Amélie Guicheney (Gaya): “Being an entrepreneur is the most complex thing I’ve ever done”

Leaders League: What was your background before launching Gaya?
Amélie Guicheney: Ever since high school, when I ran a few event organization projects, I’d always wanted to set up my own business. But first I had to learn how to operate in the professional world. After graduating from EM Lyon business school, I began working in corporate R&D in the fields of marketing and development, before joining a strategy and marketing consultancy that worked with Carrefour, Club Med and Biocoop. I learned how to sell things by focusing on the user, rather than the product, which was quite rare to services at the time.

Back then, I couldn’t ever see myself leaving a job to become an entrepreneur, but that began to change when I joined Evaneos, an online market-place specializing in travel experiences. There, I developed my digital skills as a chief data officer. From a phase of hyper-growth, the scale-up was confronted by the Covid crisis. Around that time, I had my first child, which made me think a lot more about how tomorrow’s world could be shaped.

Why did you take the plunge in the end?
There was a round of redundancies at Evaneos and I’d just become a mother, so it felt like a good time to begin a new chapter in my career. After some soul searching and careful study of which sector to enter, urban mobility seemed to tick all the boxes: innovation, impact and the chance to simplify people’s daily lives with accessible products. From there, I met Jacques Bonneville, who has been a mobility engineer for over 40 years, and we got right down to business.

What needs do you meet?
As a young mother in Paris you realize that, when baby arrives, the city suddenly becomes less accessible. E-bikes allow you to regain your freedom. At Gaya, we have paid particular attention to the comfort and modularity of our two-wheelers, since these were the top two points mentioned by the women we interviewed on the subject. We’ve designed secure bikes with low ─ and therefore stable ─ centers of gravity, turn signals, rear brake lights, an electric horn... As for connectivity, our products are equipped with geolocation and alarm systems linked to smartphones, etc. Last but not least, there’s aesthetics: our bikes bring joy back to the city, with their vibrant colors, white wheels and gooseneck frames.

Three years after founding Gaya, what is your vision of entrepreneurship?
Many of us say that, had we known then what we know now, we wouldn’t have gone into it. I’ve had a lot of demanding positions in my career, and went through a very difficult crisis at Evaneos, from a personal point of view. Yet being an entrepreneur is the most complex thing I’ve ever done. With Gaya, there were two major feats. The first was to exclusively sell directly to consumers, and the second was to launch a manufacturing project.

In entrepreneurship, as soon as you’ve stabilized your activity and optimized your product, it’s time to step out of your comfort zone once more

In this sector you never seem to go long without a fresh piece of bad news. We had to deal with the impact on our supplies from the cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal, the dockers’ strikes, the lockdown in China... Another challenge we had to face was financing, because when you’re a manufacturing startup in France, it’s not easy to secure backing. If your business is not profitable, banks won’t lend, and investment funds in our sector of activity are not yet sufficiently advanced. Access to investment for female entrepreneurs is a real issue. Only 2% of entrepreneurial projects financed in France are led by women, and just 12% by mixed founding teams. Manufacturing is still a very male-dominated activity. A big goal for me is to find a way to connect women entrepreneurs with investors.

What are your plans for Gaya?
I’m convinced that our brand has potential. Despite limited resources, Gaya has convinced over 7,000 customers to buy our bikes to date. The bike sector is only now recovering after Covid, which put the brakes on the industry after a period of significant growth in the previous decade. Growth is destined to return in the long term.

We have just launched a new premium range, which takes into account all customer feedback since Gaya was set up. We’re also going to run our own reconditioning and resale service for second-hand Gaya bikes, which will sell for 10% to 30% less. We are opening up partnerships with around thirty retailers in France. Finally, Gaya is launching in Belgium. There are a million things I’d like to do. I don’t want to go into too much detail at this stage, but I do want to go international. In entrepreneurship, as soon as you’ve stabilized things, you try to optimize them, and then it’s time to step out of your comfort zone once more. That’s the way the story goes.

What is your approach to management?
One of the great advantages of entrepreneurship is that you get to define your values and make sure you work with people who think as you do. An engineer and a communications manager don’t necessarily have the same vision on an issue, but if they share the same corporate culture, it goes a long way. When I set up Gaya, I established our purpose, and we are a company with a strong ethical mission. The companies that best resist crises are those where collective intelligence is valued. I’ve spent a lot of time on these issues, and I’m convinced that it’s by empowering people, giving them autonomy and trust, that companies work well.