Stronaut

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Stronaut

Consultancy (management consulting)

One-man business

Belgium

www.stronaut.be

Lease experts (intrapreneur), internal academy days, durable solutions

Kobe Jacxsens

Guyllian De Beule

Kobe Jacxsens

Summary

Stronaut leases intrapreneurs to SME’s to trigger innovation and expand them in a sustainable way. An intrapreneur is an inside entrepreneur who uses entrepreneurial skills and experience in a certain organization. The goals is that the intrapreneurs of Stronaut convert internal employees into intrapreneurs (that they see the innovation themselves). The faster the company doesn’t need Stronaut anymore, the faster results are being achieved.

The intrapreneur works on internal or external projects in a certain company to see what can be changed or optimized on an operational base. This means that first the internal business is optimized whereafter other processes (marketing, sales,…) can be optimized too. “You can put a rotten apple in a new box, but you first need to renew the apple before the box” according to Kobe Jacxsens.

Background

Mission

Stronaut was founded in March with solely own financial means. The reason why Stronaut was founded is rather a personal reason of the founder, Kobe Jacxsens. He is a person who works highly independent, he always had the frustration that he didn’t have the end responsibility of tasks he conducted for employers. Therefore Kobe knew that he had to be an entrepreneur to function at the most effective rate. In his career as an employee, Kobe gained a lot of experience with different Belgian SME’s where he noticed that there is a huge pressure to innovate in every single of those companies. It is the first year that SME’s aren’t ignoring the fact that they need to innovate and change in order to compete in their markets.

This exactly what Stronaut wants to achieve, elevating the innovation rate in SME’s. Stronaut leases intrapreneurs to SME’s to primarily effect sustainable innovation within those companies, support them and teach them new ways of business development. A lot of SME’s are taking decisions to fast to innovate very quickly, resulting in ill-considered, ineffective and short term decisions.

Implement change and innovation in companies to prevent a burst of a disruptive bubble where companies are not prepared in a fast changing economy.

Vision

Becoming the center for the high potential war. Serve as a midpoint for intrapreneurs and young potentials where they can gain experience and contact within companies to develop their career.

Values

Innovation and excellence.

Business Model

At the moment Stronaut has a team of eight highly experienced freelance consultants. These intrapreneurs are being placed with clients for a minimum of two months. An intrapreneur at Stronaut works two days a week for one client, this means that one intrapreneur can handle two clients per week. The fifth day, Wednesday, Stronaut conducts academy days. This entales that all the intrapreneurs gather to talk, share and brainstorm their ideas and experiences they have with clients. They give workshops to eachother to optimize their effectiviness in their work.

These academy days allows the intrapreneurs to have a whole team as a back up. For example, when an intrapreneur has difficulties with a certain project of a client, he can discuss this problem with the other intrapreneurs to reach new ideas and strategies. This academy his a huge competitive advantage for the company.

Stronaut uses minimum montly fees to generate revenue. This revenue stream is divided in 80% that directly flows to the intrapreneur and 20% to Stronaut. The fees that Stronaut uses are based on the need of the client. On top of that, Stronauts also offers workshops to clients, these have a cost of 200,00 EUR per week. The workshops are not tied to one individual in a company, meaning the client can send different employees every week.

Growth

Stronaut wants to skyrocket in terms of growth by firstly starting off with launching as much intrapreneurs as possible witihin companies. Secondly, they want to serve as an acceletor within companies where Stronaut buys shares of the clients to consult in a sustainable way sharing all expertise they have (they want to be engaged for a lifetime in certain companies). Stronaut’s goal is to reach a turnover growth of 150 to 200 percent between year one and two after launch.

In the far future, Stronaut wants to expand the academy part of the company. They want to give workships, trainings, postgraduates,… to employees or intrapreneurs within companies. Kobe sees this in the way of hiring personell to give trainings, construct workshops,… In addition, expanding to the Netherlands is also a goal that the companies is determined to achieve. This mainly due to the language and the international character that this would give to Stronaut.

Customers

Stronaut focuses primarily on small and medium entreprises (SME’s). This is a very well-thought-out choice. This because there’s a trend where SME’s are feeling the urge to innovate in order to keep up with the competition, the only problem is they don’t now how to. This is where Stronaut comes in the picture, supporting them in the fast changing economy.

Competitors

In general, there’re a lot of competitors for Stronaut, the biggest part being indirect competition. The competitors often only give advice, which Kobe believes is only a very small part of the work. Stronaut goes the extra mile, Stronaut is a mix of consultants, intrapreneurs and a creative agency combined which is a huge added value for clients.

Most of Stronaut’s competitiors have the goal of leaving the intrapreneur or consultant at their client for a long period to support them. But the goal of Stronaut is to make themselves no longer necessary after a period of time, this because they will trigger sustainable change and innovation with the client meaning their employees will become the intrapreneurs.

In addition, the concept of leasing intrapreneurs is unique in Belgium making Stronaut an innovative and trendsetting company. This means that there is a lot space for potential competition.

Conclusion

Stronaut is an innovative and young company ready to flourish and trigger innovation with SME’s in Belgium. Nevertheless, Kobe senses a couple of threats for Stronaut, but has control over them. Although, the biggest threat for this innovating company is that the intrapreneurs won’t deliver the quality that Stronaut wants to deliver to their clients. If the intrapreneur doensn’t fulfill his job based on the best practices of the company, the name of the whole company can suffer from it. The threat lies in bad or sloppy recruitment of freelancers.

To finish Kobe gives three key points as advice for starting entrepreneurs:

Pick the right people to build your team, make sure you’re not being fooled by enthusiasm of people who turn out to be someone else over a period of time;
Don’t obtain external financial means to quickly, try to finance everything yourself, don’t use investors when you don’t need them;
Talk a lot about your project with experienced people in your network.