Co-Working and Professional Events Combine for the Best

Anticafé, it is a network of spaces that combines coworking and the atmosphere of a coffee shop. After 10 years of success, the company is evolving to become After Place. Why? To meet the new demands of businesses that need places adapted to post-Covid working habits. Coworking is always important, of course, but it is mainly the sector of seminars and BtoB events which is booming.

In this interview, Leonid is at the microphone of Clémence to look back on his journey from Ukraine to Anticafé, through the development of this company that designs the Future of Work. Have a hot drink and sit back for this read full of tips and feedback!

From Ukraine to France: The birth of Anticafé and its rise

Clémence Férault: Léonid, you are the the CEO and co-founder ofAnticafé. Before we talk about Anticafé, because we are going to talk about it a lot, tell us a little bit about your background. So that we understand where you come from and how did you manage to create Anticafé?

Leonid Goncharov: With pleasure. I have been an entrepreneur for 15 years. I come fromukraine, I had already set up 2 businesses there. I put on the first one when I was in college because I was bored. A year or two later, I put on the second one. At some point, I said to myself that it would be good if I had a good education. That's how I ended up in France in 2010. I came to Paris.

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CF: Did you study in Ukraine and France?

LG: Exactly. I did my second master's degree in France. Because in Ukraine, I only went to university when I had time. And since I liked my job, I didn't have much time to come. (...) So I took a “real” business school, a “real” course, and those in France were highly rated (this is still the case anyway). I applied to HEC, got admitted, came and had a great time.

→ Student and already an entrepreneur

CF: In what sector did you do business in Ukraine?

LG: Nothing to do with Anticafé. The first was a magazine for students with the model of 20 minutes, which were distributed free of charge and which worked with advertising. First in my hometown of Odessa, then in 6 cities in the country. Between employees and volunteers, there were almost fifty people. The second company was a wholesale of Swiss watches. I had contracts with brands that were not imported into Switzerland. So it was BtoB and BtoC. At the same time, we were between the distributor and the stores and, at the same time, we had to introduce the brand on the Ukrainian market. Except that I had chosen the wrong timing, it was just before the financial crisis. (...)

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CF: Do you leave these clubs when you come to study in France?

LG: First of all, I had partners, so I let them have a hand. I sold the second one instead. That's how I ended up in France afterwards. I thought that a business school was to become a merchant, commercial. I learned that it was more for working in marketing or in banking. I said to myself, “Ok, that's not how I imagined business!” It was quite interesting, I specialized in entrepreneurship. My school was one of the first in France with this course, and it was very, very rewarding.

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CF: It's also good to say it. Because some people are wondering how to come to entrepreneurship and well there you go: the Business schools, it's a path!

LG: Business schools are one way, but not 100%. It may help you, but Entrepreneurship is a state of mind. All the rest are means and tools.

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CF: It's true that sometimes, young people who already feel they have fiber, they can be frustrated by certain training courses that don't feed them enough... Well there you go, you have an experience that you enjoyed. Then you leave school, what happens?

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LG: I saw that there were other things to do. I tried consulting, I worked for a bit at BTJ. I learned a lot, but I said to myself “I want to be an entrepreneur, (...) I want to be one again”. Even in the best clubs in the world, I didn't want to work.

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“I looked for the next idea, I took 6 months to test 6 projects. Anticafé was the first idea that met all my criteria. Bingo, I'm going. I started to work, to launch Anticafé. At the end of 2012, 10 years ago, I made this decision. And At the beginning of 2013, we opened the first Anticafé.”

→ The creation of Anticafé: a space between coworking and coffee shops

CF: Perfect transition, Leonid, thank you! Are you presenting us Anticafé ? How did you come up with this idea?

LG: Anticafé is a network ofcoworking coffee spaces. For me it is in between the two. It has accessibility, the services of a café, without any commitment, without a contract. We're coming, we're settling in like me now, I'm at Anticafé. But at the same time, you have everything you need for the job.

We have workspaces, meeting rooms, even microphones, very good coffees, snacks,... Above all, we have a very beautiful fellowship. The particularity of Anticafé is thatWe pay for the time spent, by the hour or by the day with all the services that are included and at will.

→ Focus on Anticafé news: the merger with Zalthabar

LG: Also an important news item that needs to be mentioned: over the past few weeks, Anticafé merged with Zalthabar more specialized in seminar spaces. We are in the process of developing the network, we are going to open new spaces and launch the new brand (After Place, editor's note).

