At least, we hope it’s the last.

My name is Maxime Blondel (Blondy). I’m the CEO & co-founder of The Secret Company, a studio building scalable, remote, self-funded businesses. Today, I want to share with you this big news: THIS IS THE LAST STUDENT STARTUP CONTEST EVER! 😉

At The Family, we make no difference between entrepreneurs. That’s why we hate the term “student-entrepreneur”. You’re either a student or you’re an entrepreneur. You have to take responsibility for the choice. There’s no problem in starting a project during nights and weekends when you are a student. It’s even a great idea to learn and progress. But if you feel that something is happening (e.g., more and more customers every day, word of mouth growing…), you must be ready to go ALL IN. …

My name is Maxime Blondel (Blondy). I crashed my first entrepreneurial project at 21 and then sold my second one at 23. After working 2 years at The Family, I’m now the CEO & Co-founder of The Secret Company, a studio building scalable, remote, self-funded businesses.

It’s been 6 months since I started a School Tour across France: engineering schools, public universities, private business schools, digital campuses, high schools… With 80 events organized and nearly 5000 attendees, I’ve had the chance to interact with a lot of determined students.

And virtually every time, I’m struck by how that determination and enthusiasm wasn’t being accompanied by a real economic & business education. At every event, I was pitched the same mobile apps or marketplace ideas… It started to give me a real sense of sadness, hearing the same mental/execution mistakes over and over. …

I’m Maxime, I’m 23 years old and I started studying Search Engine Optimization 3 years ago in my dorm room. After working 2 years at The Family, I’m now the co-founder & CEO of The Secret Company, a startup studio that has notably created SEO Secret, an SEO-optimized content creation partner for ambitious companies.

Over the past year, I’ve built and grown 3 marketplaces in the event sector, all with a 95% SEO acquisition strategy. …

Come on, let’s confess something. I’m that kind of guy writing on post-it I oblige myself to reread every morning. I have the feeling that it reminds me which path to follow. Do not forget things I don’t want to forget. Trying to anchor what I think is not yet assimilated.

For 3 months, I did so much post-it that I ended up creating a Word document: “Entrepreneurial Reminders”. It is full of small sentences: advices from seasoned entrepreneurs, essential business concepts, inspiring catchphrases… But before sharing it with you in a future article here, let me tell you the 3 (crazy) months I just spent. …

⚠️ this article is regularly updated with new tools I discover and the best one recommended in the comments ⚠️

➡️ Ctrl+F to find what you’re looking for 😉

Well, okay, the title is a little rough, but finish reading and you will see it was not bullshit.

As a guarantee of transparency, let me introduce myself:

My name is Maxime Blondel, I am 22 and I live in the suburb of Paris. Like many people of my age, the thing that motivates me most in life? Projects with friends! I used to be President of the student association of my University Institute of Technology for 1 year. Following this amazing experience, I saw a market opportunity and launched a niche website called AnimationEvenement.com, a marketplace that allows any event organizer to find a group of Brazilian dancers, a roller coaster simulator in virtual reality, a cotton candy culinary stand and +500 animations on demand anywhere in France. Bachelor’s degree in Digital Marketing acquired, I decided to stop my studies to discover entrepreneurship for 2 years. With 3 friends, we launched a start-up (The Young Economy — “The ideal promotional tool for young talents”), finally crashed after 11 months. On october 2017, I joined Le Wagon (Paris), an intensive 9-week coding bootcamp. Those were 2 incredible months! I’m now developing AnimationEvenement.com …

It’s been 2 months since my days and nights have been monopolized by Le Wagon, a coding bootcamp. That is to say, a (very) intensive program of 9 weeks where dozens of people (40 here) from diverse backgrounds learn the basics and best practices of web development : HTML, CSS, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, PostgreSQL, Bootstrap, Github…

After the failure of my 1st start-up, I had clearly observed the technical knowledge of “how the web works and how to build web products” was missing from us. …

Nous sommes le lundi 3 juillet 2017. Je sors d’un restaurant japonais. On a décidé d’arrêter The Young Economy. Récit.

4 étudiants et 1 projet

En décembre 2015, alors étudiants en Licence pro Marketing Digital & E-commerce à l’IUT Paris Descartes, avec Adams, Célia et Maxime, on commence à travailler sur un projet de plateforme pour aider les jeunes à trouver des petits jobs & missions freelance plus facilement. En janvier 2016, je clique sur une publicité avant une vidéo Youtube. Voilà qu’on participe au concours Carrefour “Lance toi et crée ton truc”. On remporte 10 000€ devant un jury composé de Maurice Levy (Publicis), Jamel Debbouze et Vincent Bolloré (Havas). “Il faut qu’on le lance, ce projet”. Avec Maxime Zéphir, on décide d’arrêter nos études à Bac+3 et se donner 2 ans pour entreprendre. Célia et Adams choisissent de continuer leurs études en parallèle. On est tous OK. …