Family Business Succession: Tiphaine de Pélichy’s Transition at Turboself

Taking the helm at Turboself

Piloting a business is rarely straightforward, but when the enterprise was founded by a talented polymath, the equation becomes far more complex. This is the exact challenge Tiphaine de Pélichy, 35, agreed to tackle at Turboself, an Orléans-based family SME with 17 million euros in revenue and 120 employees that designs kiosks and software to manage student flows in school cafeterias.

The firm holds the lion’s share of its niche market in France, supplying 70 percent of the country’s public secondary schools. De Pélichy, now an associate director, discussed the audacity required to follow in the footsteps of a polymath founder at the BIG entrepreneur gathering organized by Bpifrance at the Accor Arena in Paris.

“My father, Jean, was an engineer at Alcatel when he had this business idea in 1986, after a discussion with a school administrator,” she recounted. A year later, he resigned to launch the company, managing every facet for nearly forty years: industrial and IT development, commercial strategy, management, and legal affairs—even correcting his lawyers on labor law cases because of his deep passion for law.

Jean’s intellectual range extends far beyond software and hardware. During coffee breaks, he is known to discuss major literary authors or the Quran, which he reads on weekends. As recently as the week prior, he walked into his daughter’s office to explain the mechanics of solar particles.

Shifting from Paris ambitions to the family firm

Following marketing studies, Tiphaine de Pélichy initially envisioned a career in Paris as an actress. She spent roughly a decade working in advertising before returning to Orléans to start a family, ultimately deciding to join the Turboself venture in 2024 alongside her older brother, Quentin. Two other sisters, also company associates, pursued different paths—one as a member of parliament and another as a physician.

Faced with the fear of failure and the weight of matching her father’s legacy, she adopted a positive counter-weight: “the desire to succeed.” Recognizing her limits, she noted that if certain skills are missing, she ensures she surrounds herself with people who possess them.

Jean de Pélichy plans to step down from management in July 2028 when he turns 70, placing the family business at the midpoint of a planned three-year handover window.

The broader succession crisis in French small businesses

In France, corporate succession remains poorly anticipated, creating an urgent economic hurdle for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and intermediate-sized enterprises (ETIs). Eric Versey, executive director of finance and network at Bpifrance, highlighted that one-third of the public investment bank’s equity participations involve family firms.

“Overall, the question of succession is not anticipated enough: when the boss is over 60, fewer than one in two has prepared a succession plan,” Versey stated. This lack of planning explains why intergenerational business transmission sits at only 20 percent in France, compared to 50 percent in Germany and 70 percent in Italy.

To address the lag, Bpifrance maintains a network of 150 experts and former managers available to join boards of directors and assist families in structuring their corporate governance.

New support networks for family transitions

Bpifrance has operated an accelerator dedicated to family businesses since 2019, welcoming roughly 20 executives annually. A second accelerator focused specifically on business transmission and buyout is launching in December in partnership with For Talents.

The new 18-month module aims to enroll roughly 20 participants, focusing on securing transition projects and firmly establishing the successor’s legitimacy. These initiatives target a vital segment of the economy, as family-owned SMEs and ETIs drive substantial portions of France’s gross domestic product, employment, and national value creation.