E027 Camille Franceschi: Co-founder @ Joonbot

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:07
Once upon a time, there were millions of businesses struggling. Every day they wasted time, effort and energy on repetitive tasks that added no value one day, the better automation podcasts by PROCESIO came to help them find a way. Because of this, these businesses save time, reduce costs, innovate and make better decisions because of that. These businesses grow, scale, and use human creativity to change this world. Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm your host that Better Automation podcast by PROCESIO where I interview the world's top experts and share their very best ideas on how to improve automation in your business's processes, and life. My guest today is Camille Franceschi. Camille is a graduate of University Paris Dauphine, a research university specialized in organization and Decision Sciences. Camille is the co founder of JOONBOT.com, and no code chat bot builder to automate in minutes your recurring interactions. Joonbott is accelerated by the Zendesk acceleration program. And the famous incubator HEC. And it is based at Station F in Paris, which is the world's biggest startup campus. Camille, how are you today?

Camille Franceschi 1:39
I'm fine. Thanks, you're saying size is very good.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 1:43
We will speak a lot about June but we will speak a lot about everything. But I want to begin with how is it to be a French woman entrepreneur? In 2022? Are there challenges? Is it easy? They are there anything you needed to overcome? Tell me your experience.

Camille Franceschi 2:05
You know, I I grew up around the men if I can say because I started to work in finance. So in, in a trading floor. So it's very full of testosterone, and then i i work even as a developer. So you know, being an A woman entrepreneur today is not something I feel difference regarding the interaction with men, it's always it's also full of men. And I don't feel uncomfortable being around the oldest men and more like a challenging person. So I feel there is a challenge then, if it's just for men, you know,

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:56
I love that. That's absolutely wonderful. And then about John bot, what's the story? How did the idea come to be? How did you decide you and your co founder to go to this direction?

Camille Franceschi 3:12
With my co founder, we previously worked in a company, which was a marketplace for recruitment in services. And the idea was to be able to find three candidates quickly, to serve for example, to to work in a shop or in a restaurant, you know. So the thing is that we with we have, we created an operation process to qualify the candidates and make them create a video etc. But the thing is that the form was too long, people never finished it and it never worked. So we continuously had to call the people. So in the end, we lost a lot of time. And then we stopped it. We just evolved in those companies. And then the Chatbot movement arrived and we sought like, Oh, if we if we knew about this conversation that way to to to collect data or maybe it would have been better to we had to maybe we'll would have a better conversion rates and it would be easier for the people to answer to our questions. And then we started to think about the widgets to add to websites to take see the resume and ask a few qualification questions. That was the as the beginning of June but that the and then we evolve to a larger? Yeah. to a larger Industry.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 5:00
I really love that. And it makes me notice that you created an ideal kind of process. But it was too long people didn't finish the forums, and therefore, you needed to adapt or find a way that works. Is this correct?

Camille Franceschi 5:16
Yeah, it was too long. The completion rate was too low. And, yeah, we finished by calling them

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 5:24
when someone is using John ball to create a process. Do you recommend they start with the minimum, like the MVP of the process? And then grow it from there rather than design the ideal chat boat flow? And then because it could be too long, too big, too complex for reality? Like, how do you go about it? Because there are two schools of thought. Some will say, Look, if people begin operating, they will do the easy thing, and therefore it's not optimal. It's just what is instinctive to them. So you need to spend time designing the whole process theoretically perfect, and then implement it in reality, while others say, look, there is a difference between theory and practical reality, that have people do their thing to create a manual process and then adapt and iterate based on what the users are doing. Which one do you agree with? Is it both? What do you recommend, for example, Jun bot users to approach creating the flow there will use?

Camille Franceschi 6:29
The answer is both actually, because it depends on the use case, I was talking to you about recruitment before. But today, people use it for many use cases. So it's very different. Some people have a lot of question to ask. So if they get, of course, if you can reduce it, it's always better. But in some cases, it's compulsory. And for people who will say, usually people think they need to ask a lot of things. So they start like that, they see that the completion rate is not, woohoo. So they reduced a bit and then the, they're happy with it. But the thing is that, in the end, if we take the example of the recruitment, the NDC, how many days successfully recruit people on time, because you can have 1000s of application, but if there are not good use, you will lose time, you know, qualifying it again. So the Chatbot can qualify it. So maybe you will lose people. But you are sure that at the end, in the end, you will call always the good once, and you save time and you and you have your recruitment process done.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 7:48
It's very interesting. And I will ask you, since you said before you were an employee, and now you're an entrepreneur, the hardest thing about entrepreneurship is that it's chaos until you find your product market fit. How is the process of finding the product market fit for June bought? How do you know when you found it? Are you still searching for it? Is it stressful? Tell us the whole chaotic experience, because maybe other entrepreneurs or people who desire to be entrepreneurs could be comparing themselves and thinking, Oh, my God, I'm trying so hard. But I'm not finding that magical product market fit. So to either tell them, it's normal to be confused for a long, long time dealing with uncertainty, or to tell them oh, this is what we did, you should try these ways in order to get to a more successful startup rather than try failing, failing, failing without finding any product market fit.