CF: Are you going to rename Anticafé or are you going to create a brand to combine all the activities of Zalthabar and Anticafé?

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LG: Yes a new brand “After Place” will take over all the spaces. The reasons will interest you, because it is related to our positioning, which is increasingly BtoB, for companies. This is where we need it most today. Anticafé was BtoC, our first customers were individuals.

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CF: The idea with Anticafé was to allow freelancers and entrepreneurs to come freely into a workspace with coffee services, like a coffee shop. You weren't initially selling space to businesses that need office space for their employees, as brands like Regus can. You were on BtoC (the self-employed).

LG: In recent years, we have increasingly focused on BtoB. In recent years, Anticafé has launched 2 services for businesses: 

• The seminars, 
• and The pass. A service for teams traveling and teleworking who can come to Anticafé whenever they want and that is paid for by the company. It is an additional drop off point, in addition to the home or office.

“After Covid, we note thatthere is a great need among businesses for this type of space and services. It can be answered. That is why we are going through this merger to strengthen our services to businesses.”

→ Anticafé's DNA: the coffee shop atmosphere

CF: Why did you say to yourself “Well, it would be nice to have a coworking space, with coffee shop codes”?

LG: I loved working in coffee shops.

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CF: Like a lot of freelancers!

LG: And I even go to cafes other than Anticafé (but you don't have to tell my teams!). I did it in Ukraine, in all the cities where I lived, in Moscow, in the United States, in Paris. In Paris, the two cafes where I could stay were Starbucks and McDonald's ! Starbucks, the tables are tiny, there are a lot of people walking around, it's not comfortable. At McDonald's, there's always the smell of fries and oil, that's not for it! Classic coffee shops, especially ten years ago, when I settled down, I was told “Sir, this table is reserved for lunch”, sometimes they would also say with my eyes “break up”!

I neededa space to settle down, to work, to meet other people, to have a place to live which is similar to my living room, to the living room of a roommate. A lively, fun space doesn't exist, so why not try to create one? And I saw this Idea of the time spent in Eastern Europe that was not used at all for work, entrepreneurs. I took this idea and my need, and created Anticafé. Fortunately, I happened to be not at all the only person who had this type of need and this type of use.

→ The development of Anticafé in several locations

CF: You start with only one location. Where?

LG: In Châtelet, rue Quincampoix. Street traders were betting on our closure. But it was the owner's trust that was important. He said “The concept is weird, it's nonsense, I don't really know what you want to do. But I like your personality, I believe in you more than in the concept. Try it, have fun.”

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CF: Can you give us a timeline of your evolution? You opened the first one in Châtelet. After, how long did it take to open others? At what pace did that happen?

LG: Without going into details, We opened the first one in Châtelet in April 2013. We're testing the concept. In September 2013, we were very busy, I see that it was working. At the beginning of 2014, a year later, in six months, I opened three. So I end up with 4 spaces: 2 in the city center in Paris, 1 in the 13th and one in Rome. This allowed me to test different formats in Paris, Paris city center and Paris out of town. In the 13th arrondissement, it was a big 400 m2 thing, with a much more extensive catering service than in the city center. We're taking a break, we observe what is happening in the locations, in the services. This is where BtoB starts. “Oh, hey, you have a nice room, can I use it for my seminar?”

CF: Is that where events start?

LG: They are the first precursors. We did not have a structured offer.

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CF: Was it up to the chance?

LG: Exactly. I had no idea it could happen, it was a surprise for me. We're taking a short break. A year later, we started to structure the BtoB part, I hired the first salespeople.

We understand what works and what doesn't work. We do a first fundraiser. We are still opening a few establishments, We create the franchise. On Do a fundraiser again in 2015/2016, more important, with an investment fund that enters our country. We continue the investments, the openings until we arrive in 2019 where we reached 14 spaces in Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Lyon, Strasbourg, Aix-en-Provence, Rome. I'm bringing in the Capital Nexity in 2019 (...).

We are entering very beautiful projects, especially in BtoB. We can see that there are more and more needs in companies, which are becoming flexible in the way they work and live.

And March 2020, Covid, who completely changes our maps, our plans, who closes our spaces overnight, initially for 2 weeks. In total, we were closed for 12 months. We had to rebuild our relationships with our customers. At the same time, it created new opportunities, but it also broke the trend we were on.

And we arrive today, where we decided to merge with Zalthabar to give the company more resources. We relaunched the company, we gave back resources, we brought in new expertise to resume what we were doing before Covid. Opening bigger establishments, even more services...

