Renaud Sornin, an Entrepreneur to Accelerate Lyon French Tech

In Lyon, the association has chosen as new president one of the prodigies from its ranks: Renaud Sornin, the bubbling president of Legal Attestation. The man, who has just raised 5 million euros, including 600,000 from his employees, militates for “shared capitalism”.

A sling shakes Paris’s French Tech: entrepreneurs are demanding more room in governance. In Lyon, the association decided the debate by choosing a new president one of the prodigies from its ranks: Renaud Sornin, the bubbling president of Legal Attestation. His company, a pioneer of the collaborative model, applied to companies, has been developing since 2010 a BtoB network for digital exchange of secure documents. A shock of simplification born of his “administrative phobia”. Which does not prevent him from paying his taxes!

Legal Certification (ALG in its shortened jargon) has just obtained fundraising of 5 million euros. “It’s not reasonable to get away from my company at this point, but Lyon French Tech is also accelerating and needs a scale-up boss who knows well the issues of hypergrowth,” says this former Bouygues, good soldier of large group converted into the turbulent general of the “start-up sphere”.

At 48, he did not exhaust, far from it, his reserves of enthusiasm. His slim draw and passionate impulses give off a teenager impression. He does not hide, with absolute honesty, wants to test with this mandate its compatibility with “political life” or “citizen”, given future commitments in the service of his city.

Saved from boron-out by a Microsoft lab

This native Lyonnais, from a middle-class family, is the father of three children aged 15 to 18, who, like him, were passed by the institution of the Marist Fathers. But in recent years, the engineer in civil engineering graduated from INSA (and IAE Aix-en-Provence) would have sailed in contrary winds “from right to left”. He admits he missed a DESS in urban planning … He says cash that money has always counted for him: he was already treasurer of the cafeteria of the school. At Bouygues GFC Construction, where he joined in 1995, he was in charge of quantifying the works of art at the Service Studies TP, then the management control on the site of the TGV Méditerranée. He participates in the creation of the GIE Achat. Until getting tired, after fifteen years of a rise in the seraglio of young managers over-motivated. “I had lost all sensitivity, all empathy,” he says.

Renaud Sornin is saved from boron-out in 2008 by visiting a Microsoft lab in Cambridge. He kept the notebook where he wrote only this word: collaborative. Two years later, he left Bouygues and created Legal Attestation. With a motto borrowed from Dr Spock in Star Trek: “The more I share, the more I own, that’s the miracle.” Since then, he added Sartre to his favourite quotes: “Everything exists only if it shared”.

Theorist of a corrected capitalism

The company already makes 4.7 million euros of turnover with 80 employees. Of which 30 have chosen to become shareholders — employees have injected 600,000 euros into the company during the recent fundraising. Their boss has negotiated for his troops, regardless of their salary level, loans to 2%. Because the entrepreneurial experience has transformed Renaud Sornin. The man has become a theoretician of “corrected capitalism, somewhere between the social and solidarity economy and liberalism”. Legal Certification an original place to put forward its program: “the shared enterprise”, described as “realistic utopia”.

The mind in perpetual effervescence, the appetite for novelty never satiated, its sixth sense is set like a radar “on weak signals “, to anticipate tomorrow. He organizes his abundant thought in keywords, “cash, performance, innovation, ethics, citizen …”. His metamorphosis has led him from the world of concrete to the virtual, “from the solid to the agile”, but also from a form of egoism in the sense of the collective. The president of ALG has just created a start-up laboratory, which will soon have spun off six companies.

His profession of faith for Lyon French Tech speaks of his “duty to contribute to the common good” and “the power of collective intelligence. “ But one could detect the first seeds of his pro bono investment in his determination to organize, for a long time, family cousins ​​and meetings of old Insa, his main professional and friendly network. “Other than that, my hobby is my job. I also tend to want to work with my friends to be sure to see them.

Originally published at Entrepreneur News and Startup Guide.