Created in 2012, labeled Paris Innovation Amorchage by the City of Paris and BPI France, the Paris-Dauphine Incubator is a driving force for entrepreneurship and supporting Dauphine entrepreneurs.RandomCoffee connects different incubatees, students, and alumni of the Paris Dauphine incubator on a regular basis
Several profiles cross paths at Paris Dauphine Incubator and share offices, but they are not always familiar with one another. As one of the incubator’s main purposes, we needed to foster synergies between incubatees (in particular, business synergies).
In spite of our efforts and encouragement, the incubatees were too busy with their daily lives and priorities to interact with others and exchange ideas. Following this observation, we realized we needed an external solution that would encourage healthy and sociable interactions among people on our premises.
RandomCoffee was subsequently deployed at the Paris Dauphine incubator to support exchanges between incubated entrepreneurs and graduates with various backgrounds, sectors, and experiences.
The RandomCoffee implementation produced concrete results from the very first meeting between the people at Paris Dauphine.
RandomCoffee was set up to facilitate informal and punctual exchanges by organizing monthly breakfast events. Graduating students and aspiring entrepreneurs have benefited from this experience, enriching their daily interactions with others.
Furthermore, for example we even see an undergraduate student with a project in mind has been able to exchange ideas with an entrepreneur from the Alumni program who had established his company two years earlier. Participants were also able to interact with Alumni and with students where they could each share their own experiences. We’ve even seen alumni recruit students for internships following a meeting through RandomCoffee.
With RandomCoffee, we have been able to organize, add context, and spark interest in our existing workshops, such as our monthly events and our formal and informal business meetings.
Within the incubator, we developed a sense of belonging over time. We wanted the incubatees to feel that the experience was enriching through the people they met, and based on their positive feedback, we’re pretty sure that the experience will be memorable for them after they leave Paris Dauphine.
RandomCoffee’s most significant advantage for an incubator like ours or any other professional ecosystem is that it optimizes interactions between people during the incubation period.
Connecting entrepreneurs is fundamental, but it isn’t always easy to organize this through events where people tend to surround themselves with their peers.
RandomCoffee enabled us to maximize the impact of the incubation period by bringing together completely different profiles in a short period of time. With recruitment every six months, we established more exchanges with the help of RandomCoffee, whose effects are still felt today. The bet paid off.