (in French)
- Article on le Dauphiné (in French)
- Vaucluse Attractivité (in French)
What are your objectives for the future?
In 2018, we will be focusing on our business development and fundraising if we meet our objectives. We finished the technical development in November 2017 to propose a platform that can be commercialised. Our platform has already attracted several clients in our two target customer bases: marketing professionals (CM, SMM, Communication Manager) and entrepreneurs (all sectors). I would really like to develop these two targets simultaneously because each has its own way of using the platform and it is very interesting to compare the two visions. The objective is to offer a platform that is comprehensive enough that marketing professionals get something out it, but easy enough to use that non-experts also have something to gain.
How did your time at KEDGE Business School and your incubation with the Business Nursery help you in your career and with this project?
If I stick to the main points, I would say that the education I received from Kedge primarily enabled me to work on my networking and relationship building. Today, it is essential that I maintain my business relationships in order to develop my company, and my training at Kedge really prepared me for that.
The Business Nursery brought in expert speakers in fields that are necessary when you are creating a company. Although VAKA was already up and running when we joined the BN, most of the workshops were still very useful and enabled us to capitalise on what we already knew. I had the opportunity to go to KEDGE Paris to pitch my project thanks to the BN in Marseille. Finally, I remained in contact with other entrepreneurs that were incubated in the BN and it is always interesting to keep in touch to see how our respective projects are progressing.
If you had one piece of advice for other KEDGE students and alumni, what would it be?
Becoming an entrepreneur isn't an easy task. Having an idea is one thing, turning it into a sustainable business is another. Challenge your ideas and your project as often as possible. Get support from experts in fields you don't master yourself.
Anything to add?
We are currently looking for a third associate to work as Marketing Director. We have a strong digital core, and marketing is therefore key to our development. That is why we are looking for someone who is willing to invest in the development of the company and who has proven expertise in digital marketing (experience in traditional marketing would be a plus). Don't hesitate to contact us:
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