From freelancers to businesses, from BtoC coworking to BtoB events: towards a new target

CF: More comprehensive services? Plus 360?

LG: Yes, but it was already 360. It is especially that The customer base is changing, the needs are changing. At the beginning, we talked about freelancers, entrepreneurs, students. If at the time, we could only settle at Starbucks and McDonald's, today this type of customer (...) has a lot of opportunities, alternatives. To give you an example, my gym in Paris has a coworking space where you can stay even all day long.

“On the other hand, professional and corporate customers, who only came to the office 10 years ago, and a little bit working from home 5 years ago, are now almost 2 and a half days on average away from the office.”

It is this clientele who now needs flexible spaces, professional spaces, who is demanding in the quality of spaces. And in addition, it is paid by the companies, and not by the employees, so this clientele has a greater budgetary capacity.

Once again, it is important that the spaces follow the level of quality, the network, etc. We are in the process of upgrade to re-focus on business needs, which are a bit different from the needs of freelancers. (...)

→ The evolution of demand for BtoB events over the last 10 years

CF: (...) I would like us to come back to the event part. You tell us that at some point, you take a break from your openings, and that's when the beginnings arrive, the first requests for BtoB events.

Do you have a type of event format that is in high demand? (...) Is it more of a study day, a meeting, or is there also a product launch? What is the panel of events at Anticafé (...)?

LG: I can give you the evolution of demands and therefore of the market, because Anticafé has existed for 10 years and we became the first on this market.

When I opened Anticafé, there were 18 coworkings in France. Today, there are over 3,000. At the time, it was a UFO. Now it has become a normal part of the market. During this time, we observed the evolution of customer expectations, including for seminars.

“If customers came to us at the beginning, it was because it was something new, innovative. Most of the events were linked to this change of framework: brainstormings, QWL, product launches, when it was necessary to communicate to say “our company is cool, different, we go to trendy spaces, in trend”. It went on for years.”

The word “innovation” was the key word in clubs for 7 years. They launched their coworking, their incubator, and promoted entrepreneurship. It's still the case today, it's just less fashionable. The first events over the years were mainly around innovation and those seeking to create bridges between employees and entrepreneurs.

As time went on, there were more and more“atypical” spaces, so to simplify steps sanitized hotel rooms. Atypical rooms are mainly found in coworking rooms, like us. High-end offices like Kwerk, or Morning, which make for very large and warm spaces. All of these players have settled, alongside dedicated players such as Comet Meetings. (Link to the Comet Meetings episode here.)

CF: Yes, they came on the Qwerk podcast too! (Link to the episode here.)

LG: I'm not surprised! With the evolution of supply, demand has changed. It went from a UFO format, for innovation, to normal, usual formats. Team meeting, launch of the strategy... These atypical spaces are now on the same level as hotels and classic spaces, but more qualitative, better positioned, with more services. They are used for the same needs as conventional spaces. This has forced traditional spaces to innovate, to improve and what has caused the entire market to move up.

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CF: I saw it coming from the hotel industry, I saw the evolution of classic brands in their event spaces, because they are caught up in a wave coming from new players, those who have arrived in the last ten years. Indeed, with coworkings and all the event locations that do just that, a bit like at home. There are many that have developed in this niche and have made a lot of competition to hotels.

→ The duration of events has changed with Covid

LG: There are fewer events over several days now, even before Covid, there were fewer overnight stays, and more events over a half-day or a day only over two, three days. In addition, the boxes try to reduce transport. Time is expensive, teams are looking for efficiency. 

There is a fundamental movement, even before Covid. The hotels used to be unique, but they're no longer unique. Likewise, Châteauform''s offer, which is always exceptional and unique, may require slightly fewer requests for this type of event, which adds pressure on hotels.

With Covid, there was a yo-yo effect. First, all the events were remote, because we couldn't see each other. Afterwards, all the events were in physics, because we had to catch up (we're almost still a little bit on that). And now I feel like we're starting to search again a balance between online, on-site and hybrid events What almost did not exist before Covid was in the minority.

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CF: What I observe a lot is that physical events resumed very, very quickly. We can feel that there is a need to be together really. But companies can no longer do anything either, in terms of travel and therefore events.

The interesting thing is that you have a dual activity of coworking and BtoB events, you therefore have access to a network and you have the opportunity to discuss a lot with companies, not necessarily about events, but about their daily lives in general.

→ What are the functions of a BtoB event?

LG: (...) I think we can look at what is the function of the event, of a seminar, etc. There is 3 main functions, which can now be served differently.

