Rare are the opportunities to meet entrepreneurs at the start of their ascent. Today, there is a plethora of podcasts, interviews, and books featuring successful entrepreneurs like Xavier Niel, Elon Musk, Evan Spiegel, and others. They have succeeded, undertaken introspective journeys, and shared their stories. In this portrait, we have chosen to showcase our ability to recognize young talent by focusing on someone we know extremely well: Ludovic Granger.

After spending some time at LVMH, launching a first startup during school, and working for 3 years at Inovexus, a cross-border acceleration deal club, Ludo recently announced the launch of his new venture: Leadbay. Leadbay removes the guesswork from prospecting. They are developing domain-specific AI models to serve Lead Generation, Scoring, and Ideal Customer Profile refinement for Sales Teams targeting the mid-market.

To comprehend all the facets of an emerging founder, we have spent time with those who have nurtured Ludo: his father, his schoolmates, Gerard Mulliez (Auchan), his early team at Leadbay, including his angels, his mentors, and of course, his co-founder Milan Stankovic, PhD.

From farmer father to founder son, launching a venture in AI for B2B Sales

It was during a 3-day seminar hosted by Gerard Mulliez (Auchan) in 2019 that Ludo realized his destiny was not to take over the family farm, but to become an entrepreneur. The 3rd day, Gerard Mulliez decided to sit next to Ludo. After a few questions about Ludo’s numerology, he inquired:

Gerard Mulliez: How many hectares do your parents own ?
Ludo gave the number, worried.
Gerard: I’ll buy it and you’ll launch your business with it.

This moment marked the first time Ludo truly valued the hard work of several generations in shaping the land into a farm. He then understood his destiny to launch companies with far fewer constraints. He would later learn in venture capital about a more “scalable” business model without climate, nor geographical constraints, and with a shorter time to market.

3 years at Inovexus was for Ludovic an MBA-like experience as an entrepreneur-investor

Back in June 2020, Ludo met Philippe Roche, Inovexus Founding Partner and CEO, a self-made entrepreneur who had recently moved from the US to Europe to launch Inovexus. During their conversation, Philippe introduced concepts like pre-seed, global from day 1 Californian DNA, and, most importantly, the pay-it-forward mindset. It was completely unfamiliar to Ludo, and from his fresh French perspective (and with all the respect he had for Philippe), it sounded like fluffy buzzwords. As their call ended, Philippe left him with these words:

I don’t care about your background, your age, your school, or your past experiences. I only care about the value you will bring to Inovexus. Let’s set objectives together for the next three months. If you succeed, you will step up within the organization.

He concluded his 3 years as Head of ventures — in charge of startup closings and investor community growth.
Through his experience at Inovexus, he gained valuable insights by working alongside more than +100 mentors — such as Christophe Louvion, Christophe Aulnette, Julie Campistron, Emanuelle Brizay — close to 500 business angels, and engaging with over 1000 B2B entrepreneurs a year. As he learned from the successful founders’ — now turned investors and mentors — testimonials he gained the knowledge about how to best start his entrepreneurial journey and gained key insights in the B2B SaaS challenges. Through his experience at Inovexus he was introduced to the difficulties of growing a mid-market business without market viability and prediction, which led him to Leadbay.

Fresh energy to the old models

Everybody is asking, “how did Ludo, 26, achieve to partner with one of the most wanted technical founder in Paris to launch Leadbay: Milan Stankovic, Phd. 40. 2 startups, 1 sold. 60+ publications leveraging information-poor data for AI ?”

It happened on March 24th, 2023, at 5 pm at The Hoxton, Paris — the well-known VC address. After 2 beers for Ludo and 1 expresso martini for Milan, they started to talk about their vibrant projects. Ludo had recently announced his departure to the Inovexus Team and was quite advanced in his market research work. Through his experience at Inovexus and their focus on B2B SaaS, Ludo gained intimate knowledge about the current problems in the industry and he launched a newsletter within a community of 200 B2B sales representatives. He had an in-depth understanding of the market, including the workflows, needs, and pain points of B2B sales reps. Through his work at Inovexus, he was also well-acquainted with all the key players in the market, along with their main strengths and weaknesses. Above all, he has the network as for 3 years, the Inovexus team that he was a part of was meeting 1,000 B2B SaaS founders yearly.

Milan came with 4 startup ideas and left home with 1: Leadbay.
The following morning at 7 am, Ludo received a long feedback email in his mailbox, which included an attached draft of the pitch deck. On the team slide. There were 2 faces: Milan Stankovic, PhD, and Ludo Granger.
Later, Ludo would understand and experience why Milan chose him.

