Marin Lavigne is the founder of Borolend, a platform that allows private users to lend or lease an object easily at a low cost. It can be anything from ski attires to a lawn mower to kitchen appliances etc. Marin is a 22-year-old student that is currently pursuing a master’s degree in engineering at IMT Atlantic University.

Last year, he discovered that there could be an opportunity when he lent some of his tools to his friends and forgot to who. During a group project, he had the chance to develop his idea with other classmates to launch a venture that would be an answer to actual needs. After conducting some studies and surveys, they created the application Borolend that is now launched within his campus. Indeed, he can create communities (a campus, a club, neighbors) where people need to join to be able to exchange with the members and have access to the objects put by them on the app. He hopes to expand to other campuses and communities in the future.

Podcast recorded by Blandine Granger

TRANSCRIPTION
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Blandine: Welcome to the GAIA Entrepreneur show of Audencia Entrepreneurship podcasts. I am Blandine Granger, student in the GAIA Semester at Audencia.

The aim of this show is to offer a better understanding by sharing several testimonies of what a GAIA entrepreneur could be, an entrepreneur who take environmental & social transitions as key component of their entrepreneurial opportunities and ventures.

My guest today is Marin Lavigne (co)founder of Borolend.

Marin Lavigne welcome to our podcast.

Blandine: Can you please introduce yourself and briefly present your application?

Marin: Hello, I’m Marin Lavigne, founder of Borolend. I’m following a formation in Engineering at IMT Atlantic, generalist school specialized in numeric. Last year I decided to create Borolend, a collaborative application that aims to help individuals to rent their personal equipment (tools, book, kitchen utensils etc.). Moreover, Borolend helps people to handle the current leasing of their objects, with a real time follow-up.

Blandine: What is for you an impactful Entrepreneur who takes environmental & social challenges into account?

Marin: Borolend is a collaborative platform designed to limit the consumption and our environmental impact. We have noticed that many of our possessions aren’t daily uses and that lease them wasn’t an issue at all and could be beneficial.

An impactful entrepreneur is going to take in consideration these kinds of subjects, to create a product or a platform that is going to change our lifestyle for better. Same on a social level, the idea of a collaborative platform allows to open a dialogue and facilitates the transmission of advice between the different actors. An impactful entrepreneur is going to bring innovations that will change our habits while taking into consideration the environmental challenges we face.

Blandine: Based on your experience, how aspiring entrepreneurs can identify/recognize an impactful & responsible entrepreneurial opportunity?

Marin: There are several ways to me. For Borolend, it was by observing my environment and understanding the problems that a regular student, like myself, can face. We lack many resources, and we have to find economic or practical solutions by ourselves. Sometimes we can find ideas by being in a pretty difficult situation because it pushes us to be more innovative.

Blandine: How to build an emerging responsible organization to support an entrepreneurial opportunity?

Marin: You can have an idea and the desire to develop it by yourself, but I think it is important to recognize when you need help. For Borolend, it was, at start, only from my point of view, but to have a real understanding of the problem, you have to be helped by someone with a different vision. Working as a duo to create a project is much more interesting. It is also very important to carry out market research to evaluate the feasibility.

Personally, I then chose to gather a team to help me on all aspects of the project: understanding of the need, the users, the marketing…

In conclusion, I would say go step by step and don’t hesitate to recruit people and ask for help. It brings a new vision, and it also allows to balance the tasks because sometimes you can be overwhelmed by the quantity of workload that is piling up.

Blandine: How do you measure your impact on the problem you solve?

Marin: Today, Borolend is in test in my campus, for the moment we don’t have a global impact on the problem as the application is still young. However, to evaluate the potential future impact, we conduct some surveys and studies on the ground, to assess the habits and the behavior of people. The idea is to do the same study in a while and observe if there are any changes and if there is a tendance.

Blandine: How do you measure the impact of your own organization?

Marin: My response will be quite similar as the precedent, we don’t have the benefit of hindsight, we have to wait to get a real long-term vision. However, we have seen in our sector, that many similar applications have emerged during the last 10 to 15 years, but they haven’t really worked well. We are trying to understand the reasons behind those failures, and we are trying to solve the problems we identify as we go. There are some questions to answer, especially around the security for example, an issue often cited by the users. We are convinced that the impact will be real once the solution will be found, with the right parameters to allow the user to lease his objects in full security.

Today, second-hand platforms, such as BackMarket are really attracting customers, we are hoping that someday renting platforms such as Borolend, even more sustainable and economic, are going to position themselves as an obvious alternative to regular consumption methods.

Blandine: How did you manage to make your venture/association… economically viable?

Marin: For the moment, Borolend isn’t making any profit, there is no system to make it economically reliable. It is yet in a testing phase to understand the users.

I plan some alternatives, especially one. We are looking for a way to reassure the users by creating an insurance system. The objective is to make the application safer and allow a benefit at lesser risks to the user. We could have a micro-commission on each insurance for example. It is the better system in adequation with our economic system and our values, to not make much profit on the users. For now, it is the plan.

Blandine: Thanks, Marin Lavigne, for participating to our show. All our podcasts are available on https://podcast-entrepreneuriat.audencia.com and on the main podcast platforms.