1. The first is sharing information. The CEO or company management say that the results of the past year are such and that the strategy for the coming months is such. So we have a lot of reasons to meet today, by visio, by hybrid which was not at all imaginable two years ago. If the CEO did it three years ago, I think he would have been mistaken for someone who does not respect his employees. So these are events that don't take physical events.

2. After, the second function of the event is the Brainstorm. It's thinking, cracking a problem together. So now, we end up with a small team, where a lot of collaboration is needed.
   
   And this function is even more common after Covid, because precisely, teams spend less time together because of hybrid work and remote working. There are fewer “coffee machine” moments. So, we need to create moments where we can disconnect from our daily, operational work. And be creative, to look for solutions to problems that are a bit more strategic.
   
   We can do that very well in big cities like Paris and we often look for atypical frames. So the coworking is one of them, but it can also be wholly atypical: in nature, in frames that go beyond what we see on a daily basis.

3. And the third function of meetings, which is becoming all the more important after Covid, is the team-building, team cohesion, the integration of new recruits into the team. With teleworking, there is even more need for this type of event. And it changes expectations about spaces and customer needs. And that creates great opportunities at the same time.

→ Structure yourself with this dual coworking and BtoB event activity?

CF: Since you have this dual activity, how did you structure yourself internally? Is there really a team dedicated only to events?

LG: Above all, we have a sales team that is dedicated to events.

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CF: When you say “dirty”, are they going to look for new contracts? Or are they going to get the request?

LG: They're going to receive. I've been trying to build a hunting team for years, but our job is quite complicated. Each time, we end up with teams that make 90, sometimes 95% of incoming requests, and a tiny bit of research.

It's a bit different on The pass. The pass is an offer, also called a prepaid card, which allows the company to have a contract with us that says “I have 300 employees, or 5, whatever they want, who have the right to come to your house at any time and I pay for their consumption (rooms, hours, days) at the end of the month”.

And that's part of teleworking as an alternative to working from home. Let's imagine (...) that you just want to change the working atmosphere without going to the office, Anticafé is there. You do your day at work and at the end of the month, it's the company that pays for the team.

Here, this product is a little less mature, it is a bit new. We need to do a bit of research, some hunting. We do it, but it's not so much the dirty ones. (...) Above all, we try to do it through the media, through PR (public relations) to create natural demand, incoming requests that do not come from hunting, but that contribute to lead generation.

→ Develop a media strategy to “make noise”

CF: What is your media strategy? For example, what actions you will take to track incoming demand, on this part.

LG: Honestly, I didn't find a good way to track them. I tried every which way. We never really succeeded. It's still minimal.

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CF: Don't you have visibility?

LG: I don't have the right tools that would tell me that, for the past hour, I've had so many requests coming in. If anyone finds me a tool to precisely track this, I am interested. Thanks for sending it. I would be very grateful!

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CF: The message, in any case, is on the air.

LG: Another strategy is to Make noise, ofget into the brains of people and potential customers. The way we have chosen to do this is to do something that is out of the ordinary.

There is a video on YouTube that I really like, which is almost a marketing theory for me, which is called Purple Cow, created by a kind of American marketing guru called Seth Godin, on TEDx, I recommend it. Overall, what he explains is that What we remember today is what surprises us, what is out of everyday life. And that's why I called Anticafé “Anticafé”, “Why don't these people like coffee?” “Why “anti”?” That's why I pay by the hour and not at the coffee shop. That's why we launched this pass offer. Campaigns and products that are out of everyday life cause astonishment, you remember them. And I like to cause that. And we have always used it very well in the life of Anticafé: a lot of media coverage, we talk about it, we have good customers. Overall, it's the core of our media PR strategy.

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CF: It's about making noise.

LG: Yes!

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→ The link between the pass offer and the BtoB event

CF: Between the pass sales part and the event management part, are these two distinct teams?

LG: We started developing the pass before Covid, then it was on hiatus. After Covid, we had a small team, so we kept the same salespeople. Which is not ideal. But we had to. Eventually, we will have a person dedicated to passes. But considering that They are the same customers, for the moment it works with a single team for both projects.

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CF: Are you going to try to have an intelligence ofUpsales ? Are those who bought passes aware of the event and is the event owner aware of the passes?

LG: Clearly yes. Same in BtoC, because they are natural persons, but who, strangely! , are working somewhere, so they can ask for meeting rooms. So, we are trying to do a kind of upsale in BtoC. So we have three channels, three products and we try to pitch all three to our customers from time to time.