Pay-it forward to traditional B2B businesses in the region and beyond

Part of Ludo’s heritage comes from the Loire Valley; he was born on a farm 30 minutes from Blois, in Loir-et-Cher. Close by, he grew up among many entrepreneurs in the region who had been developing their businesses for years, most of the time, limited by their workforce and encountering a glass ceiling with non-scalable tasks.

Ludo believes that you won’t need to be in Paris anymore to scale a business, and he also believes that high budgets and skills will no longer be necessary to use technologies. This AI wave coming to the market will make highly efficient sales software accessible to the mid-market, even for the non-tech sector. It will be driven by a whole new generation of B2B salespeople entering the market, bringing new market practices for accessing customers and making sales. Currently, only 20% of the mid-market is equipped with a CRM.

It is with this market understanding, consideration, and common sense that Ludo is building Leadbay with a community of 200 B2B Sales Reps from day one, from the ground, and for the many.

This is the reason why Leadbay, headquartered in Centre-Val de Loire, is supported by many public and private players.

Inovexus founders’ story: Ludovic Granger, founder & CEO of Leadbay, and ex-Inovexus was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Statistically, 9 out of 10 startups fail, including 2 of them in the first year of operations. In order to support talented founders to get access to global smart-money funding, Inovexus has launched a brand new cohort-based acceleration program.

At Inovexus, we believe that the world of tech is inherently global. Getting “global ready” in the early stages means founders will face challenges that will help them build specific milestones that are essential to their growth. By having the right KPIs in place from day 1, founders will have incredible fundraising opportunities with top investors and set their company on a fast-growing path.

Our mission at Inovexus is to empower early-stage startups to boost their capacity to prepare and organize the complete early-stage funding stages to become a global tech company. We’re here to support our founders every step of the way and help them achieve their goals!

A unique program to unlock global growth

The Inovexus Acceleration Program empowers early-stage founders to access global capital and secure funding in current and upcoming rounds. The program is bolstered by the Inovexus Community, a global network of mentors and investors with diverse backgrounds and experiences from all around the world. Together, they form a powerful ecosystem that helps startups unlock their full potential and achieve global success.

Over the course of 3 months, the Cohort I founders will:

👨‍🏫be matched with unique cross-border mentors to address their key strategic issues. From refining their go-to-market strategy to perfecting their pitch deck, equity story, business model, product roadmap, and team structure, they will receive unparalleled guidance and support from some of the brightest minds in the startup, tech and VC ecosystem worldwide.

🎙️have access to bi-monthly workshops run by outstanding facilitators to dive deep into the topics that matter most to their success such as:

• Christophe Jouin, Head of Partner Experience at Netflix in California, and Mentor & Investor at Inovexus
• Elodie De Marchi, ex-Vice President — Private Bank Investment of Silicon Valley Bank, and Mentor at Inovexus
• Vincent Pineau, Partner at Axeleo

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 receive targeted training and introductions to our powerful cross-border community of 55+ mentors, 300 global Business Angels and network of 200 VC co-investors, including Emmanuelle Brizay, Baptiste Hamel, Christophe Aulnette, Gwenael Moy, Yves Weisselberger.

🤝 have the opportunity to network with their peers. Each of the 7 founders in this Cohort I share synergies: at an early stage, they are all based in Europe and focus on B2B tech solutions.

🎤 pitch their company to the Inovexus network of investors from the US, Europe and Asia during an online Demo-day event.

The Inovexus Acceleration Program is managed by Inovexus’ Head of Programs Patricia Russ, supported by the Ventures team. Patricia joins Inovexus from Google in Berlin and brings 10+ years of international experience with her.

Cohort I 2023: unveiling our visionary founders

For the Cohort I 2023, we selected 8 passionate founders who founded innovative ventures with global ambitions.

So, who are we working with for the next 3 months? Let us introduce you to the 8 startups we have selected!

David — CEO of Deep Planet, London 🇬🇧

Deep Planet combines computer vision and satellite data to improve yields and climate impact of the global farming industry, starting with the global wine industry to improve harvest timing & crop management.

Wilfried Bapte — CEO of Sesame, Paris 🇫🇷

Sesame is a digital payment solution for employee benefit leveraging open banking. It offers smooth operations, a better cash management and it maximizes employee satisfaction for companies.

Claire Guillet — CEO of Karyon, Paris 🇫🇷

KaryonFood is a SaaS platform dedicated to Food SMEs looking to increase their market shares, enabling them to have 360° visibility on product performance by merging data from the value chain.

