#16: Ethan Pierse

Episode 16 - Ethan Pierse - Entrepreneur is not a dirty word

Key Points

• Founder of Borderless Ventures, partner in new Silicon Valley fund targeting deep tech

• Engineering education, career started doing digital marketing & corporate training

• Business activity between France, Southeast Asia and the US

• Sees confluence of positive events in France coming together today

• Being an entrepreneur is now cool, which helps build ecosystem

• What is Ethan looking for with startups? Idea needs to be great but the team has to be great to build real value and full potential

• Team is critical to success of startup!

• New book coming out on corporate innovation - Chief Startup Officer

• Why France is a hotbed for deep tech

Ethan Pierse spent years working in the US as a successful digital marketer before moving to France, where he initially did similar work until four years ago when he started helping French startups gain access to US investment capital as well as business development. This effort then led to working with Singapore and Hong Kong, where French expats make up a significant community.

Today, Ethan’s splits his time between Borderless Ventures, which helps startups, investors and corporates access opportunities between the US, France and Southeast Asia - as well as a new Silicon Valley venture fund that is investing in AI and Industry 4.0 deep tech.  This new fund is based in the US but investing in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in Israel and Southeast Asia.

In this episode, we discussed why France and why now, and Ethan clearly explains the confluence of events over recent years that has positioned France as the place to be. The French government has been promoting entrepreneurship and improving the visibility of French startups outside of France. They’re pushing hard to drive this change and the results are starting to show.

One big change Ethan comments on is that younger students today really want to be entrepreneurs, which is a radical departure from years ago when so many wanted to work for big organizations or the government. Today, it’s cool to be an entrepreneur-- which, as he mentions, can cut both ways. Ultimately, it’s still a business and as fun as some of the perks of that business can be, they’re just that: perks.

Listen as Ethan explains in very clear terms what investors are looking for when they are considering a startup. We also discuss how startups interact with corporates, including the positives and the negatives on both sides. Yes it can work out well, but startups can easily waste valuable time and collapse if they chase the wrong corporate partnerships. If big corporates want to be part of the future, they urgently need to be serious about engaging with startups. For more on that subject, keep an eye out for Ethan’s new book, Chief Startup Officer, coming out soon. Our podcast discussion with Ethan wraps up as he discusses why France is well positioned for the Deep Tech wave of startups that will be disrupting organizations around the world in the coming years.

Ethan is very active on social media, putting out a ton of great content, so follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook,  He’s also a regular on BFM Business and once you start following him, you will quickly see why!

#15: Eva Peris

Episode 15 - Eva Peris - Once Upon a Dating App...

Key Points:

• Dating market has been around for a while, first online and then apps, but market has been evolving

• Met Once founders soon after product developed

• Once’s concept was based on addressing dating app inefficiencies, including wasted time wading through countless profiles & embarrassment of everyone seeing their profile

• Once’s founders are French but launched in UK

• Post-Brexit & following Macron’s victory, Paris became a more interesting place to relocate

• Breaking into a crowded market requires something solid & a new idea

• European markets more skeptical of the new and different, compared to US consumers

Breaking into a crowded market can initially sound like the worst idea in the world.  You have to be crazy to even think such a thing, right? After all, there’s often a reason that a market isn’t crowded. A crowded market can actually mean that there’s a lot of attention and potentially money in addressing that particular market’s problems. Look at what our previous guest Edouard Aligand has managed to achieve with QuasarDB.

Eva Peris had already worked for happn, another dating app, so she had some experience in the market. While many of the online sites were past their prime and Tinder was the market leader, users were looking for something different. Swiping through so many profiles wasn’t for everyone and for many, the thought of exposing your profile to thousands of people didn’t sound like a great idea either.

The big question then was how to succeed in such a crowded market, where the competition has both market share as well as very deep pockets. Eva was hired as the Deputy CMO at Once to build out their marketing plan, and they’ve enjoyed considerable success both with building a customer base as well as raising multiple rounds of funds. In this episode, she explains how Once differentiated themselves from the competition and why they’re enjoying so much success.

