Alongside our amazing students, Sage Corps’ programming is powered by game-changing startups — high-impact entrepreneurs tackling real problems and building real solutions. They host our students and help them through their career development. For our third Startup Spotlight, we interviewed Watch Certificate CEO Guillaume Kuntz.
Q. How did the idea for your company come about?
Initially, we launched a platform to connect owners of luxury watches with the goal of helping them make deals. Our next step was to go further and actually process the transactions. To do so, we needed to verify watch authenticity on a bigger scale. So we built a strong process to fulfill our own needs. We later realized that this process would be very helpful to many people in the industry, leading us to pivot and turn our process into a product.
Today it’s called Watch Certificate™. It is the digital double of luxury watches with 45+ checkpoints and 8+ HD pictures. The watch is checked locally by an authorized watchmaker and validated by an expert. Then, the certificate is saved in the blockchain. This digital double evolves over time as the watch is maintained and eventually resold. It gives access to top-level expertise, for a public price ranging from €99 to €299.
Q. What triggered your entrepreneurial adventure?
I like challenges. I enjoy starting from scratch and growing something useful for people.
The watch market is very interesting: growing, relatively less digitized because of a lack of trust. A major information asymmetry exists between buyers and sellers.
Q. What does success look like for your company?
Success for us would be when our product is making a change both for our professional customers and our end-users, the watch owners. This means more business for our partners and more security for the consumers.
Q. What are some hardships that you’ve faced? How did you overcome them?
The number of fakes is staggering, and a few malevolent people trying to scam are harmful to the industry. We overcame this by using the existing experts to build a network of trust.
Building good things takes time.
Q. Can you share how your experience with Sage Corps has been so far?
Sage Corps is very efficient and always provides us with high-quality profiles.
Q. What qualities do you look for in your interns?
We want our interns to understand the context and make decisions with autonomy. We’d like them to ask good questions and deliver value to our team.
Q. What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned during your professional journey?
There is no shortcut or guesswork; it takes time to build something good.
Q. Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
Seek advice, reach out, always talk to your customers, enjoy the journey because it’s longer than you think, and never quit.
