The Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation | The ESSEC Ventures support offer | Being incubated by ESSEC Ventures | Startups incubated | Incubatee Testimonials

The ESSEC Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation supports and advises you in your business creation project throughout your training at ESSEC.

The Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation team

The center's programs are supported by a large community of ESSEC Alumni in Residence, including entrepreneurs who are the driving force behind the ecosystem (Business Angels, CFOs, CTOs, consultants, etc.), professors who are experts in various fields (Law, Marketing, Finance, Digital, etc.) and ESSEC student associations (ESSEC Initiatives, BDE ESSEC, ESSEC Solutions....).

Lao-Tze : A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
#justgettingstarted

Stay connected : LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
Contact : entrepreneurs@essec.edu
Office K104, Cergy - Phone: 01 34 43 30 71

The Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

With ESSEC Business School, reveal the entrepreneur in you! Gain confidence in your ability to act in the face of uncertainty and impact the world around you!

The school and its ecosystem offer you the optimal conditions to make your projects emerge and then transform them into viable solutions.

The ESSEC Ventures Student Incubator
All the incubator team is available to discuss your ideas and projects, whatever the maturity of your thinking process.
Don't hesitate, come and meet us and dive into the entrepreneurial adventure!
Surround yourself with key players, partners and other student entrepreneurs, like you, full of ideas and energy!
Join the ESSEC Ventures incubator, take advantage of the community of current or alumni incubatees to boost yourself and move forward... Discover, test, while being supervised and supported.
Developing an entrepreneurial project during your training at ESSEC Business School means transforming yourself and then propelling you into the heart of an ecosystem at the service of your professional projects. You put into practice the knowledge you have acquired and amplify it. You accumulate and benefit from a unique professional experience!
To know more

Antropia ESSEC
Antropia ESSEC was created in 2008 by the ESSEC Chair of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship to support the specific needs of social entrepreneurs who create, develop and maximize the impact of organizations that are socially useful, environmentally virtuous and economically sustainable.
As the first social entrepreneurship accelerator supported by a business school, Antropia ESSEC's mission is to strengthen the capacity of its entrepreneurs by training them, equipping them and offering them support adapted to their stage of development (prototyping, launch, consolidation and change of scale).
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Club Génération #Startuppeuse and Wo/Men Experts
A comprehensive support system for impact startups founded by women or both men and women.
Projects are incubated both remotely through various digital and "in situ" tools with workshops, events, participation of corporates, links with women's networks and the "impact" community.
The follow-up is collective, individualized according to the stage of development of the project and voluntary in nature.
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Paris Biotech Santé
"Supporting and promoting health innovation through the creation of companies to heal and relieve."
Founded in 2000 by Paris Descartes University, ESSEC, Centrale Supélec and INSERM, Paris Biotech Santé is an incubator for innovative companies specializing in the development of drugs, medical devices and innovative services for the benefit of patients.
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The Media House
Incubator of the Media & Digital Chair, supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture in partnership with Media Maker, is an incubator for projects in the press sector.
The Media House is a specialized incubator that offers a support program for innovative media creation projects, providing annually recruited startups with a mixed system of specialized masterclasses (in entrepreneurship and media economics) and coaching on editorial strategy and entrepreneurial approach.
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In-Lab ESSEC Africa
In-Lab Africa is a talent scout for entrepreneurs in Morocco and Africa, and also the first African platform for entrepreneurial content and linking pan-African ecosystems by opening their doors to international ecosystems.
For this, In-Lab ESSEC Africa has defined the following objectives:
• To be an incubator of contents and pedagogy
• To develop the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in Africa
• To act as a catalyst for youth entrepreneurship through entrepreneurship programs and customized toolkits for African entrepreneurs.
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The ESSEC Ventures support offer

Any ESSEC student in initial or continuing education (Grande Ecole, BBA, MS, MBA, MG...) and wishing to launch an entrepreneurial project is eligible for the incubator.
Applying to ESSEC Ventures can be done at any time during the year or during their ESSEC training. You join the incubator when you are ready to get started!
The student incubator is free of charge and is part of the services offered by ESSEC in all its graduating programs. It adapts to the maturity of the projects and allows them to be immersed in a favorable ecosystem.
Since its launch in 2000, the ESSEC Ventures incubator has supported nearly 500 business projects.
#justgettingstarted!

Support services:

• Individual monitoring by the ESSEC team

• Dedicated coworking space on the Cergy campus

• Regular events with renowned speakers: VC, entrepreneurs, ...

• Peer Learning
  Contact with other incubatees or pre-incubatees working on similar problems. A common Slack for ESSEC Alumni entrepreneurs and student entrepreneurs.

