“I like to bet on the future,” says Vincent Tricot. And the bet he took professionally, well, he’s about to win it. At the age of 40, this University of Dallas graduate left the comfort of big companies like IBM and Microsoft for a small one – “a return to my first love because I specialized in small and midsize company management.” He teamed up with this football mates, Thierry Depierre and Stéphane Malicet, first as a business angel, then as a full associate of 1001Services, one of the 2000 Excellence Oseo companies – the most promising in terms of growth. Mr. Tricot delved into marketing and his two colleagues in the sales and technical fields. Together, they are adding to one of the first databases of room rentals on the Internet, 1001salles.com, are creating a help tool for website construction, 1001sites.com, and above are announcing the birth on 11 January 2010 of an ambitious project: one of the first virtual business tourism and events exhibitions: 3D Live Meeting. 150 paying exhibitors, 15 000 free visitors attracted on the Internet over a 9-day period thanks to two years of brainstorming, technical development, and a €500,000 budget. “We are far from having made this first edition profitable, but we are in this for the mid and long term, since the platform we now have makes it possible for us to plan any time of business meeting.” It’s to 1001Services to set them up, and up to the organizers to organize them. A word to the wise…

Sabine Durand

Beyond Beauty MAG #28