An interview of Yoolink Pro’s bizdev director, Sebastien Blanc
I had wished very hard my sharp-minded friend Sébastien Blanc joined me as a partner when I founded environmental management software company Verteego, almost two years ago. Instead Séb accepted an offer from online collaborative tools Yoolink, which makes me think that either I’m very bad at convincing people on joining me in projects, or that Yoolink is a very special startup. Although both options are still wide opened and not exclusive at all, I like for some reason to consider it’s Yoolink that’s an amazing company and felt it would be just fair play from me to interview Sébastien on what actually Yoolink is doing for its enterprise customers.
Hello Seb, could you please introduce yourself?
Hi Jeremy. Well, my name is Sebastien Blanc and I am the Business development director for YoolinkPro, a Paris-based start-up developing a micro-sharing Platform for professionals.
Things have changed and knowledge now is increasingly on-line. We all spend loads of time googling the Internet for information about customers, about markets or to solve work-based issues. Yet when we find an interesting document we rarely do anything with it.
YoolinkPro changes that. The service allows you to save, share, tag and discuss information you find on-line. It allows you to bring the knowledge you find on the web into your company to increase productivity.
– What’s Yoolink business model?
We are mainly targeting SME. So our business model is really flexible. You can subscribe to the service and pay a monthly fee depending on how many people are going to use the service. It starts at 34€/month for 5 people.
For departments or teams within large companies we offer special plans depending on needs and of course we offer tailor-made developments to ensure the product meets each customers’ needs.
– What is YoolinkPro’s market?
We are developing sales on different markets, the main ones being communication agencies, R&D fuelled companies and public organization. We have customers in Western Europe but France is our main market. Our average customer is a 30-40 person company but we are currently implementing tests in companies way larger than that. We’ll keep you posted!
- Is Enterprise 2.0 an evolution or a revolution? Let me ask the question differently, do you think large companies are ready to switch to Web 2.0, online services like Yoolink?
That’s a good question and I think many people are discussing it in depth: Dion Hinchcliffe or Denis Howlett to name but a few. Personally I don’t think it’s a revolution per se. You can’t get into a company – large or not – by saying everything they are doing is crap and they have to change it all. They were making profits way before you existed. So talking about revolution is not likely to drive up sales.
If you want to work with large groups, I think you have to start with a small team of highly motivated users and then use them as a base to spread within the company. It’s a one-step-at-a-time approach. And I think dropping the buzzwords is also a good idea. Or to put it differently, you solve problems rather than bringing in some fancy technology. People call me back a lot more since I started talking about operations instead of 2.0.
– What is Yoolink’s secret sauce? What makes you better than del.icio.us and Wordpress altogether?
Wordpress is not really a competitor. We are working with people who are using both YP and Wordpress. Wordpress is used to communicate with people outside a company and YoolinkPro is an easy way to share information within the company. Both services can communicate with each other.
As for Delicious there are of course some common features. But it is definitely a service for private users, not for professionals. YoolinkPro offers features a company really needs that private users don’t: privacy, guaranteed quality-of-service, support, storage, etc. When you address companies, you have to meet higher standards.
– What are you most proud of at Yoolink?
Our interface. We definitely have a good interface. We often have a “wow” effect from people during presentation. That’s something we really enjoy and that is critical in users’ adoption of the service.
– What will you be most proud of at Yoolink in 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years? In other words, what will be Yoolink’s next major landmarks?
Our next landmark is a business one: break-even. That’s what we are working toward. Bringing the service to companies, solving their problems, developing new ways to work. I hope my portfolio of happy customers is going to be what I am most proud of in 1 year!
– Do you find easy to get bloggers write about Yoolink Pro?
Well if you want me to be honest I’d say it is one of the hardest things I’ve encountered. From a more general point of view it is really difficult to get visibility as an IT start-up when you’re not US-based. It’s as if being American boosts both your product and your brand…
– Is blogging and twittering most useful when it comes to building a community around the Yoolink brand?
Definitely. We worked a lot on PR and media a couple of month ago. And then we realized that a single twit or blog post from a good analyst was worth more in terms of users than several articles in major on-line newspapers. Besides, with twitter and blogs we can actually exchange with our users and not just publish information…
– How does the Yoolink team look like today? And tomorrow?
We are a small but efficient team. There are 6 people, three of whom develop the service, 1 designs it and 2 develop the Business. Everyone is highly motivated and devoted and the CEO – Sunny Paris, former founder of Weborama, a listed company – is bringing loads of energy and vision to the team. I think the team is going to remain the same for a while, at least until 2010.
– How is Yoolink funded as of today? What are its capital development perspectives?
We raised 500k€ last June from industrials and BA and we have a really low burn-rate. So we don’t plan to raise money in the short term. Once again the focus is on business development.
– On a more personal standpoint, what is your next move?
I have many in mind. The one coming the fastest though is to try running the semi-marathon in less than 1’30!
Many thx Séb.
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Hey Jeremy, Seb,
Sorry for the late comment, just wanted to say that the interviews are my favourite parts of Tech IT Easy, so I hope you keep it up!
So to actually add value to the conversation: it's definitely a tricky business, imo, to enable business to process online information. 2 challenges:
One, how to make it usable within the SME. I.e. many businesses are using fairly traditional pieces of software to communicate, which in many cases replaces or replicates the web inside the organisation (outlook, intranet, etc.) and it's a challenge to merge that "private" exchange with a public one.
And second, regarding privacy: while I've read some great information online, both free and payware, I still think that there is so much of it and the dynamics go towards making it free'er and thus less valuable that I am personally skeptical about online bookmarking. I'm sure this doesn't apply to all individuals and organisations, but it's my no. 1 thought in this case.
Over to you.
Hello Vincent,
Thanks for your thoughts on the topic! Just a quick answer :
#1:I am not sure it is about merging private and public exchanges. We think privacy definitely is a core value proposition with KM. So YoolinkPro's accounts are limited to members of a company. You share within your team, and people outside of the company can't see your content.
#2 : I think there are 2 kinds of content. Feed content, i.e. content you want to see but don't necessarily want to save and keep for future references. And Long-term content, i.e. content you want to be able to find in a matter of second in the future. For the first kind of information I agree with you, it is not really about bookmarking, it is more a matter of sharing with the right people. There are loads of information on-line, your colleagues can therefore act as a decent filter by bringing you good content. That's 90% of YP's features. As for the 2nd type of content, bookmarking is critical. You save the link AND the content, so you know you find it easily later.
=> The question, I think, is what can capture value. Are privacy, tailor-made news feed and dynamic knowledge base going to be enough? That's of course an open debate but I think the answer is a yes
"You save the link AND the content"
I didn't realise that was a feature of Yoolink, nice. I was thinking about a similar business idea before, but one of my problems with it was the matter of copyright. By saving the content, you essentially take away property of other people. Some license it publicly, but definitely not all of them. How do you get around this issue?
Sorry for being so critical/annoying, but I think it's an interesting question to have answered. If you prefer for this to happen privately, just mail me at the address top right.