He is at the origin of Doctolib which revolutionized the health of the French. His destiny could have been quite different. Discover the journey of Stanislas Niox-Château.
As Roland-Garros begins, French hopes rest on the shoulders of Arthur Fils. The 21-year-old will have the difficult task of trying to do better than the previous generation who remained empty-handed on clay. A player could have tried his luck a few years ago but his body unfortunately decided otherwise. This man is Stanislas Niox-Château, who is today the founder of Doctolib.
Born in 1987 in Paris, he is today a major figure in French Tech. Before arriving there, this Parisian by birth was destined for a completely different career in sport. He played tennis at a high level during his youth where he faced names known to the general public like Gaël Monfils or Jérémy Chardy, who later became professionals. Unfortunately for him, his destiny was changed by a back injury which forced him to stop playing tennis at the age of 17.
This event adds to another aspect of the character: stuttering. “The most useful thing is my stutter. I’ve been stuttering since I was little, and 15 years ago I couldn’t go get a baguette at the bakery. Today I talk to customers, I speak in public, etc. This stutter helps me to question myself every day,” confides the entrepreneur on the HEC website. He explains that he used it as a strength to question himself on a daily basis.
Stanislas Niox-Château then turned to a completely different career in entrepreneurship, a field that he considered close to sport. “There are extremely strong links between entrepreneurship and sport,” he explains in an interview. To achieve this, he joined HEC Paris in 2006 where he trained specifically in entrepreneurship by following an “Entrepreneurs major” in his course. This academic path accelerates his entry into the business world.
In 2010, he confused Otium Capital, a private investor that supports entrepreneurs, with Pierre-Edouard Stérin and Antoine Freysz. This project allows him to have first experiences and to discover the world of start-ups and investment. Here again, his sporting past is never far away because as he says himself: “a start-up is like a sports team”.
It was finally in 2013 that he launched into his project that everyone knows today: Doctolib. With other co-founders like Jessy Bernal, Ivan Schneider, or Thomas Landais, Stanislas Niox-Château has the ambition to modernize the health sector by allowing the French to make appointments more simply. “Innovating in the medical appointment booking market means working on a daily basis with healthcare professionals to provide them with innovative and comprehensive tools for managing their consultations and their patient base. Not calling them into question,” writes the entrepreneur in a column published in our columns on April 27, 2016.
Doctolib is quickly becoming a major player in health in France. The application extends to Germany and its growth is constant. Its place in the health ecosystem has continued to grow, notably in 2018 with the acquisition of MonDocteur, a platform born in 2013 and which offered an appointment booking service similar to what Doctolib does. A good example that you can bounce as high as a tennis ball.
