Trained as an engineer, Laurent Laïk worked for Cuisines Schmidt, a French company that creates kitchens, as a project manager from 1995 to 1997. To start a new career he left this job and discovered the concept of companies providing employment to promote social integration, which he felt offered freedom and possibilities to innovate with people often excluded from society. For this reason he took over La Varappe in the late 1990s. In 2000 he became president of the French national committee of the companies that help with the integration of people excluded from society.