Neoca has good news to share with you!

December 22, 2022

Neoca a de bonnes nouvelles à vous annoncer! - Neoca

This week Neoca has good news to announce: we are winners of the Passeport Armorique program. What impact will this have on our project? We'll tell you all about it in the rest of the article!

What is Passeport Armorique?

The Concept

Passeport Armorique is a mentorship program between an entrepreneur and one or more young entrepreneurs. You're probably wondering what the point of being mentored is. It lies in an exchange between the mentor and the project leaders. Indeed, through this mentorship, project leaders will gain more self-confidence and help their project mature.

The Advantages

For the winners, the advantages of participating in the Passeport Armorique program are numerous:

Gain confidence in their project and their skills
Benefit from the experience of their mentor, a business leader
Build their network
Acquire a good understanding of the business environment

Who can participate?

If you are a post-baccalaureate student in initial training or work-study, belonging to the Brittany or Pays de la Loire region, under 28 years old and carrying an entrepreneurial project, then Passeport Armorique is for you!

A young person being mentored by an older person around a computer

And Neoca in all this?

A Project in Maturation

Since early 2022, Neoca has been part of the INSA Rennes pre-incubator, the "SAS de création". The purpose of a start-up pre-incubator is to enable project leaders to develop their idea to the creation stage. Being part of the SAS de création means:

Being Supervised Being a group of young entrepreneurs is not always simple; we cannot dedicate 100% of our time to Neoca because we are pursuing our project alongside our demanding studies and our hobbies. Therefore, having supervision is beneficial, as it's very easy to lose momentum and ultimately not see your idea through.
Preparing One advantage of being part of a pre-incubator is being able to prepare for competitions by regularly practicing pitching, and at the same time learning to receive criticism or answer the most difficult questions. Preparing also means preparing your project. Being at the SAS de création also allows us to frame our project and see things from new angles, thus helping our ideas mature.
Creating a Network The SAS de création is the first stage of the Station Rennes Innovation incubator, which brings together various major schools in Rennes. This forms a large network where everyone can contribute their skills to various projects. For example, we enlisted the help of the Rennes School of Design to assist us with the design of our helmets.
Cooperating Grouping with different projects also means helping them mature, offering a fresh and different perspective, or sometimes technical assistance. A great advantage of the SAS de création is that it hosts numerous projects, all as different from each other as they are, and especially at different stages of maturity. Thus, we can benefit from those who have already gone before us on this somewhat bumpy path that is entrepreneurship. And this moral support is more than important on this journey.
Confronting Being surrounded by many projects means helping each other, but it also means confronting each self. We sometimes find ourselves competing for the same competition, so we need to give our best and be ready to assert ourselves against other projects.

Since this summer, Romane and Maxence have acquired the Pépite status for Neoca to become student entrepreneurs. The Pépite poles, or Student Hubs for Innovation, Transfer, and Entrepreneurship, aim to strengthen entrepreneurial culture and innovation. To do this, they connect business creation projects led by students or young graduates with companies, thus becoming support and financing structures. As for the student entrepreneur status, its goal is to help students develop their project while continuing their studies, by adapting their curriculum!

All logos of Passeport Armorique, Pépite and INSA SAS de création crossed by a rocket

A New Impetus

Belonging to the mentorship offered by Passeport Armorique allows us to advance our project even further. Indeed, this mentorship is different from that offered by the SAS de création. This time, the support will be personalized and more regular. For Neoca, we have solicited Passeport Armorique to receive help mainly in the areas of logistics and supply chain, which would greatly help us when we launch the production of our helmets.

This mentorship also comes at a time when we will need it most. Indeed, starting in February, Maxence and Romane will be working full-time on Neoca as part of their Final Project for 6 months. So, get ready because the pace will accelerate at Neoca!

And for the future?

Because Neoca's ambition doesn't stop there, we already have other projects in sight to bring Neoca to the top. Indeed, the pre-selections for the Ignition competition organized by Station Rennes Innovation will take place at the beginning of February, and you can be sure that Neoca will be there!

Station Rennes is Rennes' shared incubator. It's the next step after the SAS de création, and the roles of these two entities are very different. Station Rennes selects emerging projects, and the goal is then to rapidly increase their fertilization. This involves comprehensive support to secure, enrich, value, and accelerate our project. To achieve this, the incubator helps projects with the following questions:

Feasibility and relevance of the innovation
Project suitability for the market
Economic viability

With the sole objective of preparing to become true entrepreneurs

The road of entrepreneurship is long and fraught with pitfalls; receiving a little help to accompany us is never too much. Thus, we thank Passeport Armorique in advance for our future collaboration, but also the SAS de création for the support it provides us, which helps us push our project ever further!