Camille Franceschi 8:49
I can't say that we found the product market fit because you know, when you have it, you know you have it, and I don't think we have it. So but at least we can we have we are we can, how do we say that we we can we can live with the company, which is huge. So that's relief. But you know, you the good thing we have today is that we have clients who are very happy and they bring other clients, people find us, people find us through word of mouth most of the time. So that's a good sign. And about trying things. We did that a lot. Maybe the best thing to do is to try but with a strategy and from the beginning to the end and then if it didn't work, go to another one. Not trying to do everything at the same time. So this is our platform So you start without chatbot, unlike my account full of ones, but you can create a chatbot, from scratch or through templates. And if I start from scratch, you will see that you can create a chatbot very easily. So you know, the way you build chatbots. And doing that is that you just add blocks, and you link them together. So here you have what we call a button block. So you ask a question, and then you suggest some predefined answers. And to just do to go to the next question, you add another block, and you link them together. So if I click on preview here, I can see the first question with the three buttons, like here. And if I clicked your ammochostos, current customer, and I have a question, the Chatbot will ask my name. So really, it's very intuitive. No code required and very easy to use. And you have all the blocks, you need to build your conversation you can even ask for file, you have rules beyond questions. You can add text, images, videos, emojis, so you can really customer like customize it. And if you want to do kind of complex things, you can do it. For example, you can create a scoring system, if you qualify leads or if you create a quiz. So you can do that with calculation and viable blocks. You can create very custom conversational paths depending on previous answers. So if you have a specific question and you expect some answers, then you can create rules, and the user will follow specific conversational paths, you can do that with the logic term blog. And you can also track your performance everywhere you want. If you for example, you you want to book a Calendly meeting somewhere, you can track it using the conversion block, like like that. And we ever saw a JavaScript block, it can be a bit scary, but in fact, if you can just add a few lines of code and it will be executed. And it can be very interesting. If you run Facebook or Google Ads has you can send events to Facebook, Google and even Google Analytics also. So it's a great way to send them your data to your analytics tool. You can also conduct A/B tests, A/B tests, very useful if you have doubts about certain questions or where you ask it etc. And you want to improve your completion rate. And as a NoCode tool, June but is very is well integrated with other other tools. So you can trigger an email, you can do an integration with Zapier so you can send a text message you can send a Slack notification when you want. So it's very powerful. And we, we have an activity question with Google Sheets. So you can send all your data into Google Sheet. And the good thing is that you don't see here. Make block. But you can do make integration, you just have to use the web block. And it's very, very, very powerful. Because with make, you can send that data you collected from June but to I don't know airtable. But you can also live during the conversation, take information from your air table and use it during the conversation with your Chatbot. So it allows you to do really very, very, very powerful things. And yes, that's pretty much it for this quick demo.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 14:36
Thank you. I like it. And I find that really, really powerful that people can actually nowadays create very useful things that would have required the whole team of developers and things like that for their business. So it's giving access to me I think about it's like YouTube, for example. Before you would have needed a studio a TV stay In so many things, and now anybody with their phone can make a video and share their knowledge, their expertise, their perspective on YouTube, in seconds, or on Instagram or wherever. So no code is that for software or for marketing, etc, we spoke about John bought, I love all the blogs, and the I would recommend to any person to speak with clients so that they understand which tracks are usually the logical tracks that people go through to buy what questions usually each kind of person will have. So it's not about guessing it's about always understanding your customers. But do you have plans for the future fortune board that you're working on? I don't know, like, the ability to read the answers that are written in human form, or AI or anything like that, since that's something that a lot of companies are focusing on integrating within their tools.

Camille Franceschi 16:07
Okay, we are doing Sofrware As a Service, SaaS. So we are targeting more SMBs and startups and big groups. And, you know, if you are a big company, and you have a big call center with 1000, people answering the question all the time by phone, maybe having a chatbot able to do this job will be interesting. So you can invest months and a lot of money trying to build this, this AI. But for all many cases, I would say like I don't know, 90% of the cases, a chatbot rule based like ours is is very fine. So we don't plan to create the AI part. Actually, you can do if you really want to do use AI into June, but you can do it through a web book blog. But you need to build the AI yourself will Gerak flow or something else. But now it's not the direction we will take it's more about focusing again, and more on the automation of repetitive interaction. And like I told you people use it for recruitment, they can also use it for giving interactive lessons. And for that, there is a feature to give you an example we would like to develop is to the ability for the Chatbot user to send the video. So, you know when you when you qualify a candidate, and you and you offer him the ability to create a video, you're you just, again, automate another part of the recruitment process. So it's, it's all good for everybody. And people are used to get recorded now. So this is the kind of things we want to go through. More automation, more no code, more customization, but we don't want to be an omni channel, or AI Chatbot.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 18:26
Thank you. That's very important, because it's being customer focused rather than product focused, where you're not just adding features just because they seem cool, but based on the real needs, and requirements of the users. And I'll ask you something that I'm curious about, and maybe other people because France is not known for its entrepreneurship culture, and but at the same time, if they do something new, whether because of the culture, the language, the people, it will be different and innovative. So what does it happen? Let's say I'm a startup, I'm a solopreneur. I'm doing it on my own in my home or whatever. What's different between the help you get when you're part of an accelerator as well as a startup campus? Like what difference is it compared to you and your co founder if you stayed in your garage or whatever doing all the work? And using books and like courses online and whatever? What difference does it add to the startup experience to be part of an accelerator as well as something like this? That's your F.

