HUMANS of NUMA

The startup life in Paris, Moscow, Bengaluru and Casablanca

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Benoit, Corentin and Arthur are the creators of Truckfly - an app made to assist truckers on their road and one of 15 startups accelerated in NUMA Season 8. 

HUMANS of NUMA: How did you find out that one in four trucks is driving empty?

Corentin: That’s a good question… Maybe it’s a bit the other way around. Ben was in Brazil during his studies and he got into a minor accident with a truck. He was looking for business ideas and that’s when he started to look at the truck industry. 

Benoit: We started looking how the trucking industry works and if there’s an Uber for trucks. It turns out in Brazil there are a few companies that are starting to do this but in Europe there’s really not much going on.   

HUMANS of NUMA: How did you guys meet? 

Arthur: I was not a part of the project at the beginning. I joined in, like, November 2015. 

Corentin: Ben and I have been friends since middle school, we were neighbours when we were, like twelve. We were friends all along through middle school and high school. With Arthur it’s a bit of a funny story. I did an internship when I was in the engineering school in New York for one year. Then I went back and I did another internship for six months in a company in Paris. Arthur was the one who replaced me for that internship in Paris and then he did another internship in the same company that I was in in New York. 

Arthur: When they were just starting, Corentin told me about the project and he told me: You’ll see, you’ll work with us when you’re finished with your school. Six months later we met again because I was back in Paris. I was looking for opportunities to join a young startup and this was the perfect fit for me.

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Felipe, Nathan and Rémy are the founders of WILLTY - the dynamic and automated engagement platform for gyms and one of 15 startups accelerated in NUMA Season 8. 

HUMANS of NUMA: What has been the most interesting experience that you’ve had along the way? 

Felipe: It’s maybe stupid to say, but what’s happening now is very amazing. We’re actually living in a collocation, all three of us in the same flat, because we lived in Toulouse. We came here 3 weeks ago, we live together in a really small apartment, in which I sleep on top of Rémy. Not on top of him literally [laughs], on a bunk bed. 

Nathan: But you know, startup is like a wedding... 

Rémy: Before we came to NUMA we got the apartment for 1 month, because we didn’t know if we wouldn't kill each other living together. Felipe: And we started to kill each other recently because me and Rémy are learning the piano. There’s a piano at home so you can imagine how terrible this sounds when we play together.   

Nathan: Yes, and when one stops, the other begins. And I think my head is gonna explode. So I started to make some poems when Rémy was playing. 

HUMANS of NUMA: Don’t you want to start learning as well? 

Nathan: I think we would be… expulse? Kicked out of the apartment, if I started too. Because they spend a lot of time on the piano. 

(Follow WILLTY on Facebook, Twitter @WilltySport or check out their website)

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How did you first come to NUMA? I got here through a friend of mine who works for an investment fund, a startup investment fund. I was looking for an internship and I had lunch with him and right at the end of the lunch, he checked his phone and saw  a tweet from NUMA saying they’re looking for a communication’s manager or intern or whatever. He said, "You should go to NUMA, I’m not even gonna tell you what it is, just go there and see if you like it." 

So I came here right that afternoon. I came here and I had never heard of it. I visited the whole building, and there was no code, so I kind of sneaked everywhere. And then I drunk a beer downstairs and just thought, "OK, I wanna work here”. I had no idea what they do, I had no idea at that point what a co-working space was or anything, or a startup even. And I though, “Whatever they do, I wanna work here. I wanna be a part of the team”. 

When I got my internship I was actually really thinking of leaving to Mexico - it’s a country I’ve been to every year from zero to twelve and then basically every three years since then. I really thought I was going there and then I saw this NUMA thing. And then I said, "I’ll do 3 months of internship, I don’t have a timing or anything". I was really going to go to Mexico if I didn’t get it. So I did the internship and it went really well, and I really loved the place. So I was like "OK, I’ll stay, I’ll see about Mexico later". So it was really, basically, out of luck. Just coincidence. 

(Tristan is a communication’s manager at NUMA, follow him on twitter @TristanLebleu)

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Why are you at NUMA?

We have been accepted to the semi-finals. We have applied to the incubator. 

What’s your startup? 

It’s Peligourmet. The objective of Peligourmet is to create and to create a collaborative website to access high quality food, which is original products, on short food circuits. 

Are you nervous? 

Yes, of course! 

(Peligourmet’s website: peligourmet.fr || twitter: @Peligourmet)

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What events do you think had the biggest impact on your life? 

The biggest impact… It’s the people I’ve met at different points, they either inspired me, or they helped me see a certain part of what was happening that I was blind to, I couldn’t see it. Basically, they pushed me into more awareness. On my side, at some point I said ‘ok, I wanna travel’. I took a bold decision, I’ve got my ticket and I just left. I said ‘ok, pros and cons, but I’m gonna do it’. Discovering new universes, you know, new places. You go to a country and everything changes - the culture changes, people change, the way they interact with each other, the way the talk changes. This changes everything and you have to adapt to all these things. I liked it very much and I did it several times.

(Marius’s website: mariusnedelcu.com || twitter: @nedzen)

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After Christmas I got this email saying ‘We definitely have a place for you but we don’t really have a job for you, so can you come for a few days and we can just see how you’re doing?”. So I went to NUMA for 3 days, which was in January. At the end of the 3 days we had an evaluation and that was positive but Elise [the programme manager] was uncertain if the job was possible. So 6 weeks and 3 emails pass and I go skiing with my dad and then out of the blue I got an email saying "We’d like you to come, can you start on Monday?”. It was Friday, by the way. And the rest is history.