Two years after a first season of Who wants to be my partner?, followed on average by 1.6 million people, M6 is once again relying on this concept, offering entrepreneurs a few minutes to convince a panel of investors to put their hand in the wallet, in exchange for a share in their capital.
The second edition is launched on Wednesday at 9:05 p.m., with Xavier Domergue replacing Julien Courbet at the presentation. If new faces are also arriving on the investor side, Delphine André, Eric Larchevêque and Marc Simoncini are among those who are coming back. “We asked production to have more interactions between us,” said the last city, creator of the start-up Angell, specializing in connected bikes. In the first season, all the questions came up on the entrepreneurs, we sometimes spoke at the same time, it made them uncomfortable and it was a little rigid. There, we agreed that the more we were going to talk to each other [entre investisseurs potentiels], more it would be alive, sympathetic, funny, in any case more dynamic. “
“I put in double the 500,000 euros that I had originally planned”
“We created an emulation that would encourage deals. When the jury itself is agile, open and wants to move forward, it promotes empathy with the candidates, ”notes Jean-Pierre Nadir, one of the new investors, who quickly found his footing in the program. “I had set myself a budget that I exceeded. When you are caught up in the dynamics of the show, when there are interesting operations, you let yourself be carried away, says the man who launched the responsible tourism portal Fairmoove.fr. In the end, I put in double the 500,000 euros that I had originally planned. The businessman, who is the only one to explicitly mention the amounts, has therefore invested a million euros – of his personal money – among the thirty-five cases of this second season.
“Television is often criticized for brutalizing the masses, it allows people to make a dream come true. This makes things accessible, but we have to make it clear that this also does not happen with the snap of the fingers. It is not: “I arrive, I pitch and it’s good, I succeeded” “, warns Delphine André, CEO of the transport and logistics group GCA. Several entrepreneurs therefore leave as they came, without having done any business. “Even if we are benevolent, we are not there to make people believe in impossible deals. The business is a shark community ”, supports Anthony Bourbon, founder of Feed and new recruit of Who wants to be my partner?
The thirty-something joined the show to “represent young people that we do not see enough”, in other words profiles similar to his, who have not gone through a large school, can not count on a helping hand from the family and do not have a real network. “It’s an opportunity to reach out and say despite the cards you have been given, even if you are disadvantaged, that you don’t have a lot of money, that you haven’t made studies, you can get by, ”he says.
Different profiles and outside networks
” For us, Who wants to be my partner? it’s the opportunity to see files that we would not have been able to see otherwise because it is true that outside the program, when we look at a file, it is better if it is supported and recommended , because we receive so many… The network plays an important role. There, we are attentive in the same way on all the projects ”, explains Eric Larchevêque, the creator of Ledger.
Marc Simoncini underlines that this M6 program “brought him back to his roots”: “As I now work in an investment fund where we see heavier and more structured files, I lost sight of all this population of first-time workers. entrepreneurs. So I was able to reconnect that link. »And for these profiles of new business leaders, Who wants to be my partner? is of considerable importance, especially in the context of a pandemic. Filming took place in May 2021, when economic activity was still heckling.
Success stories
“The Covid was a complicated phase for start-ups. Investments fell by 80% in terms of early stage, the first deals, ”says Anthony Bourbon. “The government has helped businesses a lot. The “whatever it costs” saved the French industry. I am in tourism and 95% of the actors of the sector were financed between the EMP [prêt garanti par l’Etat] and partial unemployment compared to their 2019 turnover, continues Jean-Pierre Nadir. But those who got started in 2020 received absolutely no help. So it’s a lot more complicated to build a box in tough times because you don’t have any support. The banks already have the EMPs to finance, they are worried about the prospects and it becomes more complicated to give money. Hence the fact that the entrepreneurs that we are are more agile to invest than more traditional institutions. “
Anthony Bourbon is already hinting at a particularly brilliant success story: “Some companies, for which I participated, now have their products sold at Monoprix or Franprix. There are those who have already raised funds. One of them will become the first unicorn of M6, it is worth more than a billion euros. It shows the power and the extraordinary possibility that it can generate. “