Activity report 2024-2025: a necessary evolution of our movement at the dawn of our 10 years of collaboration

Almost ten years ago, MAIN launched a movement. A call to come together, to collaborate, to pool forces to create a more vibrant, better aligned, and above all, humane entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Today, this movement is entering a new phase. A phase that is more open, more determined and more daring.

It is now clearly driven by one mission: we must give entrepreneurs the courage to take risks.

Because creating, undertaking and building something new requires courage, not just individual courage, but collective courage too. The courage to take the plunge, of course, but also the courage to persevere, to pivot, to learn, to fail, and finally, to start again.

And for that, entrepreneurs need an ecosystem that supports them without directing them.

A mission rooted in experience

This renewed mission is built on a solid foundation: doing good, sustainably and collectively. Over the years, we've developed an in-depth knowledge of innovative entrepreneurship support services, who holds the information, and what we don't yet know.

We've spoken to hundreds of support professionals to provide the best possible guidance to the entrepreneurs who contact us - and who share their frustrations with an ecosystem that can be difficult to navigate.

Our new mission is based on three simple but powerful principles:

1. First, an ecosystem focused on entrepreneurs. In a healthcare ecosystem, all actions converge on a single point: the entrepreneur, whose needs must guide priorities and structure.
2. Secondly, a sustainable, self-sufficient infrastructure. This infrastructure cannot depend solely on public funding: it must be resistant to political upheavals, capable of being largely self-financing and of serving the entrepreneurial community over the long term.
3. Finally, decentralized collective intelligence. Only a networked, decentralized mode of operation, one that values local expertise while reinforcing interconnections, and driven by trust, can pave the way for genuine collaboration. On this point, we have a long way to go, rivalries to calm and wounds to heal. But this path is inevitable.

Solid foundations for the future

This year, we have set concrete milestones for this transformation. The new portal.mainqc.com represents the first milestone in a digital infrastructure designed to make the ecosystem more readable, navigable and fluid. It's just the beginning - the first sum of what we know, transformed into a practical tool.

A committee of independent entrepreneurs is quietly getting organized, to carry the voice of those we serve loud and clear, and guide the next steps of the movement. Because, as Brad Feld, co-founder of Techstars and author of Startup Communities and Give First, often says, the true leaders of an ecosystem are none other than the entrepreneurs themselves.

Our Board of Directors continues to strengthen, with the arrival of two entrepreneurs in the thick of things, Daniel Valois (ProgressionLIVE) and Simon Boulet (Stay22), setting the tone for our commitment to aligning ourselves with the realities of the field.

A change of stance

In November 2024, we officially abandoned the appellation " innovation gas pedal movement " in the public sphere. This name, which had never been intended to refer exclusively to technology gas pedals, was causing confusion and no longer reflected our broader mission.

This change symbolizes a deeper transformation. MAIN. is no longer an orchestra conductor, but an attentive chronicler and committed facilitator of our ecosystem.

A movement is not imposed; it is woven. It does not build alone; it brings together those who, through their actions, their convictions, their daily commitment and their mutual trust, are already working to build a stronger, fairer and freer entrepreneurial world.

This is where MAIN's unique contribution lies: not in the solutions we impose, but in the infrastructure - above all the social infrastructure - that enables everyone to find their own way.