What’s also interesting is Eva’s experience working in London both pre and post-Brexit, and Emmanuel Macron’s successful bid for the French presidency. London was once the undisputed leader in Europe for startup talent thanks to its international community, but the tide appears to be shifting and Paris is looking better than ever moving forward.

One of the perks of Paris’s fast-changing startup scene is that after three and a half years with a market-changing startup like Once, Eva was recently hired by Ironhack as the VP of Marketing.  In her new role she will be overseeing the global marketing for the top coding bootcamp. This says a lot about the dynamics of the fast-changing Paris startup scene, where opportunities for internationally experienced professionals are increasing by the month.

#12: Anne Ravanona

Episode 12 - Anne Ravanona - Opportunity Loss: Closing the $300 billion global funding gap between men and women

Key Points:

• Anne is on a mission to get more women entrepreneurs funded

• Need to close the $300 billion funding gap between men and women

• Help women understand the funding system, including the language, the biases and how to navigate the system

• Change the funding system to provide fair and equal access to funding

After a successful business career, when Anne hit 40 she asked herself what she wanted to do with her life. The answer was a resounding “help female entrepreneurs.” This is when Anne created Global Invest Her.  

We’ve all read the stories about low funding for women but Anne is stepping up to build a network of women to help other women entrepreneurs. The funding gap between men and women is a whopping $300 billion, which is enormous. Anne’s mission is to close that gap and teach women how to navigate this complex system: one with ever-changing players and rules.

Successful female entrepreneurs help other women who are seeking funding by explaining their own journeys and how they were successful in the process. Change is coming, but only slowly: we’re still a long way off from equal funding, despite women being 51% of the global population.

Anne walks us through some of the brutal statistics and why most of the investment world is missing out on so many great ideas. The “opportunity loss” numbers are not easy to quantify but it seems hard to believe that businesses are fully realizing their potential when so few female  startup founders receive funding and even when they do, the amounts are generally lower.

While there are a few positive examples of existing investment funds, what’s really exciting today is the number of new funds created by women that focus on funding and assisting women.

As depressing as the current statistics can be, there’s good reason to be hopeful for something better moving forward. As Anne tells us in the episode, anyone wanting to team up to address this issue needs to talk with her so they can collaborate and create that better environment that we’re all demanding.

#11: Robin Lepercq

Episode 11 - Robin Lepercq - The evolving click-and-mortar model

Key take-away points

• Created after leaving an IT services company, noticed the inefficiencies of the market

• Freelancing was small compared to other countries but growing rapidly

• Pivoted from a broad offering to a very narrow market

• Strong focus on the market and focus on delivering high quality so very selective

• Building a community for high end, technical freelancers

• Opting for organic growth rather than raising funds

After working for years in IT services, Robin was let go. A situation like that is rarely welcomed or ideal when you’re raising a family, but thanks to the incredible French system, Robin was able to transition from this tough situation into launching a successful startup - FreelanceRepublik -  that has an abundance of assignments. Not a bad place to be for a young startup.

The idea came about after collaborating with businesses and seeing how the process worked with developing projects and applications. The traditional model was struggling due to high costs and very long cycles for hiring IT teams. He could see that the future was definitely in empowering top freelancers who wanted interesting jobs where they could learn and grow.

One of the great things about the French safety net is that the system provides a strong layer of support for people who lose their jobs. Robin used this structure to help get FreelanceRepublik off the ground. It provided him with the help he needed during that period so he could try one model, before pivoting to what exists today.

What he learned during this process was that having a razor-sharp focus helped the company offer the best possible service both to companies and to freelancers. By staying narrow, he got to know his market and his market got to know him. Robin makes sure that FreelanceRepublik keeps a strict quality standard, so he’s been able to easily find missions for talented freelance developers and project managers.

Moving forward, he wants to evolve to have more click and less mortar in his click-and-mortar startup, though there will always be a need for a least a little mortar in the business of high-end recruitment.

