ABOUT US

Hi, I'm Oliboni Nicolas, the founder and current CEO of The VBC - The Virtual Business Card and I will tell you how and why The VBC came into existence.

In 2005, I discovered Tiger Woods PGA Tour on Xbox and it was a revelation for me, 2 days later, I did my first swings to find out if I was left or right-handed and the following Wednesday, I took my first golf lesson. Six months later, I took my first golf vacation centered on the Chiang Mai fairways with a full day personal trainer.

At the beginning of 2008, I was fired, I sold everything and I opened a travel agency specializing in golf stays à la carte in Thailand where I lived for six years.

During these six years, I have distributed thousands of business cards and I have learned that the competition is great, fierce and that if you let a prospect leave your shop, your store, your stand or any other place where you are face-to-face with your prospects there are major chances that in 99% of the cases you will never see them again!

So I had to find a strategy to be able to contact this 99% again in order to be able to transform them as quickly as possible into customers before one of my competitors who is closer to their hotels than I do and especially before their holidays are over... A week in heaven goes by so quickly!

In 2012, I headed to marketing and communications sites and where all throwing pop-ups in my face to receive their free books or videos with the secrets that only they know to turn a novice into a 20-step sales expert!

And then... I had the click; Pop-ups are nothing more than a roundabout way to " set foot in the door " by first offering " a free service or product " against an email so that they can contact the person who came to the site and who is more or less interested in what was offered to him before the pop up " pop " and finally finds that the offer in this pop up can be useful to him.

And so, I now had to find out how and in what way to bring pop-ups back into " real life "!

So I did some tests and mixed these elements into one solution!

Every time someone pushed the door of my shop or I met prospects at the beach, at parties, etc..., I introduced them to my tours, my services, then they selected several activities, but they needed time to think and organize themselves.

A sentence often came up: We'll watch all this quietly tonight at dinner and then we'll come back later, are you still open? and then...

Hop! " Pop Up "...

I exchanged my business cards for their emails, mobile number or another way to contact them again!

Then in the early evening, I sent them an email, SMS, a What's App with a link to a page on my site with the activities they had been interested in during the day, and with a discount, but the offer was only valid for 1 hour after the page was opened, then at the end of the countdown the offer was returned to its normal price. All this with online payment and delivery of booking tickets directly to the reception of their hotel in the evening.

This little trick increased my sales by 15% to 25% depending if it was the low or high season!

This is where the idea of The VBC - The Virtual Business Card was born in order to easily exchange your virtual business card ( " VBC " ) and to be able to easily contact the person to whom you exchanged it in order to sell your products at the most appropriate time!

From 2013 to 2015, As I didn't have the financment to create this kind of app, I started to create a flow map of the application and gave myself time to think and " interview " professionals to see what they expected from such an application, once I had sorted all these wishes and good ideas, I distributed them in 10 different modules for more coherency.

In 2016, I participated in a start-up competition in French-part of Switzerland where The VBC - The Virtual Business Card was still in the simple wireframe state and was selected in the first 30 Start-Up out of more than 120.

For the second round where a coach was assigned to us... For the little story, the organizer had assigned me the CEO of a printing company... Nice 🤪 ...

Then the coach had to create his pitch and pitcher it in front of the jury to make The VBC go through the third round so that I had a chance to pitch in front of the jury, but I was really disappointed that it wasn't the other way round...

Unfortunately, due to the too early stage of my application, The VBC was not selected in the top 10 for the final pitch. It was a good experience, which I hope to start again soon.

In 2017, in fact, I'm not a designer and I don't code, one of the problems when you have an idea and you realize that you have to delegate everything to get a good result, but this time... the dreams fall apart at the first request for an offer!

Thanks to services like upWork, I was able to find a designer in my budget to create a fast wireframe so that I could understand how it worked, then from there, I started Photoshop, then Sketch came to save my life!

At the same time, I learned how to create a prototype and I came across inVision which helped me create my first prototype with transitions between screens, then inVision finally released its Studio software which helped me create micro animations.

In 2018, I was able to hire a company and we started coding The VBC - The Virtual Business Card.

At the beginning of 2022, the first launch where I officially launched the first module of the VBC - The Virtual Business Card, which we will gradually improve and add the next modules.

In 2023 …

All modules are ready to be coded!
Stay Tuned!

Module 1

Personal Profile
Pro Profile
Manage your Personal & Pro at the same place
Create & Exchange a VBC
Animated VBC
VBC Directory
VBC Shop
And Much More Coming Soon!

Module 2

Coming Soon

The Virtual Business Card To Help everyone2x

Unlike other Vcard applications, The VBC - The Virtual Business Card is a PWA (Progressive Web App) that does not require people to download yet another app that they may use every 3 months and that will eventually be deleted to have a little more space on their mobile!

A simple shortcut on the desktop and here we are, just as you can use the VBC on your PC, but for the moment The VBC is not yet optimized for full screen, but it will happen soon! Step by step, ouooouh!

The VBC - The Virtual Business Card does not only focus on networking between professionals as often for this type of application, but also on the forgotten ones of these apps which are the exchanges between individuals to individuals, from individuals to professionals, from professionals to individuals and of course from professionals to professionals!

The VBC covers all needs and opens new doors to communication!

As I wrote above, I was distributing my business cards like hotcakes! Not only did most of them have a very short life... because they came into the hands of the people who put them on the table before putting them away and there, the condensation of the glasses flowed on the table, then the paper pumped the water and as the cards were wet they were left on the table and they ended up directly in the trash, etc.... and that's without counting on the business cards which have an even shorter life! because the person has made a mistake inattention when typing his email, his phone, or business cards are badly printed, badly cut, etc...

As with other waste, many of them are not recycled...

Billions of business cards have the same lifecycle!

It seems that you have to give about 2000 business cards to increase your turnover by 2.5% and that 90% of them will end up in the trash the first week!

The process behind The VBC had helped me to increase my sales by 25% and they will remain forever linked to the person to whom I gave it, it is time to change the way you are communicate, you are a winner on all points!

About 28 million business cards are printed every day and about 10 billion of them are printed every year in the USA alone.

If we stack all these business cards printed in one year on top of each other we could make two piles that would touch the surface of the Moon! ( The Moon is 384,400 km away).

Nowadays" everyone in " civilized " regions has a smartphone! Business cards no longer need to be made of paper, which will make it possible to reduce a little bit the energy and grey energy consumed around their production.

The Virtual Business Card What we do for the environment2x

The VBC - The Virtual Business Card hosts its site and app with a company that uses only green energy for cooling and powering its servers. The energy used is 60% hydropower (certified " TÜV SÜD EE01 ") and 40% renewable energy (certified " Naturemade Star ").

For our part, we will continue to maintain the actions already implemented and will strive to improve them, we will also commit to offsetting our carbon emissions at 200% to reduce our CO2 emissions.

Electronics

All devices go into standby as quickly as possible (black screens without animation).
All screens are turned off as soon as the day is over.
The computers are switched off as soon as the day is over.
The lights are on only when necessary and all rooms where there is no one are off with the last person leaving the room.
Sockets and electrical appliances with a small light indicator light should be disconnected after each use.
We only print what is strictly necessary.

Daily consumption

The towels, wipe everything are made of fabric
The cutlery offered in the company and stirrers has been replaced by steel utensils.
Not all containers for coffee, tea, etc... are made of plastic or single-use plastic.
Room for the recovery for recycling of paper, aluminum, steel, plastic and computer equipment, finally all that we can recycle!

The Virtual Business Card We are THE VBC

More Info ?