Second edition of the entrepreneurship festival: encouraging the desire to start a business

The second edition of the entrepreneurship festival attracted over 400 students in November. The event centred on a series of start-up stands on the School´s campuses, presentations of EDHEC’s incubators and a programme of conferences. 

Community of entrepreneurs, incubators, support programmes, etc.: offering the key resources to take the plunge into entrepreneurship

In Nice, the participants visited EURECOM, an engineering partner school of EDHEC, and the TechForward incubator, in the heart of the Sophia Antipolis technology hub. On site, the EDHEC Entrepreneurs teams presented the different forms of support available to them: masterclasses, coaching sessions and co-development sessions, notably provided through the Start-up Challenge, an elective designed for students wanting to launch start-up projects, and through the CEO for 6 Months programme, which offers students the chance to do a six-month internship in their own start-ups. In addition, the founders of Alternate Dimension, a start-up incubated at TechForward, specialised in preparing immersive reality travel, came to explain their business. 

At EURECOM students were also offered two options, in the form of an entrepreneurial hackathon and an immersion in the heart of the deep tech ecosystem. Bringing together 100 EDHEC and EURECOM students, the “Founder Sprint” hackathon enabled participants to familiarise themselves with a technology before presenting it via a three-minute pitch. In parallel, the “Deep Tech Explorer” featured a round table on deep tech, a presentation of the job of researcher, a visit to EURECOM’s laboratories and contacts with start-ups, all designed to give students a better understanding of deep tech and its ecosystem.

In Lille, students got to meet several start-up founders (Yérima Advisory, Myodev and Eternall Stories) and the members of EDHEC Entrepreneurs Club, a student association that supports students keen to embark on start-up projects. In the same vein, an immersion day on the Jean Arnault campus offered students a dive into the levers for creating a business. The programme featured a conference led by Juliette Magnient, Impact Program manager at STATION F, with Sabine Thouvenin (EDHEC 2022), founder of Polettes, and Marie Destobbeleir (EDHEC 2022), founder of Suriia, who gave insight into their entrepreneurial adventures. The participants then familiarised themselves with pitching during the “Inside the mind of a VC” workshop, organised in partnership with the GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC investment fund. This immersive session was designed to help participants understand investors’ expectations. 

Looking to the future: views on the entrepreneurship of tomorrow 

The second edition of the entrepreneurship festival explored the major trends liable to shape the entrepreneurship of tomorrow, through the “The New Builders: Entering the Next Era of Entrepreneurship” conference. Led by Yasmine Machwate, Head of Incubators at EDHEC, the discussion brought together Constantin Wolfrom, co-founder and CEO of Nepsis Energy — the first start-up founded by an EDHEC alumnus to benefit from the GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC seed fund, managed by Ring Capital — and Étienne Westphal, Chairman of the Executive Board of EuraTechnologies, one of Europe’s largest start-up incubators. 

The speakers began by describing the evolution of entrepreneurship between 2015 and 2025, i.e. refocusing of start-ups on highly-differentiated products, heightened competition, multiplication of available resources (support programmes, financings devoted to entrepreneurial development), as well as more diverse examples of entrepreneurial success. “Our mission within EDHEC Entrepreneurs involves familiarising students with the variety of entrepreneurs’ models”, explains Yasmine Machwate. “The idea is for everyone to find a pathway, a story, a way of operating that enables them to look forward and fuels their inspiration”. 

These subjects also fuelled reflections on the prospects for entrepreneurship in the coming years. Étienne Westphal expects to see research play a greater role in start-up creation, and public authorities and higher education to become more involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. For his part, Constantin Wolfrom concluded by saying that “Entrepreneurship, is above all the art of execution. Tomorrow, with all founders pursuing the same idea, the quality of execution is the only factor that will make the difference”.