Laurent Cuzin — CEO of Quartz, Paris 🇫🇷

Quartz is transforming risk management for companies, building the modern insurance platform by leveraging businesses data directly collected by the platform in real time.

Christophe Tardivat — CEO of B4X, Dublin 🇮🇪

B4X is the first fintech app & challenger bank targeting 20 million expatriates worldwide.

Ilan Nabeth — CEO of PlayMakers, Paris 🇫🇷

PlayMakers helps game development teams to capture, audit, reward and implement user-generated content on any games. Simply put, PlayMakers helps studios to drive higher engagement on their games, and therefore revenues.

Gerrit Schumann — CEO of mogenius, Berlin 🇩🇪

mogenius provides a solution that automates DevOps and reduces deployment times for developers who want to scale in Kubernetes in any cloud and lack the resources to automate their workflows.

Emilio Matthaei — CEO of countX, Berlin 🇩🇪

countX is a technology provider for VAT issues in e-commerce. Through a blend of cutting-edge technology and quality control, countX sets new standards in the automation of cross-border VAT registration and reporting.

To see the progress of Cohort I, sign up to our Newsletter. For early-bird applications for our next Cohort, please fill out this form and we will be in touch.

We hope our new founders are as excited as us to kick off the program 🌟
Patricia, Mathilde & The Inovexus Team

Welcome to Cohort I: How Inovexus Acceleration Program Will Boost 8 Founders to Go Global from Day… was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Did you know that 92% of business owners believe that their website is the most powerful component of their digital marketing strategy?

This means that the top priority for any startup is to get their digital presence live ASAP. They need the development stage to be efficient, simple, and agile.

That’s when DevTools take the stage.

So what are DevTools?

DevTools is a suite of developer tools commonly used by web and app developers to build, collaborate, and deploy digital products.

These tools streamline the developer experience, improve software speed and quality, fixes bugs, and promote cooperation among the tech team. They also ensure app scalability and can even give a base code structure to work from, so you don’t have to start from 0.

Christophe Jouin, Head of Engineering at Netflix, perfectly sums up why this suite of tools is critical to any new business. He told me:

“[DevTools] enable a high development velocity. They give startups similar capabilities that larger companies have.”

And if an Inovexus mentor such as C. Jouin says so, there’s no doubt that your startup will increase profitability and relevance with DevTools.

So let’s deep dive into the different tool categories to give you the gist of what they represent and enable.

1. Enable Developers to Launch Your Product Quickly

Every company wants their website or app done yesterday. So here are a few top ways DevTools will get your minimally viable product (MVP) online fast.

Build a product with low to no code

Low-code development platforms are the most used DevTools when launching an MVP with a tight turnaround. In other words, these tools give you an existing base code to work with instead of creating all your code from scratch.

Low-code development platforms revolutionize business access to tech. They enable quick setup, which lower costs — perfect for companies just starting out.

Retool (🇺🇸) — gives access to libraries of blocks and templates, so you don’t have to write original code for common functions.

Weweb (🇫🇷) — helps create interactive platforms while connecting to all relevant external tools and data sets with no hard coding required.

Webflow (🇺🇸) — enables to build business websites faster without coding.

Speed Up with Open-source software

Open-Source software (OOS) is software code that the original developer has published for use and modification by other developers. It allows coders to have a high-functioning product right away, focusing their time on customizing the code for your company’s specific needs.

GitHub (🇺🇸) — easily the most widely used software development platform.

Atom (🇺🇸) — provides a vast list of third-party integrations with direct customization and collaboration on-site.

Codesandbox (🇳🇱) — enables collaboration, coding, and prototyping online.

2. Optimize Your Product Features

Let’s cover some tools that manage and improve your user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) development.

Incorporate Third-party APIs

API (Application Programming Interface) is the foundation of any app or website. An API is what translates your request to the server and then formats the server’s response in a sensible way. Third-party API integrations streamline your app’s functionality and cut down required code. Instead of creating your own from scratch, you can ping someone else’s functioning code to help translate customer queries and server responses.

Kaggle (🇺🇸) — offers a fully customizable Jupyter Notebooks (web-based interactive computing platform) environment.

Superface (🇨🇿) — an all-in-one tool that integrates all APIs you need on your website.

Tyk (🇬🇧) — connects all systems and services within minutes for API-led businesses.

Hugging face (🇫🇷) — Github for machine learning.