→ Leonid Goncharov's advice on using the database

CF: We have a lot of big discussions with our customers Booking Shake, because you can see everything that's going on. We are precisely one of the tools that allows collect all the data of customers who have organized events. This base is still valuable and we can make it do a lot of things. Can you tell me what you do with it? Are there any tools that you particularly like? If you had to give your advice on”Make her work database”, what would it be?

LG: I would not have advice on the tools, because I am not the one who manages them. But there are two important issues. The first is the legal thing with databases. The second is “what do we offer the customer?” and “what is the essence of the message?” From a legal point of view, we are trying to do our best to follow the RGPD, but the smaller you are, the more you can afford. IIt is better to ask for an apology than for permission.

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CF: I agree. And then, now, there are still few emailing tools that do not allow you to unsubscribe.

LG: Yes, and if not, we'd end up in spam right away, nobody likes that. They are ancient tools, nobody uses them anymore. (...) In any tool that is modern and good, there is always a link.

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CF: (...) So, that's why, I think, we shouldn't get too hung up on GDPR. People who do not want to be in your mailing base, they will come forward or unsubscribe and it will happen by itself.

LG: When you're small, you can afford it. QWhen you're a big company, it's better to follow the rules. Again, it's better to apologize than to ask for permission.

The second element that seems important to me is Know your customers well.

“We tried to follow the behavior of our customers as much as possible. For us, what matters is when did they come, since when, when did they come back. If they haven't come back, it's about knowing why and creating sub-groups to communicate differently.”

We're not going to push the message to someone who came twice a year, or even once, and someone who came 200 times a year. And we have two types of customers. In the BtoC, we have customers who come back often, to whom we will recommend BtoB services. As well, we have regular customers in the BtoB who come back several times a year and others who only come back once. So we always try to know as much as possible the behavior of our customers, to have sub-groups, to personalize the message, according to the use.

→ How to communicate well with your database?

CF: So you are going to structure the database to make it more efficient afterwards.

LG: I would have said more specific. This allows me to reach the third point, which is obvious, but we don't always think about it: Communicate about what people are interested in. Because we tend to communicate what interests us. And in this case, we will have few openings at the time of registration.

We do a lot of communication around projects that happen with us, that happen with our customers. We don't just talk about us and what we do, but we also talk about what we do at Anticafé, about what is done by other members of the community. This means that we have higher opening rates than those of promotional newsletters.

CF: It's also something I repeat a lot. If it is to tell us something that we already know and that is boring, for example: send a Newsletter to say that we have a video projector... At first glance, it's not the idea of the century.

LG: To go further, you have to tell us something that we don't yet know. We don't care about promotions, we have so many of them everywhere, we don't want to be bothered everywhere.

LG: (...) We, our source of inspiration is our community, our customers, even our team. There are always cool, interesting stories that don't talk about Anticafé, but about what's going on there.

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CF: When you talk about your teams, are you talking about operations, about those who are in the field, who are telling you things?

LG: Yes, absolutely.

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CF: How do you communicate with them? How do you make sure that this happens to the marketing team, possibly to the salespeople?

LG: Yes, it comes to communication, to marketing - not to sales people at all (...). We tried to automate it using several tools, simple or complicated, just by email or Whatsapp to find out what's going on.

But the only way that works is for us to be on site, in human contact, and to know our teams very well. What do they do, what is going on in their lives? Of course, what are they called? Because we still have dozens of people working for us. Let us be part of this life of spaces.

And in this case, of course, the teams share interesting stories, interesting customers with us. We have never succeeded in putting a tool on it, it is not for lack of having tried, researched. It's just abouta human side that cannot be automated.

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CF: Yes, do not hesitate to take your computer and go to work in the room... For you, it's easy, because they are work rooms. But I even think of the bar, the restaurant, etc.: someone who will work on a seat, will take their computer and once a week, go for a morning or an afternoon with the teams.

LG: It's even more than that. For two years, we have been working as a team within L'Anticafé, and you're right, we have the spaces for that. But even when we had offices, very often, we were 2 out of 10 in the offices, because the teams worked in the spaces, because we had appointments with field teams, with our suppliers, etc. So even before, we had this culture. We are lucky to have spaces that are adapted. This is the raison d'être of the company, to create these spaces that are flexible and adapted to work, to meetings and to life.

What is the future for Anticafé and BtoB events?

