## My journey in the world's biggest startup campus We've been fortunate to join [Station F](https://stationf.co/) with my #startup [Studiomatic](https://www.studiomatic.co/en/) in january 2021 ! 🎉 Station F is a 51000 square meters startup campus in Paris, backed by [Xavier Niel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Niel) (a very famous entrepreneur in France) where more than a thousand startups from all over the world are following programs. There's more than 30 programs, mostly industry and stage specific, managed by big company like Facebook, Microsoft, Ubisoft, LVMH, Astra Zeneca or by Station F itself. We succeed to join the most coveted one : the [Founders Program](https://stationf.co/apply/#t-founders). I'll share you here my journey at Station F, from the day we applied. ## What we're doing in Station F, in short As the word "campus" might help, Station F is an hybrid place between an incubator, a school and a living place with a big community. The goal, obviously, is to grow faster than if you were alone. Station F provide equipment, infrastructures, resources, staff and mentors, puting you in best conditions possible to achieve a faster growth. ## The apply Everything starts by applying. Each programs have it's own schedule and apply process. Depending on what you want to achieve, your industry, your stage etc, you apply to one or another program. I.e. : Faceook program is for #artificial-intelligence startups, LVMH for luxury tech, Ubisoft for gaming and entertainment while others are only for students or only for unprivileged people. For the Founders Program, the apply is in 2 steps, each online and lasts something around 4 months. We applied 3 times and get refused 2 times, all during the first step. The first step is a form you fill online, with a lot of questions about you, your startup, your team, your vision, your product, if you already fundraised or not, your KPIs. (I'm not sure I remember, but I think they'd also asked for a deck). This step is the most difficult one because you're in competition with a lot of startups. They say that they have something like 5000 applicants each time, and that they take only 100 startups for the second step. Your application is reviewed by a comitee of 100 top notch entrepreneurs that are checking if you : - Match the pre-requisits : early stage startup with big ambitions, working full time - Are aligned with Station F values : active in community, sucker for resources - Ok with the 205€ monthly fees (ridiculous comparing to the cost of a coworking place in Paris) - You have a PoC and KPIs - You want to work in Paris - You have the right mindset (don't come if you want to get babysitted) If your profile match with all of this, you might be choosen to go on the second and last step, which is a kind of screening interview in video, but without the interviewer. You're not provided with the questions you might have to answer or any kind of this, so it's a bit hard to prepare. All the team must be present, the questions must be answered in english and in 1 to 2 minutes maximum with 30 seconds of reading an preperation (there's a timer on the screen). We had something like 10 to 12 questions and it was mainly about our vision, our values and very specific questions. We had something like : - The classic "introduce yourself and where do you met with your partners" - Short pitch - "Who're your clients and what are you selling them?" - "How do you bring diversity in your company?" - "If someone who's making the same things as you, but with lot more money and resrouces jump in your office what would you do?" - "How do you solve conflicts between you and your cofounders?" *<mark class="red">Disclaimer</mark> : Here, I'm just relating how the apply went for us. Please, don't take anything as the only truth or advices, processes might changes for every new batch.* To be honest, it was quite anxious. We'd prepared the best we could, we had notes in english about our KPIs, pitch, market, customers, values etc, but some questions wasn't what we prepared at all. We did our best to stay ourselves and answer what we trully thought. It was also a bit more difficult for us because we had to improvise in a foreign language! At the end, we were neutral about our performance, more like *"Ok, we did what we could, let's see now".* One month later, we received an email from Station F with a title saying: > Congratulations, you did it! 🎉 And we were very happy! 😄 ## The onboarding Once we were accepted as a startup, we have to do our onboarding. It's a kind of ceremony mixed with online things to do: we had to fill our profile for the online plateform HAL (Station F's intranet) and watch a very funny video on how Station F works. We then accept a date for a presential onboarding. The presential onboarding lasts about 2 hours, and it's a kind of conferences. Every people get their portrait, then sit in the auditorium to hear the staff talking about how Station F works. They explain the core values, core concepts and things to do and not do as a startup in Station F. We also were given our access to HAL, the general Slack and our WIFI credentials. ### The guild system When this end, we are associated with our guild. As there's no mentoring, we're teamed with other startup that works in the same industries as we are. This is like graduate school choice: we made three wishes during the online onboarding, and we have the answer during the presential onboading. For us, we were teamed with the B2C guild, called Players. Once the conference is finish, we just get out to join our guild master that will make us a custom tour of Station F, giving us our badge access and showing us our office. Very