Last Updated on July 20, 2016 by Tim
Let’s meet Startup, Cocolabs:
Website: www.cocolabs.com
In a few sentences, tell us what your start-up is all about!:
Cocolabs developed a powerful and feature rich open source solution used to build service based marketplaces such as Airbnb, Blablacar, Drivy, TaskRabbit…. The software we use is offered for free on Github. It includes, among its many features, geolocated searching, escrowing, availability management, buyer and seller management… The technical solution is called Cocorico.
When was your startup founded? And what stage is your startup currently at?:
The Cocolabs team started working on sharing economy platforms in 2008, and decided to launch Cocolabs in June 2015. We have already built 22 marketplaces of which the first and foremost equipment sharing platform for farmers (WeFarmUp.com). Our company is entirely funded by its 2 partners and will be seeking seed capital later in 2016 to develop a SaaS solution.
Let us know a bit about your team, who are the key team members and what is their role?:
The company is the brainchild of Arnaud Benatsou and Anthoni Noyon. Arnaud (pronounced “Arno”) acts as CTO and was previously CTO for major platforms at Prisma Press, France’s largest media company. Anthoni Noyon acts as CEO and has previously cofounded several companies of which SOFRACS, YachtPaintShop, TheHaircut.com and EducaFinance which successfully received seed funding from some of France’s most successful entrepreneurs (Xavier Niel, Marc Simoncini, Jacques-Antoine Granjon). Together Anthoni and Arnaud conceived Cocorico.
If applicable, what is your growth like? And what milestones has your startup achieved so far?:
Cocolabs is a profitable company despite heavy investments in developing the Cocorico technology. The company has moved from a Paris only clientele to clients throughout Europe and North America with 22 platforms completed and 9 platforms currently in production. Our current maximum production capacity of 2 new marketplaces per month is fully booked with rolling orders several months in advance.
Building bespoke platforms allows us to spend time and efforts on improving our technology and our feature set before moving ahead with a SaaS solution which will be available early 2017.
Why did you choose this particular idea and concept to build your start-up on?:
We didn’t choose this field, it chose us. We had a reputation for building difficult projects and had been approached to build a French competitor to AirBNB. We did a good job (our client did an even better job at growing his platform) and next thing we knew we were lining up contracts to build service based marketplaces. After building half a dozen of them we decided it was time to stop reinventing the wheel and take the occasion to return to the open source community what it had given us. The idea to make Cocorico was born.
The technology allowed us to go from 2 platforms per year to 24 platforms per year with the same team. Of course the idea isn’t for us to build platforms individually, but to offer solutions for others to build theirs. Our next steps are to develop a SaaS offering as well as a marketplace of plugins for Cocorico.
Do you have any customer feedback on your product and/or service that you could share?:
“Thanks to you we were able to launch our site quickly with all the essential features for a great business launch.”
François de Landes, Cofounder
MisterBNB
“The skills brought by Cocolabs in matter of consulting, design and development have greatly contributed to our success.”
Jean-René Sellos, Associate Director
DogVacances
“Excellent project management and perfect technique, basically all it takes to launch your startup.”
Julien Delon, Cofounder
Sejourning
“We were able to stay focused on the user experience, our marketing campaign and our buyer and seller acquisition strategy as all the technical aspects were completely covered”
Clément Schereck, Cofounder
Communivy
Are you looking for funding or are you open to partnership opportunities, and if so, what’s the best way for people to get in contact with you?:
We are open to all types of partnerships but are actively seeking partnerships with payment gateways, web agencies and more generally B2B players. We are also looking for funds for our SaaS solution.
You can reach us at anthoni.noyon [@] cocolabs.io
Finally, do you have any other comments or information about your product that you would like to add?:
If you want to take a look at and tweak our open source solution you can get it on Github: https://github.com/Cocolabs-SAS/cocorico
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