#9: Timothée Rebours

Episode 9 - Timothée Rebours - Seald: Not your father’s encryption product

Key take-aways:

• Formed team with complementary skills during UC Berkeley program

• No interest in working for a large company

• Always loved encryption, sought an easy answer to a serious problem

• More secure for large organizations, consultants, going to the cloud

• Paris makes good business sense thanks to lower costs, BPI & ecosystem

• French businesses are more engaged with startups

• Focused on building base in France, then take abroad

Ten years ago, students often dreamed of hopping into the corporate world following graduation.  It was safe, it was comfortable and that’s just what one did in France.  While it can still make sense for many, more young graduates want to dive straight into the startup world.  Sure it’s tough and there’s not the security blanket of a big company and a big team, but for people like Timothée and his co-founders at Seald.io, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

The idea behind the encryption product was one that started years ago for Timothée.  He always had a strong interest in security and encryption so when he needed to create something for his graduate studies program at UC Berkeley, he thought back to his childhood idea of encrypting his dad’s email messages and the ongoing problem of sensitive data being encrypted.

Another continuous challenge is making it easy.  As a kid, Timothée would explain to his dad the dozens of steps he could take to secure his emails. His father was already interested in the concept, but Timothée knew that all those steps would make it impossible to implement in the corporate world.  

To bring all this together, Timothée joined up with Mehdi Kouhen and Maxime Huber to form the initial team. Each brought something to the table and together they delivered a really nice, easy-to-use encryption solution that protects sensitive data on email and beyond. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of ease-of-use, whether it’s one or even zero-click functionality.  It’s a core focus of the team.

The end result for users is a product that makes it easy to properly encrypt sensitive information that’s being distributed via email, Dropbox, or other tools.  For companies moving sensitive data into the cloud, they too now have a solution to sleep well at night.

Seald.io has enjoyed market success with early-mover accounts in France, where they’re close to customers and have received helpful impact.  Timothée asserted that large French companies are changing and are engaging with startups better than in the past.  This is indeed a welcome sign and we’re thrilled to hear it.

The benefit for Seald.io and the rest of the French tech startup world is that it’s easy to build our your initial product offering with local customers and then take it on the road to other markets.  It’s an enormous expense for startups to have to travel to another country - this means train or plane tickets, hotels, etc - when getting started, money that could be better spent on building out the product and the team.

On the subject of future growth, Timothée gave high marks to BPI and the rapid help they provided.  It’s hard to underestimate the positive impact BPI has had for the startup world.  As for launching in Paris, when San Francisco or London could have been an option in the past, he sees the benefits of setting up in Paris over the rest.  Timothée says that the cost in France is lower for developers and the overall support structures for startups has improved dramatically.

Once the team is comfortable with its initial product, they will explore market expansion, but only after they’ve properly studied and understood those other markets. An unwise decision of jumping in headfirst could be a fatal move, so besides a smart product, the Seald.io team is also making some smart business decisions.

Delivering an easy-to-use encryption product that can protect sensitive data has been a market challenge for years but Seald.io is building a tool that will finally make this a problem of the past.

#7: Edouard Alligand

Episode 7 - Edouard Alligand - Techies are terrible listeners, and other fake news

In 2008, Edouard Alligand decided to make a career change, which is normal for most people at some point in their lives. The problem?  He moved into the banking sector...in 2008. Ouch. That’s a tough market to break into in the best of times and in the worst of times, the transition was difficult.

It was during that time that Edouard noticed that stocks were especially volatile and big money was made and lost because of that volatility. Through talks with customers in the banking market, he noticed that the systems being used could not keep up; so he applied his background in math and system programming to address the issue.

While working with one particular client, he built a new database that was able to run computations on thousands of CPUs.  Making this work would be the difference between financial traders making or losing money, and the stakes were even higher in the wake of the financial crisis.

Out of this chaos, QuasarDB was born. It helped that the initial product was built based on the needs of a client, but Edouard realized that this tool would be useful beyond just that single client, so he raised money, product-ized it and built an early model to sell to others.

Edouard’s story is smart and enjoyable as he walks us through how he leveraged assistance from Business France and IMPACT USA to build out QuasarDB and enter the US market. While Edouard is a very serious person, he also has fun along the way. Launching a startup comes with enough stressful days, so it’s essential to learn how to laugh through them.

