Interview conducted and transcribed by IFAL

As a British citizen, Francisco is also ethnically from Mexico and Iran. Following studies in Management Science and Software Engineering at UCL, he pursued an entrepreneurship course at HEC Paris combined with a programme at the Ecole Polytechnique. Both courses assisted him on the creation of Bluco, an AI tool assisting recruiters on the filtering of candidates operating for 9 months.

Question: What was your main motivation for studying in the UK and at your chosen university? 

Answer: First of all, the UK is known to have quite a good education system. I chose it not specifically for this, I chose it because I grew up there, because I knew the academics were strong of course, but I heard very good things about UCL in particular. I wanted to do management and business studies, I thought it would give me the fundamentals necessary to launch my start-up later, because even while I was in high school I knew I wanted to do this, so I knew ‘okay management is where I want to go down but I need to pick up some tech as well’. I actually considered between UCL and LSE. I had offers from both, I went to both of the Open Days, and what I found with LSE’s course of management is that it was very theoretical. What I really liked about management science at UCL is it was very practical and you could learn the functional skills that you need to get into business, especially it's quite data analysis and tech oriented so it allowed me to pick up computer sciences as well. This is why I thought okay I'll probably get the larger, wider tool set in UCL. 

Q:What kind of obstacles have you encountered during your studies? Did you overcome these obstacles, and if so, how? 

A: I had my first year and even part of the second year through covid, so it was online. The obstacle there was networking-wise, socially, it was very limited. I was really just behind the computer, far from the campus, far from the university, so that wasn’t amazing especially when it comes to trying to learn management through practical and also group projects which entail case studies with real companies. You can't get into the real teamwork that you could have got into if it was in person. I just imagine trying to do this start-up that I'm doing away from my team remotely, as opposed to being here all together, and it's a total difference being here together. The communication, and the speed we can move at, it’s on a different level. I felt that lack of speed in university, especially with communication, talking with teammates with classmates whether it's a group project or socially, was very limited. That was the biggest obstacle. 

[It was equally an obstacle with regards to] opportunities. Although there would usually be plenty of events where you can go and meet leaders from companies, learn real life sector skills, or general events, all that was taken out of the window for us. That might even be what pushed me to make my first start up in the first year of university. I had all this time behind my computer where I had to be indoors and I couldn't be engaging in other extracurriculars, so I took it upon myself to just get going right then and there. 

How I overcame it? Well, once the restrictions were eased of course I took the initiative to meet up with the classmates, even though we couldn’t do it at university we would go elsewhere, and that's how we'd get our group projects done, we'd find open spaces we could work at. That's the only real obstacle though. It was a demanding course, but it was well facilitated. We were taught well, I enjoyed it, it was quite engaging, so the only obstacle really was external. 

Q: How did the idea for your company come about? 

A: For Bluco, I already had a preliminary introduction to HRtech and what I saw was that the current technologies, specifically legacy softwares, are very outdated and only target white collar candidates so they leave out the majority of the workforce who are deskless, who don't use computers like you and I every single day and rather who use their phones. My co-founder Nicolò was working in BCG, he was also doing a project in recruitment and was seeing all the struggles that companies were facing in recruiting people. So we put my tech perspective and his sector perspective, we mixed that together and we saw that there was this problem and the current solution wasn’t solving it, so what would make applying to a job for these people as easy as sending a message on WhatsApp? We thought about that, we implemented it, we showed it to customers, to potential clients, they loved it and that's what we went with. 

I knew Nicolò for some time, I met him at HEC and we got along from the first day, so I knew when we started speaking about this that he's the right person to co-found a company with. We're both quite focused, with the same sort of objectives and ambitions, it was an easy decision for me. 

Q: Since you embarked on this project, have you found anyone willing to help you get established? 

A: Certainly! I think a very good thing about the French start-up ecosystem is that you have a lot of support. They have this huge hub where I'm at right now it’s called Station F and you have a thousand start-ups all in one place. We managed to get in here, we applied, we got accepted, and you find that anyone you ask a question to will be very willing to help. People are actually quite open, contrary to popular belief, so we found it very easy to get the answers we're looking for. Again, support in France is in many aspects better than in other countries. You have BPI which can give you grants to boost your startup quickly with like 30,000 Euros so there's a lot of support here. I did find people were eager to help, people were even eager to join us and we couldn't take everyone, but we already have a decent team here of some very smart people, a lot of them are French. It’s a good place to start a business. 

