iAdvize, the jewel of Nantes’ digital economy, moves into its offices in Euronantes

Since its foundation in 2010, iAdvize, the Nantes start-up that has become the European leader in conversational marketing, has not stopped attracting attention for the right reasons. From regular fund raising to massive recruitment, the company has grown steadily to become one of the jewels of the Nantes region. To mark its move into new 3,500m² offices in Euronantes, we spoke to the company’s marketing VP, Maxime Baumard.

iAdvize was the brainchild of Julien Hervouët and Jonathan Gueron, born not even 10 years ago. It has become one of Nantes’ greatest success stories. What do you attribute that to?

Maxime Baumard: Two main factors lie behind the development of iAdvize. The first relates to what we provide, which, being based on human contact, genuinely shook things up, introducing a new kind of communication between companies and customers. The quality of the people involved, the passion they brought to the table, also helped to generate enthusiasm for our solution. In particular, it enabled us to form a community of experts that we dubbed ibbü.
The other factor is the way we work: the creativity and commitment of the people involved and the highly visionary qualities of our CEO enables us to evolve continually. The strength of iAdvize is the diversity of the people that drive it, starting with the countries they come from: there are 12 nationalities represented in our teams!

You have moved into new offices in the Euronantes business district. Is this a new stage in your development?

Yes. On top of needing to ensure our office keeps pace with our growth, we wanted this move to demonstrate and fully capture what the DNA of our company is all about: working together.
Here everything is designed to encourage openness, sharing and the mobility of people working with each other. Open spaces are located alongside more than thirty meeting rooms, ideal for project-based working. Two event spaces have been created: “The Square”, an open space featuring several hangouts for employees, and “The Agora”, a speaking space for inhouse events or even external ones in which iAdvize is a partner.
Being based in Euronantes business district, close to the South station, gives us an openness to our foreign offices, since we are based in four European countries as well as in in the United States (in London, Düsseldorf, Madrid and Boston).

How do you think the Nantes area has contributed to your development?

One of our main concerns is attracting and recruiting talent. Some forty more people will come to work with us in our headquarters here by the end of 2018. The appeal of Nantes helps us convince them to come. Whether it is in terms of the quality of life and presence of international colleges, we have plenty of things in our favour.

We work closely with local higher education establishments, providing their students with internships and jobs, and we also hold conferences to increase students understanding of of what we do.

It is also essential for us that we are integrated into the local digital ecosystem and we want to play our part by, for example, running a corporate mentoring scheme. This is yet another way for us to open ourselves up to the outside.

Key figures:
•    220 workers
•    600 corporate customers, operations in 60 countries
•    30 corporate customers in the Nantes region

Find out more: www.iadvize.com