Another key point to note is Edouard’s assertion that yes, France has a deep talent base for developing tech products for global customers. That said, the business market in France is lagging behind other countries. It’s an important point and one that we hear from many startups focused on selling to big accounts. French business is too slow moving, they want to build rather than buy and negotiations can be painfully long, if they even work.

For a startup, having prospects who spin their wheels only to not buy anything is a progress-killer. If your early stage startup is trying to build a local market before going elsewhere, it’s a very big risk trying in France compared to engaging with prospects in other markets such as the UK, Scandinavia, or the US. Imagine the possibilities if more local companies here invested in startup technology!

In the case of QuasarDB, they did find local customers but they also learned that prospects elsewhere were more open to new technology companies and engaged with them as a serious partner. Deciding to focus on markets outside of France became an easy decision to make for Edouard.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned here on so many subjects - product creation, listening to customers, obsession with quality, moving to the business to the US, working with an accelerator and more - so you’ll probably want to listen a few times to soak it all in. Edouard has the industry experience as well as proven success, so he’s a wealth of information for all.

#6: Cassandra Delage

Episode 6 - Cassandra Delage - Changing recycling behavior in France, office by office

After completing her Bachelor’s at McGill University in Canada, Cassandra moved to France to pursue her Master’s degree in entrepreneurship at HEC.  During her internships there, something jumped out to Cassandra: Compared to her experience in Canada, French offices were very far behind in terms of recycling behavior and technology.  The waste and attitudes had to change, for the sake of the environment.

Instead of accepting this recycle-free zone, she decided to do something about it.  In addition to her degrees from impressive schools, Cassandra also has the drive to get things done; after creating her first company as a teenager, she knew she’d found her calling as an entrepreneur.

Her latest business is Plast’if, a hyper-local recycling machine that addresses the problem of recycling in offices.  For starters, it collects and separates plastic in the office - water bottles, dishes, bottle caps, you name it - and then melts and transforms that plastic, which is then used to print 3D objects of your choice.  Definitely a cool idea.

While sorting, melting, and printing are at the core of Plast’if’s functionalities, what makes their technology special is that it encourages responsible behavior.  Office teams can compete and win rewards for recycling more.  Rewarding people reinforces the good behavior, which in turn encourages and builds the habit of recycling.  So far, the response with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) teams has been very positive in the Île-de-France region.

The key to Cassandra’s success?  Networking, followed by more networking, served with a topping of extra networking.  Having the support and mentoring assistance from Microsoft Ventures and others is great, but there’s no replacement for pounding the pavement and meeting people.  As she tells us, each new conversation gives her new ideas that help Plast’if move forward, so there’s a lot more networking ahead.

Cassandra also shares about the friendliness and camaraderie she’s come across that are prevalent in the French startup ecosystem.  It’s something we at OuiStart Media have experienced ourselves and most people we meet say the same thing. While the French sometimes have a reputation for being standoffish, our guests’ experiences tell a different story.

Maybe it’s because the startup world here is still early and growing, but people here are willing to help.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help - including asking us! - and if you can, be generous with others who need it. That kind of community building is just what’s helped Cassandra to forge Plast’fi in a new-to-her environment!

#4: Sébastien Couture

Episode 4 -  Sébastien Couture - Building the future with blockchain

As much as everyone in Startupland talks about disruption, let’s be honest: there’s not as much disruption out there as there’s cracked up to be.  However, however...blockchain is one of those areas that may be living up to the hype.  We sat down with one of the co-founders of Stratumn, the highest-funded blockchain startup in France.

Sébastien is a great example of someone who proves there’s more than one model for being a successful startup entrepreneur.  As his professors described him, he’s “atypical”: he’s both a self-taught developer, and has a degree in marketing and communications.  What’s more, he was educated in Canada as well as in France.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Sébastien walks us through how he got started in the blockchain world (including launching the very successful Epicenter blockchain podcast) and how the relationships that he’s developed over time have helped Stratumn grow from a vision to a leading blockchain infrastructure business with two rounds of funding.

For technical founders who don’t like glitzy marketing, there are so many lessons to be learned here.  Sébastien is big on relationship development, building a community and listening.  In a world full of so many more pontificators than listeners, he provides some valuable lessons in how to build your business with open communication channels between you and your users.

