8 questions to Vincent de Saint Exupery, Founder of LCCS

Can you give a brief introduction about your company?

LCCS is the first cloud-based and Low Cost Corporate Services provider in HK offering company formation and company management cloud based solutions. It is a mix of DIY with professional back up and expertise. It addresses startups and entrepreneurs who may lake of financial capacities and rather compensate limited resources by doing part of the job by themselves. Using an internet platform, we separate what can be done by any one from what requires expertise. Then the cost of non-added value services such as collecting and gathering the necessary information is not supported by our customers. The addition of cloud tools and such separation between low-added value services and expertise leads to low cost but quality solutions focusing on what worth spending money on. It worth to spend money on expertise but not to pay someone to upload data!

What was your biggest challenge or the worst decision you had made and had to flip away from afterwards?

The biggest challenge is never to forget that what may appear to you as a necessity may not appear as such to the others. The biggest mistake is the hear what you want to hear and not what you are told. One last famous threat can be that you may arrive too early with an innovation for which the market is not ready!

What happened to us is that LCCS was initially a SaaS (software as a service) dedicated to HK professionals but HK professionals, besides being quite conservatives and reluctant to change their procedures, were not aware of what cloud computing was few years ago (and even now for some of them, if not the majority). So, after considering to give it up all and thanks to some supportive investors, we made the smart move to re-invent ourselves. It was not an easy step, it is never easy to give up on your initial idea which you always believed is a good one, but it is definitely a wise step to consider. Open up your hears and listen to the others!

What is your dream and vision for LCCS?

The dream is to provide the most user-friendly and most cost effective global tool to entrepreneurs and startups, becoming HK number 1 corporate services provider as volumes will also impact our capacity to maintain low prices without deteriorated the quality of the service ever, and to develop new features for our customers. We expect LCCS to be able to accompany its customers in more and more fields including IP issues, visa applications, employment contracts, etc. Last but not least, obviously, once we will feel ready, we will expend to other jurisdictions starting with similar legal environment such as Singapore of course.

How do you get your brand out there? Did you leverage any connections to other startups? Any other meaningful relationships or connections that helped you?

As any e-commerce operator, but not like most of HK corporate services providers (our competitors), we are using the ‘traditional” online channels such as SEO of course, Sponsored link mainly through Adwords at this stage, social media obviously but of course, we also like to “socialize” offline assisting and participating to some events. We do training with organization such as General Assembly, we like to sponsor some events such as Startup Week End, we try to always go to Entrepreneur Drink, keep in touch with StartupHK and we are also happy Whubbers!

Finally, our customers are our best ambassadors and the source of many potential customers and connections to other startups are essential as we like to call ourselves ‘a startup for startups and entrepreneurs!’

TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More. What keeps your team going? What do they value the most?

Being incubated by an existing consulting company, we are lucky enough to be able to count on some of their resources. So our own team definitely value the fact that it is not isolated. We have people around that can help but also can share lunch with J. But of course, the main source of energy for our team is each new customer joining the growing community of LCCS happy users! So far, feedbacks are always positives and it makes the team feel rewarded for all it is done to convince potential users to become our customers not only arguing but also providing the best service we can.

You are growing your team really fast, how quick can or should a startup team grow? Any advice/ watch-outs?

We are not yet growing that fast and most of all, having experienced some failures in the past, we are little more conservatives in terms of investment. We know that running after profitability is a trap in which we don’t want to fall and since we are lucky enough to be hosted by an existing well-established company, we have flexible resources that are made available for us.

Said that, it is true that after almost 10 months of operations since we seriously launched LCCS, we start to really fill the need to have people joining the team. We had trainees and part-time people, but we start now to feel the need to have some more stabilized people we can train on a long run basis. It is also time to offer the opportunity to startup lovers to join a venture early enough to quickly accumulate responsibilities before more people join.

Finally, recruiting and training new comers is a lot of additional work before it becomes a release. So we definitely know that you should never wait until everybody is totally overwhelmed.

What is the one reason to start a startup in HK? And what would be the reason not to do so?

Well, 2nd question is definitely much easier to answer: there is no reason not to start a startup in HK! And there is actually no reason not to start a startup anywhere! Launching a startup is an experience that can only turn into an asset, and I know what I am talking about as I experienced failures in the past. Whereas you succeed or not, it is an experience that leads to maturity, sense of responsibilities and sense of realities! It is also a great school for humility and humility is a good path to success. Finally, it is simply a good lecture of what life requires in terms of values and I do believe that values are important as only fair business leads to real success!

Now, talking about HK more specifically, we all know that it is one of the best place in the world for business. People are super active, fast and ambitious. It is also a comfortable legal and tax environment and fortunately a significant startup community is now growing actively. While there is no reason not to start a startup in HK, we can still express some regrets about the lack of facilities for mid-cap businesses. HK remains a place mainly dedicated to large multinationals where one can wish that there were more incentives and leverages for SMEs starting with well identified external growth opportunities and financing solutions. Cash flow is always an issue for a startup and even more for a growing startup. It is a pity that no bank in HK is paying attention to this market.

What is your #Startup Passion?

My startup passion fits in 1 word: entrepreneurship. The taste of trying, building, structuring, developing, innovating, etc. Actually, I often think that it might be even more a vocation than a passion, the vocation to undertake. But at the end, it is kind of the same as vocation to undertake is to undertake with passion.

Deal flow