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As part of their orientation days before starting classes, the Global Entrepreneurship Program 2014 intake went to visit Simplifia, a start-up company launched by EMLYON graduates Maxime Nory and Baptiste Dhaussy.

Simplifia is a company specialized in post-death administrative work. In 48 hours, the company compiles all the necessary paperwork written by legal experts and sends it back to the families who purchased Simplifia’s services so they can sign the documents.

Together, Maxime and Baptiste launched Simplifia 3 years ago. After developing their company within EMLYON’s incubator, the largest incubator in France which has supported the launch of 1200 ventures in the last few years, the EMLYON graduates moved their company closer to downtown Lyon. Today Simplifia has 26 employees with 3 main departments: Commercial, IT and Customer Service. “We wanted to create a company and we chose the funeral market because we saw there were many things to do in this particular sector” says Maxime. 

During the visit, the company co-founder explained how the company operates within the funeral market. Simplifia distributes and commercializes its services mainly through funeral homes and insurance companies. 

After taking a tour of the different departments, the company co-founder took the time to answer the students’ questions. Ranging from queries about the different types of services Simplifia offers to asking Maxime about his future plans for his company, all of the students actively participated in the discussion.

Maxime finished the Q&A part of the visit by giving the students the following advice: “When you start a company you need to go out of the office and study the market first. We went to talk to funeral home directors and we felt a need in this market.”

Not only did this company visit help the students get a sense of their new learning environment but it also gave them inspiration…a great way to start this new academic year!

“During our visit, it was great to see how some non-usual markets, like the "funeral market", could be that profitable and interesting from an entrepreneurial perspective.” Ramon David Abadi Balid Vasquez from Panama, Global Entrepreneurship Program student