In addition, we hear about both the upsides and the challenges of building a startup in Paris with a team that looks like the UN.  Communicating across cultures is not always easy, but embracing the challenge is certainly paying off for Stratumn.

There’s so much helpful advice here, you’re going to want to listen to this a few times to get it all.

#2: Phil Waknell

Episode 2 - Phil Waknell - The Perfect Pitch

Before diving into startup storytelling, we wanted to first step back and focus on one of the most important parts of startup creation.  You could argue that it’s not as important as the concept itself, but without a pitch, moving forward is going to be a struggle.  

For starters, you need to pitch the idea to others to get them onboard with your idea.  You need to pitch others - or even amongst yourselves - to do a lot of work to build a prototype so you can go out and pitch others, to get customers or raise money.

Pitching doesn’t come naturally for most so for many, it’s such a painful and forced process, that there will be only one pitch.  Talking with potential partners?  Here’s our pitch.  Potential investors?  Oh good, here’s that same pitch.  Prospects?  You got it, here’s the pitch.  It’s difficult coming up with that pitch masterpiece so surely it works for every situation, right?

If you thought that your pitch wasn’t all that important and that you only needed one, you really need to listen to our guest Phil Waknell, Chief Inspiration Officer at Ideas on Stage.  Phil has coached countless people for pitching, including students at some of the Grandes Écoles in France, startup incubators such as NUMA and Share-It at StationF and numerous corporate accounts including Microsoft, EDF, Orange, Sanofi and beyond.

Phil explains the critical components that are needed for your pitch as well as why you need not just one pitch, but many.  If you want to have a successful pitch, each pitch must speak to your specific audience, which is important to consider beyond just your pitch, as you grow your business.

Learning this process is often more difficult for technical founders, who put more value on the technical aspects of their startup rather than the marketing side.  It’s true your technical solution needs to be solid, but it’s a mistake to undervalue the critical nature of your pitch.  If you fail to connect with your audience, it’s going to be difficult to get the to listen to your cool new offering.

Remember, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all pitch.  In fact, as we will discover during our podcasts, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all in the startup world.  We always need to know our audience and speak to them, not a generic person.  Nobody explains this better than Phil, so enjoy!

#1: Intro

Episode 1 - Intro - The many roads to success

A few years ago it was said that George W. Bush claimed that “the problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.”  Even though he didn’t say this (and sure, we had to confirm this on Snopes because it does sound like something he could have blurted out) it’s fair to say this was the general stereotype by many outside of France and even some inside France too!

So how true is this today?  While being a startup entrepreneur is not as much a part of the culture in France as it is in the US, everything is changing.  Those who used to rush off to London or Silicon Valley are now seeing that yes, it’s possible to stay in France and enjoy success.

Even the word “success” is loaded because there is no single right answer.  Success is whatever you define success to be.  Is it being rich?  Is it doing something positive for the world?  Is it finding work-life balance?  There is no right answer, it’s whatever you want it to be.

Along those lines, how do you achieve success with a startup?  Do you mirror Silicon Valley, where financial success is plentiful?  Despite the claims of some, there really is no single path to success.

Can other parts of the world learn from Silicon Valley.  Of course, but there is plenty of both good and bad.  Does one model from a specific region in the US translate everywhere?  Hardly!  Even in the US there are many models and many startup success stories in places outside of Silicon Valley.

Before jumping into the many great discussions with startup people and industry experts, we want to provide you with a brief introduction to ourselves and what we will be talking about moving forward.  Instead of bloviating or pontificating, our goal is to engage in fun and interesting discussions with startup people.

From our perspective, listening and learning from others is the best way forward.  Maybe your focus is different from ours or our guests, but listening to others can help move forward with developing your own success.  Even when we choose another path, listening to others helps develop our own methods.

When you’re a larger company and have plenty of money available, it’s easy to find experts and get advice.  When you’re getting started and money is tight, access to experts is much more difficult.  By listening to others who have gone through this experience, you can hear that others have faced exactly the same issues as you.

We hope that it will help you think more about the decisions you make, these discussions have already helped us change our mind on a few points.  Keep an open mind and learn along with us.