With over 800 enterprise clients across 30 countries, Kolsquare has established itself as Europe’s primary influencer marketing platform by addressing a critical challenge: helping brands scale their creator partnerships while maintaining quality and responsibility. 

Under the guidance of founder and CEO Quentin Bordage, the company shapes how global brands like Coca-Cola, Sephora, and Netflix approach creator collaborations through data-driven technology and ethical practices.

Building Kolsquare’s Foundation

Quentin’s path to influencer marketing took an unexpected route. A former rugby player with a business school degree, he began his career as a strategy consultant at Oliver Wyman, specializing in digital topics and payments. His passion for sports, the web, and social media led him to identify a crucial market opportunity.

“I started to look at an entrepreneurial project four years ago and created my first company, which used to be Kolsquare’s mother company, Brand and Celebrities,” Quentin explains.

His first success in the space emerged through an innovative campaign that demonstrated the potential of creator partnerships. 

“The first deal we did was to replace the community manager of McDonald’s in France with a boxing champion who used to work at McDonald’s when he was younger,” Quentin recalls. “He replaced the community manager for one week with a big reality: he had a championship fight against the world champion.”

What started as a platform connecting brands with celebrities for endorsements shifted as Quentin observed content creators’ growing influence. 

“We saw the rise of the audiences of celebrities on social media, but also the rise of new kind of celebrities – the celebrities that were not known in real life, but with massive audiences,” he recalls. “At that time, they were on YouTube and Twitter.”

The development of Kolsquare emerged through detailed market analysis and strategic decisions. 

“We started to develop specific tools with automated tech, allowing the influencers to give brands the rights to push some content on their behalf and negotiate pricing. Everything was automated, but it was small and just starting,” Quentin explains.

After securing funding in 2016, Quentin launched Kolsquare in 2018. By 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he implemented several strategic changes: focusing entirely on Kolsquare’s SaaS platform, transitioning to a fully remote company, and becoming a benefit corporation. 

“We did everything at the same time in 2020,” Quentin says. “So we pivoted, focusing on SaaS and Kolsquare becoming a work-from-home company. Today, we are 50-person teams in France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and Italy. We have more than 15 nationalities, so very diversified backgrounds.”

Data-Driven Creator Partnerships

Kolsquare’s core value addresses a fundamental challenge in influencer marketing: scalability. 

“Everyone knows it works and can positively impact your business, but how can you do that? And the question is, ‘How can you scale it once you identify what works for you?’” Quentin explains.

The platform’s technology suite includes three primary components:

Advanced Search Engine

“If you want someone talking about a specific haircare routine – for instance, a blonde woman based in Bulgaria with an audience of women over 35 – you can do that,” Quentin states.

“It’s not just having access to a catalog of existing creators on our database; we reference all creators that exist. Sometimes, you will look for creators on YouTube; sometimes, your audience will be TikTok. You don’t know before you’ve started to work on the campaign. We provide you with the exhaustive database, allowing you to be agile and everywhere you want to be,” he adds.

This comprehensive approach distinguishes Kolsquare. “We decided to address all the people who already have a clear idea which kind of creators and collaborations are working for them and want to scale,” Quentin explains. 

This means that once they identify potential influencers or conduct initial searches on Instagram, they need a solution that helps them pinpoint the ideal talent. “It’s about finding the perfect match, not just relying on who comes to mind or who friends suggest. They need a truly data-driven approach,” Quentin says.

Relationship Management

The platform’s IRM (Influencer Relationship Management) system addresses the complexity of managing multiple creator relationships simultaneously. 

You need to reach out and build relationships with these people,” Quentin explains. “And when I say people, that can mean hundreds, even thousands of creators at the same time. We designed our tool to make this process faster and more efficient, so teams can focus their time on high-impact activities where they add the most value.”

The system integrates with existing business tools: “You can sync with platforms like Shopify to auto-generate promo codes or with Gmail to manage messaging—all in one place,” Quentin adds. “These tasks can be very time-consuming, and we designed our tool to streamline them, helping teams work more efficiently.”

Comprehensive Reporting

Kolsquare’s reporting capabilities tackle one of the industry’s biggest challenges – ROI measurement. 

“We also integrate with e-commerce platforms and affiliate technologies,” Quentin explains. “We leverage all the data that we are collecting to provide our clients with a benchmarking tool that allows them to rank their brand in terms of EMV volume of key opinion leaders, share of voices, and compare their strategy to other competitors.”

The platform includes a fourth component focused on insights. 

“We have a fourth component focussing on insight and intelligence,” Quentin explains. “We leverage all the data that we are collecting to provide our clients with a benchmarking tool that allows them to rank their brand in terms of EMV volume of key opinion leaders and share of voices, compare their strategy to other competitors or other inspiring brands, and see what could be the best next move for them.”

Quentin emphasizes making complex capabilities accessible: “We focus on simplicity, knowing how complex it can get. Our platform is intuitive and user-friendly, and our UX/UI consistently gets great feedback,” he notes.

Leading with Purpose

Kolsquare distinguishes itself through its dedication to responsible influence. In 2020, Quentin transformed Kolsquare into a benefit corporation, joining companies like Patagonia to prioritize profit and social impact.

“We are convinced that influencer marketing and social media are revolutionary,” he says. “We’re optimistic and enthusiastic, but we also recognize the darker sides of our industry and don’t want to ignore them. That’s why we’re committed to tackling issues like addiction, fake news, mental health, carbon footprint, and more.”

The company’s commitment extends to concrete actions: “We give 1% of our revenues yearly to NGOs fighting against these limits. For example, we go to schools to train children in safe social media usage,” Quentin shares. They’ve also developed tools like the “compliance score” that measures creators’ transparency in sponsored content across different countries.

“Many brands are conscious of the impact of their campaigns, but they don’t know how to deal with it,” Quentin notes. “If you want to reduce your carbon footprint on your campaign, you need to start by measuring it. However, time and expertise often get in the way—brands need the right insights and know-how to effectively measure and reduce their carbon footprint. For many, it’s a complex challenge that still doesn’t have a complete solution.”

Strategic Growth and Innovation

Quentin touches on the recent acquisition of Kolsquare by Team Blue, describing it as a milestone. 

“We made this move because we were growing very fast,” Quentin shares. “We reached a very interesting milestone in Europe and became the European leader. We are also profitable because we have this very specific model of being a B Corp benefit company. We wanted to ensure we could reach the next stage and accelerate there.”

With access to Team Blue’s network of 3 million clients and 30,000 agencies, Kolsquare is positioned for expansion while maintaining its core values. 

“We are keeping everything as we are doing today,” Quentin assures. “We will benefit from their means, expertise, and culture, but we stay Kolsquare. We stay a benefit company. The team remains the same. We will just accelerate our strategy.”

Shaping Industry Standards

Quentin helps establish industry standards as vice president of the ethical committee at UMICC (Union des Métiers de l’Influence et des Créateurs de Contenu) and co-founder of the European Influencer Marketing Alliance. 

“Last year, we created the UMICC, a union gathering all the market players, agencies, creators, and platforms like us to work on common standards harmonizing the practices,” he explains.

The industry’s advancement is evident in several trends: “Now, more people are dedicated to influencer marketing within companies. At first, it was just someone from PR or social media handling it, but now, all teams are focused on it. With that shift, expertise is growing, and so is performance.”

“We are building this new industry, this new world that is part of a societal revolution,” Quentin reflects. “We’re all players in this change, and maybe we really can make a difference. It’s not just about business but also the broader impact on society.”