Facilitate Collaboration and Project Management

Seamless collaboration is critical to enable smooth product development. You can use DevTools for project management, messaging, uncovering bugs, and more!

Jira (🇦🇺) — powered by Atlassian, facilitates issues monitoring and project tracking for fast bug resolution and patching.

Figma (🇺🇸) — helps project visualization, designing, and collaboration.

Wrike (🇺🇸) — empowers dev teams with collaborative tools for project management.

3. Maintain and Secure the Launch of Your Product

Finally, DevTools help check your product for bugs and failures faster and more consistently. These tools perform tests and run iterations to sift through your code — then alert you if (or when) there’s a problem.

Detect and Report Product Bugs

Bugs are unavoidable if you have a website or app — there’s no getting around it. Still, customer satisfaction depends on early bug detection and speedy fixes.

LogRocket (🇺🇸) — helps detect and track bugs thanks to its debugging tool.

Dashbird (🇪🇪) — tracks real-time errors for any AWS Lambda app.

Inspect (🇺🇸) — enables inspecting and debugging any website on iOS.

Discover and Report Security Weakness

Data leaks continue to make global headlines. If your app doesn’t seem safe, you’ll quickly lose touch with your customer base. So instead, use DevTools to prove to your customers that they can trust you and your website or app.

Bearer (🇫🇷) — helps security teams map data flows and mitigate data security risks across the software development lifecycle.

You get the point. DevTools are growing fast — and taking over.

The US got a head start with DevTools, but European companies are quickly catching up — the metrics prove it.

In 2021 alone, American venture capitalists contributed the vast majority of the B37$ invested into developer startups worldwide. YC on its own started investing in DevTools in 2009, with a booming interest in 2018, investing in 15 DevTool companies per batch every year among famous leader Gitlab.

The bottom line is clear: DevTools are paramount in tech and will continue to grow its presence.

Focus on 2 of Inovexus startups Randevu & Mogenius

Randevu 🇩🇪 — the marketplace DevTool of tomorrow

What is it? Basically, the only marketplace infrastructure that supports the full-lifecycle of a marketplace business with a Pay as You grow Saas model.

What does it mean? It means you start your marketplace in your garage with your college best mate using randevu. He’s the dev of the band, focusing on developing your product on randevu. And 2 years later, with your 3 devs, growth KPIs, export all over Europe, you still use randevu. Finally, when you’re just as close to close a Series C, make huge profit, randevu remains in the pipe.

Cherry on the top: the pricing and product scale at the same speed as the marketplace.

Mogenius 🇩🇪 — code to cloud, fast and easily

What is it? A code to cloud platform that automates cloud infrastructure and DevOps processes from start to a scalable production site.

Why is it cool? It enables dev teams to easily build cloud-native applications and fully focus on developing features for their users, not on infrastructure and deployments. Ideal for anyone who wants to develop awesome digital products and scale them fast and cost-efficiently.

To read more

• 101 Best Developer Tools Startups Worth A Follow In 2021
• Introducing the next generation of dev tools
• Building for 26.9Mn developers (Go-to-market for Devtools)
• The Future of Developer Tools, and the Tech Companies out to Improve it

DevTools — When developers become the new cool kids around the block was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Each of my 5 previous articles was an answer to the question “What’s the California DNA in startups?”. This last one is an answer to “how did I get these answers?” 😉 During my experience, I received several messages from people wondering how to get connections in SF, so here are my learnings and tips.

I’ll focus on 2 main parts, based on my personal experience:

• Places to go to get the first connections
• My learnings on managing interactions with people
• My learnings on networking in California

I will mainly focus on San Francisco since it is, to me, the best place to go when you’re looking for connections and meetings in the startup and tech field (and LA for entertainment, NYC for finance). SF is considered as a small and interconnected area, where everyone knows each other. A core principle in the Bay Area is sharing your knowledge, and people are happy to help you!

Let’s go for 22 bullet points that go with 22 tips 😊

1. My tips to make the first connections

The most difficult part is the beginning: make your first connections. Then it gets really easier because you’re introduced. This was the question I was asked the most. To me, there are 7 ways:

1. Use Eventbrite and Meetup to attend networking events

Networking events are the most efficient way to immerse yourself in the ecosystem and meet people when you start from scratch. To find these events, Eventbrite and Meetup are apps that gather most of the entrepreneurship and tech events (free and paid ones). It’s especially useful for in-person networking events. I went to Pitch Night events, drinks, lunch, or breakfast and I met Tesla’s employees, startup founders, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, from all booming tech sectors. Online pitching or talk sessions can also be useful to get contacts.
👉 I made 40% of my meetings thanks to networking events found on these platforms.

