Jonathan Cherki (E11), founder of Contentsquare, tells us about the whirlwind decade that led him from ESSEC Ventures' incubator to the helm of a French Tech unicorn, valued at almost $3bn.

Reflets Magazine: Was launching a start-up always the plan when you enrolled at ESSEC?

Jonathan Cherki: To tell the truth, it wasn’t my intention at all: I was destined for a career with my family’s company. 70 years ago, my grandfather started a company that imported and exported dried legumes: chickpeas, split peas, dried beans and lentils. Today, my dad works with my grandfather, and my brother works with my dad, so it seemed to make perfect sense that one day I would join them. 

RM: How did you come up with the idea of developing a technology that would improve the conversion rate for websites?

J. Cherki: I loved maths and statistics, and I moved to Paris for my studies. While there, I started a project within ESSEC’s start-up incubator. It quickly became my vocation, and to this day I’ve only ever worked for Contentsquare. Back when I launched the project, the best way to improve online sales was to just get people to your website, either via Google and its search engine, or using Salesforce with its CRM and emails. And so the costs of acquisition were getting higher all the time, because it’s very expensive to drive traffic to a website, and conversion rates were pitifully low. To give you an example, out of every 100 people who go into a physical shop, 30 of them will buy something. Online, that drops to around 3%. This observation is what gave me the idea to find a solution, a tool, to boost website conversion rates.

RM: So it’s actually about understanding what motivates the buying decision...

J. Cherki: That’s right. The buying decision can be influenced by myriad factors: the customer journey and the way they browse, the content and impact of visuals, the time it takes a video to load, the price of the product, and even loyalty to a particular brand. It’s a whole host of factors that need to be analysed in detail and then combined, so that you can prioritise and optimise what improvements the website needs. We are leaders in this sector thanks to our range of experience analytics solutions that enable us to understand and optimise the digital experience as a whole. We start by identifying problems to resolve points of friction, and to improve website performance and the ability to make digital content accessible to all.

RM: What was it like in the early days?

J. Cherki: I had zero technical skills, so the first challenge was to surround myself with people who could help me create and grow this project. We started off using a lot of interns, due to our limited resources. Then we managed to sell a few products relatively quickly, which generated a fair bit of interest. Our first customers enabled us to fund the company’s growth and, in 2012, to complete a fundraising round that brought us around $400,000 from business angels. In late 2016, seeing that the market was maturing and that the technology was becoming increasingly robust, we completed a second fundraising round for $20m, which meant that we could launch on the American market. And that was how I found myself in New York in early 2017, launching our American business. The US market was very enthusiastic, and a series of fundraising rounds were completed: $40m, then $60m, then $190m, and up to $500m raised last May from Softbank and a number of other investors.

RM: So the company was born within ESSEC Ventures. How did that help you?

J. Cherki: Primarily, it gave me confidence. Because launching this project wasn’t supposed to be my path, the fact that I was surrounded by supportive people who provided me with office space and logistics and regularly challenged my thinking really helped me to believe in the company. Then it was the whole network and introductions for support that ESSEC Ventures gave me, as well as the priceless advice that helps you ask the right questions and challenge your own thinking. The incubator played a decisive role in our development, to the extent that it inspired me to launch our own start-up incubator within Contentsquare, to support and assist the start-ups that are playing a role in our growth, and to plug them into the ecosystem, just like ESSEC Ventures did for me back in the day.

RM: Why did you decide to expand the company in France and the USA at the same time, and why did you choose to be based in New York rather than California?

J. Cherki: We chose to set up shop in New York rather than San Francisco and Silicon Valley initially because the vast majority of our customers and leads were located on the East Coast of the United States. And also because there’s only a six-hour time difference between New York and Paris, compared to nine hours with San Francisco, which makes it easier to keep managing the company. With regard to our growth in France and the USA at almost the same time, it was simply because from the outset our goal was to become the world leader in user experience analytics, and this ambition meant conquering the biggest market. That’s why, after we raised $20m, I decided to move to the States. Before I left, I made sure that we were in a strong enough position in France, which was the case. We’d been in the English-speaking market for a few months, and it was already off to a good start. All the lights were green: our staff were performing well in terms of development and our organisation was robust, so it seemed like the right time to try our luck across the pond.

RM: How would you explain such success, such growth in turnover of 120% on average over the past four years?

J. Cherki: It’s the market. The content analytics market today is worth around $7bn worldwide, and it’s constantly growing. We predict it will be worth $20bn in three years. Ways to improve website conversion rates had been overlooked for a very long time. The sole focus was to drive large numbers of visitors to a website, without thinking about why they chose to buy or not. Then, as online competition heated up, it became apparent that we needed to quickly find a way to make sure that visitors to a website converted into sales, meaning that they made a purchase or subscribed to a service. This phenomenon accelerated with the Covid-19 pandemic, with strong growth in digitalisation seen across the world. Remember that back in 2010, only 8% of sales made in the USA were online; this figure grew to 16% in 2019 and 35% in 2020. In 2021, online sales exceeded traditional sales in China for the very first time. This breakneck acceleration in online business led to a real optimisation of customer journeys and interfaces, so that users had the best possible experience.

RM: So the pandemic gave your business a boost?

J. Cherki: It was a difficult time at first, as it was for everyone. We needed to readjust our way of working, of operating. We had to talk to our customers in a different way, to become more agile while committing to maintaining jobs and maintaining our investments. We tried to listen more to our customers so that we could give them more flexibility, and we tried to help with the problems they encountered – here I’m thinking mainly about the travel and tourism sectors, and hospitality and fashion, which were hugely impacted by the pandemic. It was an opportunity for us to create a kind of hub to provide free data on what was happening in different sectors, to give brands a better view of the context in which they found themselves. We did the same for a number of public services and government ministries, to streamline the performance of their user experience.

RM: How do you manage to compete with the American giants in this sector?

J. Cherki: […]

Interview by François de Guillebon, Editor in Chief of Reflets ESSEC Magazine 

Translation of an extract from article published in issue 140 of Reflets Mag. To receive the next issues (in French), click here.