Q: What about the UK environment? What does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur in the UK and how does it differ from the French entrepreneurial echosystem? 

A: In France, you have a lot of opportunities for support. So for example, here in station F, they give us incredible opportunities to meet top people in top companies that we want to sell. To introduce us to these people. Have amazing events with people from even open AI, from hugging faces to CEOs coming in, giving us a plethora of knowledge on everything want to learn about. But in the UK, it's more financial support you get. So you're exposed to probably the biggest financial hub in Europe. And that means, when it comes to maybe fundraising as a startup, even if you're a student, you have far more opportunity there. So it's more financial, the support than it is here, or just opportunity based in France, or like network-based, I'd say what needs to be done is simply get going, put it together, give it a go. There's nothing wrong with trying. But in the UK, I would say it's more competitive. In France, you have, of course, far more startups being launched. There, is a much more competitive market as there's more money there, so more people want a piece of that money, which means that if you do it, you have to give it everything. 

Q: Have you been able to secure customers so far? 

A: We have several customers, quite a few, actually, some big names, like the subsidiaries of the Volkswagen Group, Bucha holding, so they sell the Volkswagen brand cars in Germany and Austria. And we also have, for example, a telecom company here in France. They hire all of their technicians with us. Difficult to hire them, of course, they prefer to apply through WhatsApp. So now they get all the people they need. We also have the railway company of Italy. We recruit the logistics workers of Amazon. So we have quite a few companies, very large companies, also middle-sized companies like Aviva, which is a logistics company here in France. And our customers are growing week by week, because people are attracted to what we're selling, and they see the value it also we have very good results, behind what we're doing. So it's quite easy to sell, we don't need to do too much to convince them just see what's happened with, for example, the people of Porsche, or other people who sleep and they say yeah we want to save results. So, we've gone we've gone quite far. 

Q: Are you focusing solely on Paris or are you also looking to expand to other cities such as London? 

A: We started in Paris, but we're operating in London, France, UK, Spain, Italy. We have quite a few customers in Italy, even the US, as well as Germany and Austria, where we also already have customers. So we're really in all of Europe right now. We've, as I said, we've moved fast. We've worked quite hard these past nine months, and we're now even looking to take on us. Expansion. Across the pond. 

Q: You started at a very young age, is that an advantage or a disadvantage? 

A: It's only an advantage to start early because then you get the perspective of what needs to be done slightly earlier. Or you can say you learned earlier. You can move faster. You don't need to answer questions which you can only get answered later, also having the objective doing it in mind is another huge advantage. Because I think the biggest thing that makes a startup fail is the team and within that, the founders themselves, and whether they have the motivation to keep going as it was always my objective to do this, when it came to actually doing it, the likelihood of it going somewhere was already set up, as opposed to someone who's just thinking, maybe I'll try this out, giving it a go, but it not being their true objective, and having it from early on simply made that objective slightly more secure than if it was a new objective which might oscillate.

Q: What are the main lessons you could give to young internationals looking to set up their own business, now or in the future? 

A: You need to have the right people to do it with, and I wouldn't do it on your own. It's a very energy-demanding and intellectually demanding endeavour. So if you have another brain, you're going to always go faster and always make better decisions than just having yourself playing a chess game. So definitely do it with another person. But even more important, you make sure you do it with the right person. I always tell my friends who ask me this similar question, I tell them, the decision of your co-founder is more important than the decision of the idea or the idea of the startup, far more important, because at the end of the day, it's done for the execution, and the execution is completely based on you two and how well you can work together, and you both being in harmony for a very long period. So that is the main takeaway. And I think maybe many people overlook how important that is, and focus really on getting an idea and starting to try building, but the team is what makes everything. 

My other takeaway is commitment 100% you'll see at least around me I'm here with 1000 other startups. I see the people who are here on the weekends, who are here late at night, and you see those people being mentioned on top lists of what the top startups are in this building. If you give it everything and you properly commit, and you meet, you make it, you make yourself dependent on it, or you make it dependent on yourself. You need something. You need to be able to say that things depend on you, and to care about them. Then it will go somewhere. 

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