Few entrepreneurs can say they founded and sold their first successful business within a year of launch. Here’s how Goosty did it.
Alexandre Roderich, Alexandre Mithouard and Hadrien Branca were in their final year of university when the covid-19 pandemic hit. Friends since high school, the three were back living with parents in Luxembourg eating ‘cold’ takeout when they stumbled on the idea for a delivery service that would ensure food arrived hot and fresh while keeping costs down for restaurants.
Roderich applied the no-code skills he’d learned in an earlier venture to build an app connecting customers, with restaurants, drivers and the Goosty operations. The team used their savings and spent all hours developing and growing the brand through social media.
Mithouard recalls: “At the beginning of 2020, I didn’t have my driver’s licence so Alexandre would make deliveries every day. He’d come to the office at 8 and end at midnight because that’s when the last orders came.”
Scaling without funding was challenging and so, a year later, the team sold the venture to Carlitoo, a private Luxembourgish fund, for €1.3m (including transfer of shares and post-sale earn-out), a figure 20 times what they invested. They remained with the new owner for a further year to help grow the platform.
“There was a lot of work but it was interesting at this young age to be able to launch a business,” says Mithouard, adding: “It was a quick exit and we hope it will build trust with VCs in the future.”
While Goosty was bootstrapped, the trio, who are now located out of Paris startup campus Station F, hope that might change for their next ventures.
“What got us accepted at Station F is our idea to create a marketplace that enables any influencer or any public personality to meet their fans in real life and monetise that,” explains Mithouard.
Wivme, as the project is known, leverages the growing importance placed by Generation Z in experiences over objects.
Tatarte is their second work in progress, a scalable franchise enabling the public to personalise high-end French pastries. The fact that Branca graduated from the prestigious Paul Bocuse cookery school no doubt inspired the idea and will help ensure the quality and know-how.
When not developing their own businesses, the three are angel investing and sharing what they have learned with other founders. And their learning experience has been vast.
Among the key takeaways from the Goosty experience, learning to build no-code solutions was a game changer. “You can do great things with no code. It’s great because you can get an MVP and that’s going to relieve your funders. These guys know you won’t rely on third-party freelancers,” says Mithouard.
Conversations with VCs about Goosty and with other founders at Station F have also helped them better understand how to raise funding. “The mindset wasn’t there when we had Goosty but now we know how to make pitches and understand more,” says Mithouard.
While Luxembourg remains limited for marketplace platforms, the trio doesn’t rule out returning with new ventures to the grand duchy.
Roderich says: “We are still attached to the country but now we want to explore other markets.”