• Free Consulting Hours and Negotiated Benefits
  Several hundred thousand euros are saved by ESSEC entrepreneurs by using the negotiated benefits made available to them by joining the incubator!
  A network of experts (lawyers, chartered accountants, innovation financing consultants, etc.) is also available to entrepreneurs to help them deal with the issues associated with launching their business.

• ESSEC Alumni in Residence
  With the support of the ESSEC alumni network, the incubator offers face-to-face or video Office Hours with experienced Entrepreneurs, CFOs, CTOs, Business Angels and VCs in Residence.

• Possibility of obtaining the "Student-Entrepreneur" status
  ESSEC is a member of the Pépite Vallée de Seine scheme. ESSEC students can therefore apply for the national "Student-Entrepreneur" status and join a complementary support network.
  To know more

• Internship in your startup
  ESSEC Ventures works with ESSEC Career Services to enable student entrepreneurs to validate their work experience within their own entrepreneurial project.

• Practical workshops
  The incubator organizes for its incubatees hands-on workshops answering the operational problems of entrepreneurs such as "SEO Strategy" or "How to make your customers your ambassadors".

• France Digitale Membership
  ESSEC is an official partner of the France Digitale association, the leading startup organization in Europe, bringing together nearly 1,500 startups and investors.
  With this exceptional partnership, ESSEC offers all of its incubatees membership of France Digitale, giving them many advantages, including free access to the organization's events and numerous high-level networking opportunities.
  To know more

• Eligibility for the ESSEC Business School Seed Fund
  Created in 2006, the Seed Fund supports projects in their start-up phase by taking minority stakes in the capital of start-ups.

• Introduction to our incubator/accelerator partners or other key players in entrepreneurship
  Fully integrated into the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the ESSEC Ventures incubator benefits from numerous partnerships and links with other incubators and accelerators that can take over to support you further in your development.

Being incubated by ESSEC Ventures

Any entrepreneurial project carried out by an ESSEC student or participant during a graduate program is eligible for the ESSEC Ventures incubator.

Three phases divide our accompaniment path.

First contact and presentation of your project

1) Do you have any questions? Would you like to simply and informally discuss about your projects?
Come and attend the monthly "New member pitch" events to discover the new ESSEC incubatees.
Drop by to meet us and talk: the ESSEC Ventures office is located at K104, in the heart of the Cergy campus, near the KLab.
You can also write to us at entrepreneurs@essec.edu

2) Is your entrepreneurial project already somewhat structured?
Do not hesitate any more and contact us.
That's it, you're there! The entire ESSEC Ventures team supports you in your entrepreneurial project. #justgettingstarted!

Pre-incubation phase - Getting ready for launch!

5 points are of particular interest to us when considering your admission into the incubator:
- The clarity and originality of the concept
- The customer need and the offer
- The competitive analysis
- The motivation and adequacy of the team
- The first concrete steps taken and the roadmap imagined

Depending on your progress on these points, your project will go through a pre-incubation phase, which will give you access to a range of services including one-on-one meetings, access to "Advantage Partners” and a co-working space on the ESSEC campus in Cergy.
You will also be part of the ESSEC Ventures entrepreneurial community, which will challenge you and give you a boost in the development of your project.

Incubation phase - You're off to a good start!

The entry into the incubation phase starts with an imposed pitching exercise of your project in front of an audience of students, staff and alumni. This is the monthly event "New Member Pitch". This marks your "official" entry into the ESSEC Ventures incubator club.

A range of services is then added to the pre-incubation offer. In particular, project owners have access to Office Hours with our ESSEC Alumni in Residence (Entrepreneurs, business angels, VC, CFO, CTO, etc.). The more motivated, ambitious and demanding you are, the more the incubator is mobilized to help you overcome obstacles and succeed.

Incubation ends upon graduation of the student.

Startups incubated

Incubatee Testimonials

I met the ESSEC Ventures team with an idea and basic market research. The team at ESSEC Ventures helped me work on my business model, on my business plan and even my presentation slides! I had discussions regarding entrepreneurship with the team which helped me gain interesting insights. The team enabled me to transform my idea into reality.

Another thing I am grateful for is the network that is accessible to us. Through ESSEC Ventures I met my mentor, an Essec alumnus working in the healthcare sector, who guided me throughout my journey. The support from alumni and being an ESSEC student gave me an edge to enter the pharma sector.
Axelle N’Ciri - Mapatho

We co-founded our biotech during our Executive MBA and the choice to be incubated at ESSEC Ventures was therefore natural for us. Above all, it's an opportunity to have access to a very rich ecosystem, to share about our challenges with other start-ups, get mentoring on a wide range of topics, access to experts to help us on specific subjects... In short, a great melting pot that has allowed us to grow and to get our project off the ground.
Jean Garrec and Jean Cuiné founders at Bioadhesive Ophthalmics - Biophta