Adrien Vansteelant unveils ambitious plans for SKEMA Entrepreneurs (ex-SKEMA Ventures)

​​​​Ad​​​rien, could you tell us a bit about your journey at SKEMA and your previous experiences?

My journey at SKEMA was a deeply collective adventure, where every step helped shape me. I fell in love with the school in 2017 during my entrance interviews. There was something special about the Sophia Antipolis campus – the sunshine, the good vibes, and the rugby association, which I would end up presiding over a few months after my arrival (Esprit Passion Ovale). Leading an association of a hundred members builds character. I experienced an incredible journey both on and off the field. After SKEMA, I had various experiences in startups, investment funds, and incubators. I worked with the startup Elsy, the Ardian, G Ventures, and Investir&+ funds, and participated in the Microsoft Environmental Startup Accelerator programme at Station F.

As a rugby enthusiast, you are the president of Les Tontons Ovalie, an association that gathers 300 SKEMA alumni who love rugby. Is rugby always close by for you?

Absolutely! The association was founded in 2001 and brings together the school's alumni around a shared passion for rugby and camaraderie. Today, it is represented by a team of around 40 players competing in the French Federation of Corporate Sport (FFSE, Ed.). We face off against graduates from other schools (NEOMA, EM Lyon, GEM, etc.) and employees from major companies (Deloitte, Société Générale, etc.). This year, we are also welcoming students on a gap year or in work-study programmes from SKEMA's Paris campus. It has become a multi-generational, multicultural team, and that's the beauty of it!

I am convinced of the synergies and lessons that can be drawn from the triptych of entrepreneurship, environment, and rugby. So much so that I have made it a content creation project (Grin to Green): newsletter, LinkedIn posts, and podcast.

• On LinkedIn, I share innovations, news, and insights related to the environment, entrepreneurship, and rugby three times a week.
  
  
• Through the newsletter, I highlight the latest updates in the impact entrepreneurship ecosystem once a month: fundraising, impact startups, and news you shouldn't miss. These are my personal observations that I share with over 550 subscribers. 
  
  
• With the podcast, I meet rugby enthusiasts who use what they have learned from this sport for their commitments or in their respective businesses. Among my guests are some alumni entrepreneurs with whom I played: Alban Cherrier (SKEMA 2018), CEO of Hall in Bio; Yohann Paulin (SKEMA 2014), CEO of Work with Island; and Ava Maisani Casanova (SKEMA 2017), co-founder of Père & Fish.

What is your vision for the incubator, and what do you plan to implement to support SKEMA entrepreneurs?

The key is: "Entrepreneurship in collectives". Entrepreneurship, like rugby, is about encounters, mutual aid, and passions. Our role within SKEMA Entrepreneurs is to provide the right ingredients, the right equipment, and the right partners to place entrepreneurs in the best position to express all their talent. We want to ensure that every idea is an opportunity to learn more about oneself, meet people, and quickly test the idea on the market. I am a proponent of "test and learn". One of the major challenges is to create bridges with other entrepreneurship actors: incubators, investment funds, and experts or mentors.

We will create programmes tailored to the maturity of each project: pre-incubation, incubation, and acceleration: 

• ​From September 2024, the pre-incubation programme will help aspiring entrepreneurs learn the rules of entrepreneurship through resources, tools, workshops, and advice to quickly test their ideas on the market. An online format, open to everyone, throughout the year.
  
• From September 2024, the incubation programmes will help between 10 to 15 projects per semester and per campus, with the aim of leading them to their first commercial success! A hybrid format, open to everyone, lasting 3 months, renewable.
  
• In the spring semester of 2025, we will launch our acceleration programmes focused on commercial development, recruitment, and financing. These acceleration programmes will be thematic, in line with the school's commitments: artificial Intelligence, international, and transitions.
  
  

What specific challenges do you anticipate in developing these new entrepreneurial programmes, and how do you plan to overcome them?​

I see three challenges to address, with which you can surely help us! 

First: the importance of creating local ecosystems around each campus. Banks, foundations, grants, partners, tools, and services for startups – we must bring all these actors together to serve our future entrepreneurs. For this, we will rely on campus managers, but also on the faculty and staff of SKEMA who have maintained relationships with local actors for years. The objective will be to extend these synergies in the field of entrepreneurship. The challenge behind all this is to easily understand what "Entrepreneurship at Sophia Antipolis", "Entrepreneurship at Suresnes", and "Entrepreneurship at Lille" concretely mean. 

Second: identifying aspiring SKEMA entrepreneurs. We need to make this renewal known, that this message is carried by all SKEMA staff and partners. SKEMA supports its student and alumni entrepreneurs. We will intensify our communication on LinkedIn in the coming months. 

=> If you wish to be supported via our various programmes, please let us know here: Join our Entrepreneurs programmes. 

Third: constituting a pool of qualified mentors and experts. The strength of an incubator, especially a school incubator, is its ability to connect with the alumni network. We are looking for experts who can answer specific questions of young entrepreneurs about their preferred industries. Also, mentors, who can support entrepreneurs of their choice during the programmes (3 or 6 months). There is room for everyone, and we will need everyone.

Join SKEMA Entrepreneurs: Join our Mentor/Expert Community