Microsoft Innovation Center Brussels

InternsGoPro was born a year ago, when Pierre-Julien Bosser-Lamy, Nicholas Wenzel and myself (Régis Pradal) were looking for new ways to boost youth employment and reduce the precariousness of the transition between education and work. We decided to launch this social enterprise when we realised something: Internships have become a requirement to get a job as they can bridge the skills gap separating young people from the labour market, but strikingly the majority of them do not fulfil their purpose. Among the 4.5 million interns per year in Europe, 59% are unpaid, 40% work without a contract and 30% complete internships that do not provide any learning content except coffee-making skills. This hinders youth employability and create social inequality for the ones who can’t afford unpaid internships.

So the question was, how to incentivize employers to offer better quality internships? Then it hit us. Creating transparency and giving visibility to employers offering good training could answer both young people’s and employers’ needs. Indeed interns need tools to assess the quality of internship offers and employers want to attract the best young talents to stay competitive.

InternsGoPro was born with one mission: building the first European job portal that certifies the quality of internship offers and centralizes entry-level jobs in Europe. Certifying the quality of internships will be achieved by labelling eligible offers and employers with the first “European Label for Quality Internships”. In addition, interns will be allowed to publicly rate their internships to create transparency and help identify the best training programs in Europe. Employers will have access to branding services and a European pool of young talents for both internships and entry-level positions.

After having the idea, it was time to see if it could really work and this is when we entered the MIC Boostcamp to face market’s reality. The hardest was to build a business model that would both satisfy our social mission and allow us to be financially viable by giving great value to employers. Stimulated by expert coaches, we worked heavily on our business plan, did our market research homework and went to talk directly to potential customers. I think that last exercise was the best learning experience for us. I will always remember the customer saying at the beginning of the interview “I don’t think I’m in your target, but if it can help you, we can talk for 20 minutes”. One and a half hour later, she was offering to buy services we didn’t even think we could sell.

After winning the Boostcamp’s Brussels Capital Region Prize we had around 10 employers strongly interested to become labelled and got the support of European Institutions. We went all over Europe to crowdsource the label and build a strong network of partners. We are now securing funding to complete the development of our platform and aim to launch a beta version for October. On the 18^th of July we organise the 1st European Interns’ Day with 8 Youth NGO in 6 countries to publish the label.

Contact us to become our partner: [email protected] ; www.internsgopro.com www.europeaninternsday.org (launched this week)

Our advice for other startups

• Avoid the “ugly baby syndrome” and definitely go for the “minimum viable product” test. Concretely, that means don’t just ask you friends and family about your idea, they will most probably say they like it even if it’s not that great. Testing the core of your idea (and your assumptions) with the smallest version of it and minimum investment is essential to avoid wasting time, energy and money. It’s also essential to find and refine your business model.
• Don’t be discouraged by mistakes you make along the way and get rid of limiting beliefs such as “I don’t know how to do that well”, instead use effectuation and look for the key learning points that will make you grow.
• Take the necessary time to build a team that you trust and with complementary skills, there is nothing more important
• Combining social impact and sound business model is possible and, in my view, 21th century challenge.