Low-Code Founder : Joseph Reinhart, founder of Victoire Durail and RÅLBØL
Inside the mind of an entrepreneur : our founder of the week talks about how he managed to get involved in side projects while studying and how he developed a business app with Bubble.
What attracts you to entrepreneurship?
I came from a preparatory engineering class during which I had to work a lot without being able to devote time to personal projects. As soon as I finished it, I tried to create, learn, discover new things and realize the ideas I had in mind while I was studying engineering and my bachelor’s degree in economics.
My first project was the development of an application called Victoire Durail and made me realize that I had a great appetence for entrepreneurship. I then raised funds for the humanitarian association Enfants du Désert (Children of the Desert) by participating in the solidarity raid of the 4L Trophy in the Sahara Desert to help children in remote areas of Morocco to have access to education. It was a beautiful experience that left us all with unforgettable memories. At the moment, I am working on the project of marketing and selling a book with my friend Arthur.
Can you introduce us to Victoire Durail, your very first entrepreneurial project?
Born in Paris, I went to study in Lyon and took the TGVMax pass with the SNCF (French National Railway Company) which allowed me to travel all over France by high-speed train for free. The problem with this subscription is that it is popular and the number of seats is limited so it is always complicated to find a train ticket. With Guillaume, a friend of mine, we thought that instead of behaving like robots updating the page on our phones every 5 seconds to buy tickets on time, we would develop a robot that would do it for us.
At first we were doing this for ourselves, but when I saw that my brother and some friends of mine were having the same difficulties, I decided to use the Bubble platform to develop a solution that could be used for everyone and deployed on a large scale.
Today the SNCF strikes and the COVID-19 crisis have strongly slowed down the train market so the project is on stand-by.
I didn’t want to stop there, so I decided to invest my time on something else with another friend of mine, Arthur. That’s how we started the RÅLBØL project (homonym of “I’m sick of it”), a survival guide that gathers all the information on administrative matters that students need to know.
How went the development of the Victoire Durail application?
The first step was to learn how to develop an algorithm that could check available seats on the train and reserve them for the user. I had a bit of knowledge about the basics of Python, but I had to learn everything else on the job.
Then there was the question of the accessibility of the solution, we wanted it to be usable by everyone, so we needed an interface on which people could create accounts, make requests, manage and their reservations and access a payment system. After looking at all the existing solutions, the Bubble platform emerged as the most accessible and powerful alternative.
We first developed the basic functionality to make an MVP, thinking that we would add the details after checking that the market was responding well. We asked ourselves questions such as: what data did we need to move forward? What is too complex to develop and not essential, therefore not a priority?
We released the MVP after working on it for a month and a half and reworked the solution another month to finalize it, add features, secure it and fix bugs.
What are the biggest challenges you have encountered in the realization of this and other projects?
The hardest thing for me is to get organized. When you have a lot of ideas and interests, you have to be able to manage your time so that this thirst has a positive impact on your life. Even if you’re really focused and efficient, you have to know how to align yourself with reality: there are only 24 hours in a day and when you’re only 22 years old, it’s just as important to see your friends, have drinks, read and do sports as it is to work. So I had to learn not to put pressure on myself about the task at hand and move forward step by step.
When you start a project, you realize that there are many different skills to acquire (development on Bubble, marketing, commercial aspect, press relations). It’s a bit rough at the very beginning, when you have to spend so much time on learning, digging around to understand how things work and looking at what’s best. Sometimes you feel like you’re not making any progress, even if it is a crucial step. Fortunately, there is plenty of quality content available online today, and being a student opens a lot of doors when you dare to ask. We had the chance to be featured in articles or on networks for free and to get valuable advice for co-funding campaigns, printing books or the legal structure to adopt.
What advice would you give to students who are reluctant to embark on side projects like you?
The most important thing is not to be afraid to take the plunge. Basically, RÅLBØL was just a joke, we didn’t see it as a business idea, and that’s what made us go into this concept without putting pressure on ourselves. When we launched Victoire Durail, I had never done any development, and certainly not any algorithm connected to APIs and all of that. Certain things could have made me think that I wasn’t legitimate, that there were people much more qualified than me to do that, but you mustn’t stop there. Each person brings their own contribution to their project, and their own assets. Of course, I know you can’t do all of your projects at once, but the experience you gain on each one accumulates and is never lost.
Studies are a particularly favourable time to start projects. When you are a student, there is no stake, no risks taken, no rent to pay for business funds, no gap on your CV to justify to employers. If it doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped, at least you’ll have learned something, and that’s already huge. Of course, it requires sacrifices, sometimes you spend long hours and long nights trying to understand what’s wrong with your strategy or application. However, as long as you organize yourself well, only positive things come out of it. Getting involved in this kind of project makes what you’ve learned very concrete and makes you go further in many areas. With hindsight, I am aware that I learned much more in my projects than I did in my school lessons. Today, Arthur and I know that we’re going to push the RÅLBØL adventure as far as we can as long as we have fun, as long as we learn and as long as we want to.
More concretely, I think it’s important not to try to reinvent the wheel, but rather check and learn from good practices in areas you are not familiar with. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and we must be aware of this and not let it stop us.
I would also say that you don’t have to wait until you have the perfect product to get started. The most important thing is to make an early contact with the market to see how it reacts to the product and if there is an opportunity or a need.
Finally, I would say that it’ s really important to choose a project that you are passionate about, because it takes a lot of importance in your life, you have to talk about it all day long and it is a long way to go. You definitely have to be motivated by the concept to keep going.
