From scratch to 1M€ /year : How Dorian built a Group with 12 brands and Zero funding ! 🚀
24 years old. 1 group. 12 brands. Already 1M€ in annual revenue. This is Dorian’s story. Dorian, a non-technical founder, began his journey with just a Snapchat account during his studies.
🕒 If you have : 1 minute
Interview of the Week 🎙️
This week, I sat down with Dorian Zerroudi, a remarkable self-made founder who bootstrapped a media company from scratch with co-founder Benjamin Hautin while still in school. Today, his venture has grown into a 1M€/year business, and he now manages a team of 20. Scroll down to discover his journey at just 24 years old and the steps that got him here.
Learnings of the Week 📚
I discovered an intriguing online course titled “How to Buy, Grow, and Sell Startups” created by a US-based micro private equity fund. This course explores investment strategies and offers insights into scaling online businesses for growth. Scroll down for more information.
3 Interesting Business Inspirations 💡
Stuart Hall’s tool aggregates app store reviews across iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon.
Kyle Nolan’s Projection Lab, a financial planning SaaS he started as a side project, now brings in $40K monthly, transforming his hobby into a bootstrapped business.
Angus Cheng’s Bank Statement Converter app, which transforms PDF bank statements into Excel formats, brings him $20K monthly from this single, targeted niche.
Interesting content on the web 🌐
Nicolas Rizk highlights a 2.4x funding gap for student projects in Europe compared to the U.S., underscoring the untapped potential in the European student entrepreneurship market.
Bpifrance Digital Venture, the French Sovereign Wealth Fund focused on early-stage companies, has released the Environmental Transition Mapping for 2024.
🕒 Reading time : 6 minutes
Interview of the Week 🎙️
"I had no network, no money, just a mind and determination." - Dorian Zerroudi, co-founder Elevenact
Curious about how a side project on Snapchat turned into a 1M€/year venture ? In this interview, you'll follow Dorian's inspiring journey from student to founder of Elevenact, a media and tech group with 12 distinct brands. Originally from the south of France, Dorian’s drive took him from a 2-year rigorous preparatory program in Aix-en-Provence to earning dual degrees at EM Lyon and Berkeley. Alongside his co-founder Benjamin Hautin, he began by creating content for students, evolving from a simple Snapchat account into a series of platforms aimed at empowering students at every stage of their academic careers.
Starting with Mister Prépa, a media hub for students preparing for competitive exams, Dorian and Benjamin’s efforts quickly caught the eye of schools and students. Their strategy paid off, with each brand they launched filling a unique need within the education sector. Now, Elevenact has become a trusted partner to some of the biggest names in France, including HEC Paris, KPMG, and TF1 Group.
In the interview, Dorian reveals the secrets behind Elevenact’s success. He shares insights about :
their niche content strategy
the importance of timing in the market
how they reinvest revenue back into the business to fuel growth
and how they scaled from a two-person side project to a fully bootstrapped, million-euro enterprise.
Through his group, Dorian wants to create equal opportunities for all students. He believes that background shouldn’t be a barrier to education, a principle that is deeply embedded in Elevenact’s mission.
So I interviewed him to learn more on how he identified gaps in the market, gained first clients, and developed a thriving business without external funding. This is a story of vision, and smart growth that every aspiring entrepreneur can learn from.
👉 Find the full interview here.
Learnings of the Week 📚
In this week's learnings, I want to share an interesting course completely for free : “How to Buy, Grow, and Sell Startups”. This course is offered by a US micro private equity firm, Fork Equity, led by Ryan Kulp (multipreneur) and Hideko Tachibana (ex Harvard, and former Investment Banking Analyst at Credit Suisse). Since their inception in 2017, they've acquired, sold, or founded over 20 projects, with their most successful exit netting 13x what they originally paid.
The course includes 60 lessons covering essential topics like :
Why buy vs. build ?
How to choose a niche
How to value a small company
Financing and closing : strategies to fund your deal
Deciding whether to hold or flip your asset
…
Fork Equity specializes in investing in founder-led B2B SaaS companies that demonstrate a strong market position and growth potential. They focus on sustainable growth without relying on venture capital, providing strategic support to facilitate smooth exits for founders when needed.
Additionally, you can find a full interview with Ryan conducted by Andrew Gazdecki (founder of Acquire.com), where Ryan discusses how he entered the M&A space and shares insights into the world of micro-acquisitions.
Here are some other Micro PE firms operating in the same space :
Skaling Ventures (U.S.) run by Kjael Skaalerud.
SureSwift Capital (Canada) run by Don Wharton.
3 Interesting Business Inspirations 💡
Here are three innovative business ideas worth exploring :
https://appbot.co/ : Created by Australian Stuart Hall, this tool for app developers aggregates app store reviews from all countries on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. It surfaces user sentiment, bugs, and feature requests, seamlessly integrating this feedback into app development and support workflows through native integrations. He has made over $1.2 million from his iOS app side projects.
https://projectionlab.com/ : Kyle Nolan launched Projection Lab (a SaaS to simulate your financial future and create detailed plans) as a side project, and it now generates $40K per month. Before starting this venture, he was an engineer with a day job and little knowledge of entrepreneurship. Although he had always loved creating things, he didn’t believe any of his projects could grow into a real bootstrapped business.
https://bankstatementconverter.com/ : From Hong Kong, Angus Cheng earns $20K monthly from a single niche idea: converting bank statements. His app simplifies the process, allowing users to convert PDF bank statements from thousands of banks worldwide into a clean Excel (XLS) format.
👉 You can find the full list of business ideas right here.
Interesting content on the web 🌐
In a LinkedIn post, Nicolas Rizk highlights the funding gap for student projects in Europe compared to the United States, noting that American student entrepreneurs have access to 2.4 times more capital than their European counterparts. Through his fund, Campus Fund, Nicolas supported Jules Deplanck in creating a report on the student entrepreneurship funding landscape. The report reveals a stark contrast: U.S. student VC funds are, on average, 2.4 times larger than those in Europe, even though both regions offer similar check sizes and target similar ventures. This disparity persists despite Europe’s larger student population, reinforcing Nicolas's belief in the untapped potential in the European market.
Bpifrance Digital Venture, has released its Environmental Transition Mapping for 2024. By "environmental transition," they refer to the concept defined by Rob Hopkins, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of human activities, with goals such as achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, backed by both global and local regulations. 🌎 The mapping focuses on three main categories within the environmental transition sector :
Monitoring Software: Digital tools for tracking consumption, assessing impact, and facilitating communication.
Finance-Related Startups: Fintech and insurtech solutions, including carbon credits, carbon management, and financing for sustainable projects.
Energy-Related Startups: Innovations aimed at enhancing energy efficiency, energy renovation, and energy production.
That’s all for this edition ! We’ll catch up next week 👋