Created in 2018 in Toulouse, the startup Smappen democratizes access to geodata
Close to reaching one million euros in turnover four years after its launch, Smappen recorded monthly growth of 5 to 15%, ” both nationally and internationally“. His goal ? Allowing its customers optimize their catchment area, visualize their network, manage their logistics, manage their local marketing campaigns and develop their commercial prospecting in the field”.
Laurent Leclerc, co-founder, looks back on the evolution of Smappen, which now has ten employees serving 460 customers. And in particular their acquisition client which allows them to see a little further.
See your goal: from BtoC to BtoB
The story of Smappen was born from the personal experience of co-founder Dan Faudemer. ” I had to find a meeting point with equal travel time between my place of residence and that of my partner for the weekend”, he explains. He then developed a web application, accessible free of charge. When the app’s traffic picks up, he decides to look into the matter and make a business out of it.
” It wasn’t that easy“, explains Laurent Leclerc, co-founder of Smappen. ” We basically tested BtoC, we tested real estate, we tested tourism, it didn’t work”. The experience ends in the end on the geomarketing part. ” When I came on board, I analyzed our entire user base, and we determined that the most interesting target for us was the franchise networks,” explains the co-founder.
This type of solution already existed, but the majority of small and medium-sized networks were not equipped, ” because it was too complicated, too expensive, and the solutions used were expert solutions”.
The freemium format for customer acquisition
The two co-founders then embark on the target of small and medium networks. ” We have chosen to create a much simpler solution, accessible to people who are not experts in geomarketing, and much more affordable”.
If the co-founder explains that they have become a leader in two years, it is also because they have succeeded in setting up reliable customer acquisition. ” It is largely automated, because we have chosen to have a freemium model, which allows us to be much faster in terms of acquisition », explains the co-founder. But it also allows you to develop smarter.
Decelerate the right targets
Laurent Leclerc explains that Smappen has today “customers who are not directly in the target, but who are dreaded by the service and subscribe”. And this is where they manage to decelerate future niches. ” The freemium offer allows us to detect new needs, i.e. significant pockets of growth for the future”. The co-founders specify that they observe the same mechanism abroad: “We have 25 to 30% of our customers who are abroad, whereas for the moment, we are not doing much, so on another opportunity for international growth“.
The startup therefore has the ambition to diversify its services, with the integration of intelligence and data interpretation directly into the application, for these future markets that they detect as the analysis progresses. of their data. The opportunity to think about fundraising? For this young shoot which has reached profitability very quickly, and Laurent Leclerc is not in favor of it for the moment. His credo:Seeking profitability from the start makes us more creative and efficient, and avoiding fundraising allows us to keep a certain freedom”. The decision seems made.