Koudetat

Koudetat was born as a way to pay the rent. Nothing more, nothing less. We had just a few weeks to generate enough cash to pay our deposit, and so we created Koudetat.

Paying rent let us have the closing ceremonies in our Paris office, here with my cofounder Alice and good friend - and great entrepreneur - Tonjé Bakang.

At first, it was expensive and just for the lucky few who could pay for it. Then as the rent kept being paid, we were able to lower the price and make it more accessible. Finally, we got the point where we could make it free for everyone.

That took things to another level. And it opened up a new argument in terms of both education and with Koudetat as its own business: Anyone Can Scale.

Basically, no matter what kind of business you have - product, service, marketplace - there are things you can do to scale up. Especially in services, people think that they're already at their maximum, that they can't possibly take on more clients. But when you get into what they do all day, there are tons of recurring tasks, or tasks like data entry that could be easily handled by an outside provider, or even just tons of time spent on back-and-forth emails.

That's how Koudetat's mission became educating business owners on the mentality and tools they need to scale up.

And the first step was to do it with Koudetat itself, so that really could reach and resonate with (French-speaking) business owners, no matter where they are, no matter what kind of business they have.

So we needed to find the right person to lead Koudetat - not just as part of The Family, but as its own company. Valentin Richard had been through crazy growth (and tons of problems) with Menu Next Door, one of the first person-to-person meal companies. He was exactly what we were looking for: super knowledgeable on how businesses can launch and scale, energetic, full of ideas on how to produce more and more content.

Remember, coffee is for closers ;) 

Valentin built up the team and they put together new programs, both paid and free:

  • Anyone Can Scale
  • Créer un produit (Creating a product)
  • Trouver des clients (Finding clients)
  • Dans la tête des entrepreneur.e.s (Inside the entrepreneur's head)
  • COVID-19 special (on surviving a crisis)
  • ...

That's how now, more than 5 years after it first started, Koudetat is:

  • 150K+ active users
  • Millions of video views
  • Thousands of super emails giving feedback and love

It really did become a way to scale our knowledge about startups, giving anybody who speaks French the opportunity to learn from the best startup practices.

Because anyone can become an entrepreneur.

Check it out.