Receiving a package with damaged contents, finding that the work on your home has not progressed or that the premises have been dirtied by their occupants… So many situations that professionals and individuals can face.
In this case, the safest solution to assert one’s rights would be to make use of a legal professional, a judicial officer, to certify the truth of the facts. But a bailiff is a budget and most importantly must be available, at the snap of a finger.
“I realized with many of them that when you call them it’s too late”, explains Alexis Deborde, co-founder of the Toulon-based startup Smartpreuve. Its reason for being? Providing its users with a tool capable of producing trial initiations, in collaboration with legal professionals, in an emergency. “I am a lawyer by training and have been a consultant in the transformation of legal professionals since 2014”specifies the thirty-year-old.
Blockchain and partner bailiff network
The principle is simple; the app lets you take up to twenty photos or even make thirty-second videos. “The items collected in this way are anchored in a blockchain, we use Tezos, and if this platform ever goes missing, the items thus secured would immediately be transmitted to the partner bailiff firm”says the entrepreneur.
Smartpreuve’s interest is to be able to count on a network of about fifty bailiffs who receive the photos sent via the app, the recipient office being the one closest to the place where the facts are detected, identified thanks to geolocation. “A bailiff certificate is available within twenty-four hours”, explains Alexis Deborde who intends to recruit new bailiffs this year. The app, which is aimed at both professionals and individuals, in the form of subscriptions or billed individually, is in its second version and already has 400 active users.
“We’re launching the attorneys’ space this week so they can allow their clients to gather evidence as part of their case”announces the startupper who has also just signed with a big name in fast food, eager to be able to prove that building permits have actually been exhibited for two months when a new establishment is set up.
> smartpreuve.com/
A new round
The stroke of genius of Alexis Deborde and his partners Frédéric Combette and Julien Noyer is to have been able to attract legal professionals who might have seen unfair competition in Smartpreuve. On the contrary, this tool allows a greater number of people, individuals or companies, to have recourse to a bailiff and soon to a lawyer, who they would not necessarily have contacted directly.
“We had raised an initial fundraiser of €200,000 in 2020 for the first release”, recalls the co-founder. Fifty bailiffs and ten lawyers had agreed to invest, seeing this instrument as a great business provider.
From now on, Smartpreuve wishes to involve other lawyers, thanks to a new round of funding from 150,000 to 300,000€, in the capital which already includes several business angels but also a fund specialized in investments in insurance and blockchain. Alexis Deborde hopes to be profitable by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the startup intends to develop subscriptions that allow companies to use the app on a regular basis to satisfy their recurring need for legal evidence, making themselves known to the general public for mundane everyday acts such as a water damage assessment.
