Founder Spotlight: Florentin Lenoir of WeCube

Founder Spotlight: Florentin Lenoir of WeCube

A ‘’collaborative ecosystem’’ for growth

By Glacer Barnett

               WeCube is a startup that seeks to create a supportive ecosystem that will essentially cater to every possible need and service that any company would request for. Its primary application is to emulate a collaborative system for the benefit of businessmen. Processes are centralized by the sharing of employees for the many different services, so as a result, everybody is able to collaborate and find the answers they are looking for. Thus, it doesn’t just aims to provide a compulsory working space; but also apply an accelerative program for a more cohesive working environment for its members. WeCube offers valued services to jumpstart a company’s growth by scaling up the development of its business ideas and market; this, WeCube achieves, by taking care of the small, distracting details—employee recruitment, legal registration, and the like—which other companies would normally have these businessmen solve. As a result, members end up with the privilege of investing the entirety of their energy onto the bigger picture of directing the paths which their businesses are headed.

               WeCube’s labelling roots originates from the necessity for a collaborative environment (We), and the mission to corner every problematic dimension that a company would ask to solve (Cube). Its beginnings come from the later months of 2015 when Florentin Lenoir, a co-founder of WeCube, was approached by his good friend Thierry Tea, WeCube’s current CEO of several companies in Europe and Asia. It was originally meant to be a ‘’service broker’’—to use every possible network and have people benefit from it. Thierry had the idea in mind, and with Florentin’s character of proceeding towards things based on gut instinct, Florentin didn’t have to think twice about giving his yes. He had previously worked with Thierry in opening a jewellery concept in Cambodia. With Thierry, along with his team members, Kate Paredes and Michiko Soriano, both of whom he had met in college, Florentin felt it easy to make the decision knowing all of them, not only a personal, but also a professional level. After much discussion, the team made changes to WeCube’s business model to what it is today, before having it launched in early 2016.   ‘’Everything just fell into place. The idea felt right with the added value that it could bring to people.’’, Florentin inputted.

A Frenchman’s integration into the land of Asia

               Florentin was born and raised in a country most known for its ingenious culture and domestic quality of life—France. Exploring the exotic land and indulging in the cultures of far Asia has always been a dream for Florentin—his first steps into achieving it was done through an exchange program that he chose to partook here in the Philippines. Florentin loved how opportune it was for him to travel to many other parts of Asia; as a result of the refreshing lifestyle, he decided on spending 2 years of his years working in a French-Filipino company here in the Philippines. After completing his diploma in South Korea, he came back to work for the same company for 3 more years.

               About a year ago, however, Florentin wanted a change in his life. Wanting to delve out of his comfort zone, Florentin ended up quitting his job to become fully immerse in the startup world. ‘’With the rise of the emerging middle-class looking to be exposed to the international standard of better products, there’s a lot of potential everywhere.’’, Florentin reasoned. He joined the marketing department of an identity verification and credit scoring company a year ago in order to further challenge himself—around this time that WeCube was in the works. Needless to say, the way Florentin perceived work and the ethic he put into it made a 180 degree turn: From a typical 9-6 job, he was now in a result-oriented career where he could arrange his time based on the result that he needed to produce.

               As a single man in his 20s, Florentin feels like he still has a lot of opportunities ahead of him. There is no better time to risk failure than the time when you have no moral commitments or legal obligations. In times of discouragement, he feels thankful that he has friends and family who believe in him. Attaining great things in order to push for his vision begins with baby steps—Florentin believes in taking his time, one step on the way, without having to stress himself of the knitty-gritty details. He knows that he isn’t going to get things perfect at the beginning, but he believes that he can improve by learning from these mistakes to look for new ways to make everything better. That is the excitement he finds out of entrepreneurship: If there is nothing to learn and if there is no room for self-improvement, then there is no meaning to it. In a way, that is the service that WeCube provides: To help people grow from their mistakes and guide them along the way.

‘’The more you give, the more you receive’’ as a philosophy

               Coming from a family with proliferate entrepreneurs, Florentin sees entrepreneurship as something that has people trying, failing, and trying again. If one person had around ten seemingly productive ideas, then seven of these ideas would fail, two would be somewhat feasible, but only one would be great. One also has to be urgent with his work, but never at the expense of the quality value that he could bring—achieving that balance is the key to making a product work. Additionally, entrepreneurs have to appropriate humility—that mistakes are normal, and that we have to listen to the advice of others, even if it may go against our prepositions. Lastly, Florentin thinks that entrepreneurs have to be innovated—to be able to come up with a novel idea that answers to the needs of people. With problems, we think of solutions—being able to analyse these problem and apply these solutions is what we have to make people understand.

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