CF: Thank you so much for these little marketing ideas. Do you have a particular vision? (...) You have developed this new pass offer, the events are still running. In your opinion, what are the future needs of businesses (...)? What is your vision of our sector, after everything we went through with the pandemic, and all that you see today, what you are in the process of developing. And then maybe also with Zalthabar, you have exchanges that open up new ideas, new visions. What would you say if you had to do an inventory of our BtoB friends?

LG: I would start a little bit further. I have an almost societal reflection : what are we going through, how will it impact our society... We talk a lot about Future of Work, but we can also talk about Future of Life.

→ The future of life?

From my point of view, work is a part of our life and what is changing is actually changing What has changed now is the way we live. We make a good example: your team is in France, you yourself, you are in Lisbon, that does not prevent you from managing your product, from having your customers in several countries. It was unimaginable, 5/10 years ago, it was exceptional.

CF: Even before Covid, it was not always well received, while today, it is no longer a question. (...)

LG: It has become normal, not at the scale of a company that has a few dozen employees, but at the scale of large companies. In France, the CAC40 boxes.

That's why I say it's almost a Revolutionizing our lifestyle. We asked ourselves the question of whether people were going to leave the big city or not, today, there is clearly a small but stable transition in spaces that have a little more quality of life (the sea, nature). Just more space to offer its inhabitants.

Today, it is normal to work from home two or three days a week. It's normal to work from home for one or two weeks from time to time, completely remotely.

Life and work are two things that are opposite and in which we must find a balance. In my opinion, work is a part of life and now with this flexibility, this hybridization, it's even more integrated.

And I just need the whole thing to please me, to make me happy. That is our life. Our life is not at 70, when we are retired. We spend every day, every day must be pleasant and pleasant. So it is very very strong that these changes, this flexibility of life now allow us to live differently, and therefore to work differently.

→ The role of companies, coworkings, BtoB events in this future of work

CF: Do you think businesses are fully aware of this? That they understood that this is how they will be able to retain their employees?

LG: More than understood: There are already a lot of companies that have changed the way they work. Of course not all of them: some did it well, others did it badly. Some decided “we're not moving”, and that's not too bad, because some employees prefer that.

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CF: Is there something for everyone?

LG: Exactly, there is something for everyone. It is a fact that there are a lot of companies that have changed the way they work, that have made agreements, that have allowed their employees to work remotely. I have friends who work in big clubs, with whom we spent several weeks at a distance, in a magnificent setting, which was unimaginable before Covid. For me, it's a fact, it's not from the future.

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CF: It's more of a trend, it's a habit.

LG: It's already a reality. We continue to seek balance, but we have already taken a step in. Now, how does that impact our work? There are, I think, 2 impacts adults.

1. The first is physics. We have need for workspaces, from falling points everywhere, we need to be able to work from home, to be able to work between home and in the office. But if we are at a distance, maybe at the station, maybe on the road. Small, comfortable work spaces are needed everywhere in France, and not only in the city centers of major cities.

2. And the second consequence that will be of particular interest to the sector of seminars : we spend less time in teams, in physics. But we are still human beings, we need to get along, limit ourselves to touch, to be in the same space. This human contact is essential. And you have less when you work in this way. Even if we say that we spend 40% of the time teleworking, that does not mean that they are the same days. We may see teams 4 times less often, because our remote days are not always the same. So we need spaces to help us maintain this human contact, this team cohesion, in a more concentrated way, which is not built from one working day to the next, but which is perhaps built in four seminars a year.

I talked about two functions: teambuilding and brainstorming. I am convinced that we will need more and more spaces that stimulate creativity and reflection that allow us to find good ideas. Not all year long, but for one or two days, we focus, we do a kind of bootcamp to solve a problem. And I think that both in terms of volume of requests and in terms of the quality of requests, spaces will have to evolve in their services to customers.

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CF: So you think that we have every interest, when we are very positioned in BtoB, in have very strong offers on all this need to meet, to collaborate in physics.

LG: Honestly, I am quite convinced of that because I think more from a demand perspective. S'There is demand, there are business opportunities, so it would be stupid not to seize them.

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CF: Do you feel it on Anticafé, can you see that there is a strong demand for these formats?

LG: Yes, but Anticafé are a little bit less adapted to this type of demand, that's why there is this combination that I told you about, with one objective: to make spaces more suitable for this type of use. (...)

CF: You are preparing for the revolution.

LG: Yes, exactly!

And indeed, Anticafé is preparing to follow this new trend in BtoB events with trendy, atypical, flexible and adapted locations. By merging with Zalthabar, they become together After Place. Another adventure to follow so as not to miss anything about the BtoB event!