Pierre Seillier, New Head of the ESSEC Incubator at Station F

He succeeds Corentin Grenon (BBA20) at the head of the ESSEC incubator at Station F, co-founded with ESSEC Alumni. A conversation with Pierre Seillier (M13), Program Manager, ESSEC Incubator. 

EA: You have just taken over responsibility for the ESSEC incubator at Station F. What does your role involve?

My remit in this position is a broad one. First, there is welcoming and supporting the start-ups. Incubating entrepreneurs can last up to 24 months, and their needs are many. My role consists above all in tracking their situation, organising training sessions (bootcamps and co-devs) to build their skills on key topics (sales, product, marketing, and so on) and, where needed, putting them in touch with the right people (mentors) in our ecosystem.

We also host LEX (Learning Expeditions). These involve welcoming companies that come to Station F for an immersion, to draw inspiration from innovation and meet the entrepreneurs. Demand is strong. Each time, it is a matter of finding the right start-ups and choosing the most suitable format: a meeting, a hackathon or a stress-test scenario. These visits are organised in partnership with the Custom Program of ESSEC Executive Education.

EA: What is your background?

I have a dual training in Law and Management. After my Specialised Master's in international business law (M13), I left for Hong Kong for an entrepreneurial venture. Three and a half years later, I returned to France having sold off my client portfolio. That was when I joined the SECAB group, which specialises in chartered accountancy. The group had just raised 4.7 million euros and I was tasked with launching an intrapreneurial project called WITY, a Pennylane lookalike. I spent 4.5 years there before joining Agorapulse, a scale-up specialising in social media management, as marketing director for France. In 2023, the urge to start something of my own returned: I launched Analysia, a software tool that helps local authorities monitor information across all their channels and keep it up to date. The project was then incubated here at Station F.

EA: You went through the ESSEC incubation programme yourself. What lessons do you draw from it?

I did indeed go through it, with Analysia. That immersion now brings a great deal to my current role and to the way I provide support: I know what founders expect, their day-to-day, their urgent needs, the moments when you have to press on alone and those when a good contact or a bit of upskilling saves you months. What is on offer is already very solid, but I think we can go further still, particularly on the bootcamps and the follow-up of start-ups. That is precisely what I want to work on.

EA: What are your projects for the months ahead?

My first project is consolidating what already exists, which is of very high quality: going further in the bootcamp offering and in the follow-up of start-ups. I want to strengthen the tracking of figures, challenging entrepreneurs on their metrics every two weeks. This monitoring will allow us to identify any problems very early. We are also going to try to identify an entrepreneur's needs and knowledge gaps more quickly, at the start of incubation. If a gap appears, an upskilling session will be offered. In concrete terms, this takes the form of a bootcamp every Thursday with a dedicated programme built around five themes: business management, financing, product, marketing and sales. Finally, I want to work on internationalisation, by building bridges with incubated networks abroad, towards Singapore, Mumbai or Morocco.

EA: Can you name a few start-up success stories?

The incubator has some fine successes to its name: Fundora, in savings and investment; Up&Charge, which is developing an inductive charging system for electric vehicles; and the LegalTech firm Ordalie. At present, Oguste, an AI solution specialising in notarial property audits, is standing out. There are many others too: Fabriquons.fr, Westiti and Ouwba. ESSEC has had a presence at Station F since 2023, and we welcome two intakes of new incubatees a year: one starting in September, the other in March. The profiles are highly varied: EdTech, LegalTech, FoodTech, SportTech, and so on. These are different worlds, with different expectations, and that is precisely the mix we are aiming for. It is worth bearing in mind that three-quarters of our start-ups do not yet generate revenue: they start out on their own funds or with non-dilutive financing (such as the Bourse French Tech), and consider a fundraising round at a later stage.

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