similar to the scene where Harry Potter first arrive in Poudlard and enters Gryffindor. I really had a great time discovering Station F for the first time. You walk through the open space, seeing various people, all working on different stuff. There's hardware, software, sales, marketing... And the place is absolutely stunning. ### Gamifications: the grade system Not every perk and services are available to everyone. This depends on your grade and there are four different grades that you get depending on various factors and goals. The first grade, “Padawan”, gives you the strict minimum and is everyone start here. The second grade, “Senseï”, can be reach automaticaly by providing our KPI to the staff through HAL. We're asked for our turnover, our MoM growth, and main KPIs. These are only for the Station F's staff to see our progression, but we can authorize them to share it with some potential investors if needed. Once we filled our first KPIs, we automaticaly move to “Senseï”. It gives us new services such as a fundraising advisor (to be honest, this is in theory. In practice, it's just a newsletter or office hours with established investors on the campus), more credits for rooms and the autorization to invite people to Create Zone. It also unlocks other services in HAL. The third grade can be reach only if we reach specific goals in community, like organizing events for the guild, being kind with other... In short, being engaged. This is not automatic. If I remember well, it is our guild master who suggest to the staff which startup to move to the third grade. Once we reach this grade, we have more credits for invitations and rooms, as well as new credit to book the main stages for bigger events and conferences. It also let us stay in Station F for 3 years max. The last grade, “Ponycorn”, is only for Future 40 startups, which are the 40 best startups on the campus. This is a competition any startup in the campus can attend and result in massive PR, fundraising opportunity and the ultimate grade that let you stay in Station F lifetime and have more services and credits. ## Our first guild-meeting One of the first event you have to attend as a startup, is the guild-meeting. Hosted by the guild master, it's a monthly meeting where the startups share their problems and try to find solution or make things in place, such as dinners, conferences or workshops, to tackle the most common problems. The first guild-meeting is more about presentation: who makes what, with who and where the startup is, in terms of market, funding, product etc. We had very various kind of startups in our guild, but mostly mobile apps: a PKM mobile app, a MMORPG, cooking app, language learning app, payment app... and us making music studios. The angular stone was that we all are B2C oriented. ## The everyday life in Station F Once you have your access, both for the campus and for HAL, you can go as you want to your desk. This is the everyday life. Conditions are super great, because the office is very luminous, you have countless options to eat, drink, play, sit, work, chill... That's, for me, the best part of Station F. Every day, on HAL, new events are listed. As we're a COVID-19 promotion, all of our events were online. They're on very wide matters and mostly in english. You just need to sign up on it and there you go. The conferences are given by associates, other CEO, or people with high grade on Station F. So the everyday life in Station F is mostly going to the office and watching after events and/or resources in HAL. ## HAL - the intranet Station F is well known for its perks. And all of these are accessible through HAL. We basicaly use HAL for everything related to Station F: attend to conferences, watch the list of other people and investors in the campus to contact them, watch online knowledge videos, claim perks, book private rooms for meetings, invite external people to the campus, managing our profile etc. Not everything is useful for everyone. The directory, to contact people in Station F, seems cool at first sight, but there's so much people in it, and you don't really know anyone, that it's a bit scary to contact people through this. There's the investor directory, listing every venture capital, their minimum ticket, industries, investment thesis and their contact. This is a very useful feature for startups who're raising funds. The knowledge videos are very new and interesting. These are series on specific subjects such as legal, HR or fundraising etc. There's also the replay of events you hadn't attended. The perks section is a great tool. They provide all the perks available for startups, the criterias and a way to claim it. Unfortunately, they're not all working, sometimes outdated or too difficult to claim, so not very handy. But it's a great way to save a lot of money, especialy if you haven't had any perks before (that wasn't our case, we already had perks program before entering Station F). There are perks on various things: SaaS, cloud services, tools, services, brands, clothes, food, transportations... They say that, if you claim and get every perks on the plateform, you could save 1M€. Of course, nobody can claim everything, but still impressive. On the campus, there's a lot of private room that can be booked for meeting. We have a limit hour of bookings available per month, we just need to choose the room in HAL to make one, and add credits if we're out. Next to that, we can invite people in the campus. There are two different zones: the Share Zone, where you can invite as many people as you want, and the Create Zone, where the number of invitation per month you have depends on your grade, but mostly more or less than 5 per month.