Interview with Maxime, co-founder of Touchify

How did you come up with the idea for Touchify?

“At my first company, we were asked to digitize the sales materials used by the 450 salespeople of a large business.

The sales management team was struggling to keep on top of the binders holding the product presentations and the price lists. There was no way, in particular, to be sure that any of it was up to date. Some salespeople were even selling with prices that had been obsolete for more than two years!

Back then, touch as we know it today did not exist. There was no iPad, only tablet PCs — computers with a swivelling touchscreen. So we had the idea of using that kind of machine and making the most of the interactivity touch offered, rather than simply turning the paper catalogue into a PDF.

The result was a touch catalogue presenting the 30 brands the company distributed, with an interactive menu for moving between their different graphic worlds simply and intuitively. All of it could be updated centrally, instantly and reliably across their entire sales force.

The project was a real success. That was when we understood that we had uncovered an opportunity. We knew touch was going to become mainstream, so we decided to build on that coming trend.”

How long did the groundwork take before you launched Touchify?

“I first worked on the product alone for 3 years. I put the tool in front of the market and the early feedback was excellent. During that period, beta versions were deployed at several customers such as Ricard, Microsoft and the Musée de l’Alcazar in Marseille.

I wanted to build a complete editor that ran in a browser, one that made it possible to centralize and distribute information. The presentations it produced had to work on every platform. Given the state of web technologies at the time, that was a genuine technical challenge.

After around 2 years of R&D, I presented the project to the tech community, which was impressed by the result and by the technical concepts behind it. The Microsoft teams in particular, which is what prompted them to incubate us in their accelerator, Microsoft Ventures.

In 2015, my brother Antony joined me to help finalize the project and officially launch the Touchify adventure. By the time the company was created, we already had a first stable version of the software and customer requests waiting. Our first sale closed the day after the company was founded.”

Did you follow the Lean Startup model? If so, is it a model you would recommend to someone who wants to start their own company?

“Yes, we followed that model, but without really knowing it. Naturally — if imperfectly — we adopted some of the Lean Startup principles, such as experimentation, iterative design and customer development. It was only much later that we discovered the ‘Lean’ model.

It is a model to follow without question, because it forces the startup to put its product in front of the market and confirm straight away that it fits what customers need.

That phase is essential if you want to avoid building an unsuitable product that will never find its market. The mistake is to insist on launching a complete, perfect product. In the United States, for example, entrepreneurs do not hesitate to start out with a very minimal first prototype. Of course, the product is not shown to the entire target audience right away. But putting it in front of the market matters. It is also a way to grow your network and build a first customer base.

In our case, Touchify Analytics did not exist at launch and had not even been imagined. It was Touchify’s first customers who brought the need to light. Today it is one of the solution’s flagship features.

That said, you have to hold a course and avoid blowing with the wind — questioning everything and pivoting after every piece of customer feedback. You have to validate how relevant a feature really is, what it will cost to build, and sound out the market and your existing customers all over again.

If there is one company that represents the perfect model in my view, it is Slack. The founder made several pivots before arriving at the company we know today. Their first version was a fairly limited prototype compared with the current product. But they already had a huge customer base and thousands of users. It is a fine example of experimentation and customer development.”

What advice would you give a young entrepreneur before they start out?

“The first thing is to believe in yourself and in your idea. Then you absolutely have to sound out the market and test your project against it, at the beginning but also throughout the adventure. Talk about it, go to events, work in coworking spaces… Finally, learn about the startup ecosystem in France, and in particular about the financial side and the many forms of support that exist for starting a company.”

Interview conducted by Sem Poaty-Tindy, a student on the Magistère Droit, Journalisme, Communication programme at Aix-Marseille Université.