This Startup is Sounding the Alarm Bells during the Crisis

Covid-19, the planetary health tsunami.

Startup: I had been prepared for anything all my life. I am one of those who like to control their destiny, their life, their future and who anticipate all situations by forcing themselves to issue options every second.

In all my life, after 20 years of serving the armies, I thought the worst was behind me and the best awaited me.

In all my life, I could never have imagined that after several centuries of history, wars, catastrophes, and pandemics.

We would not be, at this point, so ill-prepared for a viral invasion and that any society, as modern as it is, or also weakened by an army of individuals from the world of the infinitely small.

A scenario worthy of a fantasy film

In all my life, I never thought it possible to bring such a scenario to my children.

My name is Cyrille REMACLY, I am 43 years old and I am a young retiree from the Ministry of Defense.

After twenty years of service as a geomatics specialist, I retrained, like many others before me, except that I chose the path of entrepreneurship.

In January 2019, I created TRIPPLE SAS, the purpose of which is to create a platform for optimizing free time for employees and traveling employees of companies, in a spirit of Quality of Life at Work and Responsibility Societal of Enterprises (QVT & CSR for insiders).

Since the start of 2019, I have been incubating with the startup incubator IONIS 361, which is the first incubator that is both generalists, multi-school and national.

Located 5 minutes from the Grand Place in Lille, it places at the heart of its support system the cross-fertilization between startups, students, graduates, and experts. This campus brings together the incubator, the ISG business school, ISEFAC, and the ESME Sudria engineering school.

2019, a great year

2019 will have been for TRIPPLE, a very rich year of learning and reflection. A whole process of ideation led me to the service proposal that I want to develop for the benefit of companies. 2020 was to be the advent of all this work done for nearly five years.

But in December 2019, as France and the world, in general, are preparing to celebrate the many end-of-year festivities, an invisible and perfectly elusive element strikes in eastern China, in the province of Hubei, whose origin is said to be a fish market in this factory town. 

This invisible individual is called SARS-CoV-2 for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, which we all know today as COVID-19, short for “Corona Virus Disease 2019”. The rest, you know it …

And now?

Like any startup, my business model is not well defined. We grope, we experiment. A bit like what the government is doing in the management of this health crisis elsewhere. But it is above all that in the economic model of a startup, we first spend money, before earning it.

And this is naturally what was provided for in the financing plan for this project. I had to proceed with the capital increase of the company, an operation that aimed to seek different sources of financing, both in the public and private sectors.

I said well had to …

Indeed, after several weeks of work to draw up the various and numerous documents necessary for this operation, I saw, with other entrepreneurs incubated, arrive the wave which paralyzes us today. And this wave, we saw it coming from very far away, it was so huge !!!

All the indicators were purplish-black, and we expected the worst.

And the worst has happened. Violent, immediate, blind, and astounding.

2020 should be for me and TRIPPLE, the pivotal year which should allow the advent of all this work undertaken.

With the Covid-19, everything is now called into question. The schedule of actions, of course, but also the financing plan. 

Indeed, at the time of the recovery; because the world will catch its breath after the passage of this planetary wave, funding priorities will undeniably be turned upside down. The economic engine will cough for a long time before returning to nominal efficiency.

And, what will be the consequences of this pandemic? At state levels? Legislation? Of consumption? Population?

The entrepreneurial world is a world where we have to fight against uncertainty, it is the challenge of the entrepreneur. 

But that’s in normal times, with a few small adjustments relating to perfectly controllable contingencies if we anticipate sufficiently and are reactive.

But the ????

But poor of us!

After many announcements tending to reassure entrepreneurs and business leaders, the government, supported by the voice of its president, promised that all businesses, whatever their size, would be supported, “whatever the cost”.

I regret to announce to you that after having gone through all the updated literature on this subject, I do not, like many others like me, who are economically in “startup” mode, enter any of the boxes of the various mechanisms put in place by government or regional authorities in terms of support.

The capital increase is therefore currently at a standstill, I have several thousand euros in an escrow account, but I cannot release them because all the administrations are closed, the banks at minimum service and the actors of funding confined.

How to hold?

The cash flow of my company can last a month, maybe two if I am negotiating and I have understanding players in front of the months, but, whatever happens, if I do not manage to finalize these operations in the quarter.

 What will come, the most difficult, I fear, will not be to have survived this planetary health wave, but like any tsunami, it will be to observe the extent of the insurance damage, once the wave has started again. And that is the only certainty I have today.

Take care of yourself!

Take good care of yourself, your loved ones, call your families, check-in with your friends, make masks if you can check in with your neighbors.

Let’s show this pathetic and insignificant virus what humanity is all about. capable when she responds, with one voice, to the threat. Whoever she is.