Camille Franceschi 19:40
I can I can tell you on that because we started in the garage, and then we enter into station F so the thing is that you when you are alone in your garage, you do the mistakes and you don't talk to other As in you, you do do mistakes or then use you lose time, you know, and, and being with other agitation F or within the HTC incubator, it helps you to, to go to talk to someone else who is doing the same business as you. And you ask question and you, you, you get feedback and you know that there's things you need to avoid to do. You just, you just gain time on that, because you have the feedback of everybody and you don't do the cells and mistakes. You do usually when you start from nothing, and you know nothing. So yeah, entrepreneur apps, LP choosers. And with the HSE incubator, we also have access to experts. So it's really helpful.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 20:51
Thank you. And I will play the devil's advocate a little bit, because startups are a very unique beast, and that nobody really knows the correct thing. Because you mentioned mistakes, and I understand that. But sometimes mistakes are what allow for innovation. It's I think about it, it's like the evolution of species or whatever that genetics keep on varying making mistakes. But some of those mistakes become unicorns or the next evolution. So how is it possible to balance I think about it in an entrepreneurial way of thinking, not restricting are having a formula for a startup, which will mean, there won't be as much variety in the innovation because everybody's trying to do it correctly. And at the same time, allowing for the beautiful mistakes, that can create the next unicorn, what is your perspective and thought about this,

Camille Franceschi 21:51
I think that maybe you can avoid to do common mistakes, and you just do the right mistakes to become the unicorn, or something like that. You know, the thing is that also when people will give you feedback, they will give feedback related to their own business, but every business is different. So sometimes you can listen to advice from someone else, but it's not the good advice for your company. So in the end, you will do mistake anyway. So the thing is just to go fast, faster as possible.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 22:31
Thank you, I love this. So I will contrast to something that a lot of people talk about whether Seth Godin or not. Were okay. If you go into a lean startup process, the premise or the assumption, or the way of thinking is this, customers are there they have needs, understand their needs, and then create something that gives them what they want. So you are serving them. While there are some people like Seth Godin, who will say that's being a hacker, or selling your personality for money. I mean, I know it sounds negative, but and what he's saying, Look, if you create your truth, that is your passion and following it, you will suffer, you will not make that much money. But in the end, you will have a happier life because you lived your reality. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs doing that, whether it's a mistake or not, where they're not thinking about the customer, they're thinking, What do I love, let me create a SAS or a product or a startup our that. And often they don't find product market fit. But in many ways, they're following their soul. You know, they mean, while some others could create a startup that is doing the product market fit, they're doing all that. And all they do in the end is sell that business to start a passion business that will be harder to do but follows their own heart and all that. I know, it doesn't have to be a contradiction, but sometimes it is. What's your perspective on this?

Camille Franceschi 24:07
From my perspective, it would be very difficult to walk into a business I don't like just because it's an opportunity. For the Chatbot industry, you know, you can do it many ways, but we wanted to do a self service platform. We are in love with no code and automation. So that's why I didn't but he's like that today. Otherwise, maybe it would have been easier to do service related to chatbots. You know, but that's what that's not what we wanted to do. So we are more in between. But I understand both type of people. Make sense.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 24:51
Thank you so much. So if people want to use your inbox, they're excited about it. They want to learn more or more about you Do what are the best websites or links for them to do that? And I'll make sure to write the June both website as well as your Twitter in the description.

Camille Franceschi 25:09
Thank you. Yes, they can join us, they can reach me on LinkedIn, on my LinkedIn, I always answer and if they want to try June, but they can sign up and they have a free 14 days free trial so they can try everything.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 25:25
Thank you. And before we end, I also highly recommend to all the viewers and listeners PROCESIO, I'm sure it can integrate with the API's of Joonbot. PROCESIO is the modern low code, no code platform for advanced automation and creating an enterprise grade back end for your software. So I know you mentioned me, but it's like something more advanced and more call you any listener can request access to a free account that process your dot app, they can use it forever. It's really wonderful and those with business needs with higher needs. They can take advantage of a 50% discount code, which is BETTER50OFF one word in capital letters more information in the description. Camille this was my privilege, my honor, such a wonderful project you're working on. Keep going and thank you.

Camille Franceschi 26:19
Thank you too for having me.