2. Use Linkedin (and filters)!

Linkedin is a huge waste of time (because of a lack of answers) but is useful when you start from scratch, especially when you’re not in the US yet. Be familiar with filters (or with Sales Navigator) to find interesting profiles. I recommend sending an invite and a message explaining precisely what you expect from meeting someone rather than who you are.
👉 I made 5% of my meetings thanks to Linkedin.

3. Go to co-working spaces

Personally, I worked in WeWork co-working spaces, both in SF and LA. In addition to having the opportunity to work in beautiful spaces with a view (picture below), co-working spaces are full of entrepreneurs and startuppers. Lunch is a great opportunity to talk to them. WeWork also organizes breakfasts or food tests that get everyone off their computers for 2 minutes: take the opportunity to talk to people!

Other co-working spaces in SF are Hivery, Foundry Square III, Embarcadero Center, Parisoma.

👉 I made 5% of my meetings thanks to co-working spaces (it wasn’t my priority).

4. Be visible on social media to get inbound

Sharing your experience on social media can catch people’s attention. I had several interesting meetings thanks to people who contacted me. I posted the key takeaways of my meetings on my Linkedin profile and shared my Medium articles on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

👉 I made 10% of my meetings thanks to people who reached out to me.

5. Go to Big Tech Events

Tech events are opportunities to get information on new trends, to meet entrepreneurs, and to attend VC tips sessions (and talk to investors). It’s not as easy to meet people in this kind of big event as in networking events. Most of the people there aren’t from the US.

The most famous one for startups is probably the CES in Las Vegas. Another option is going to Demo-Days organized by accelerators like YC, Plug & Play, etc (which I didn’t because of Covid).

👉 I made 10% of my meetings participating in the MWC in LA for hardware and the IoT World at Santa Clara.

6. Ask for introductions:

Introductions are not a way to make first contacts (because it requires you already know people), but they are certainly the way to speed up meetings. Californians are really likely to introduce you. That’s the “Well, how can I help you?”, usually at the end of a conversation. I have 3 recommendations regarding introductions:

• Have a clear idea of the profile you’d like to be introduced to:
  What kind of profiles (experience, sector, expertise, current business…) are you looking for and what do you expect from him/her (specific issues you want to address)? These 2 elements are key to be introduced. Personally, I was sometimes too large in explaining who I was looking for… which resulted in no introduction because your contact doesn’t think of anyone in particular.
• Send a mail directly after your meeting:
  After a meeting, send a “thank you” where you write again who you are and what you’re looking for. It will make the job easier for people who can forward your mail to their network instead of writing it themselves. Again, specify the type of profiles you would like to meet. The longer you wait to follow up, the more likely you are to get… no answer 🙂 reactivity is valued!
• Dare to ask for introductions by yourself!
  Introductions are the way it works, so go for it! I was personally shy about doing it because I thought it was “opportunistic”. It’s not in the Bay Area. If your contacts don’t offer to introduce you to their network, ask them. I recommend doing this verbally at the end of the meeting, rather than in an email you send out later like “By the way, I was wondering if you could introduce me…”.

👉 I made 30% of my meetings thanks to introductions.

7. Other places

I have not been to these places but they have been recommended to me. In case of hopelessness, it might be useful:

• There are the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center, Chambers of Commerce (of France, Spain), the German Business Association etc in which you can go to ask for information or attend events.
• The General Assembly and Cupa Cafe are apparently cafes where entrepreneurs are used to going.
• For French people, there are events organized by FrenchFounders or L’Apéro.

2. My learnings on managing an interaction

As I moved from one appointment to another, I learned about managing an interaction. So here is my list of takeaways:

8. Always tell people what you expect from them, before anything:

Whether it’s by sending a message on Linkedin or over coffee, people need to know within the first 2 minutes the purpose of the meeting and why it’s valuable to you. This will help your interlocutors to formulate their speech in a way that is useful for you! That’s something I didn’t at the beginning and I realized it was destabilizing.

9. Be as precise as possible:
What are the 3 questions you must ask, or the 2/3 key things you want to have insights on? Having this in mind helped me steer the interview in a specific direction and get clear outputs! By the way, these 3 questions were all I prepared before the interviews, along with a quick check of the Linkedin profile (for entrepreneurs) and Pitchbook/website for VCs. Having a long, structured list of questions (as I did at the beginning) is useless. Go deeper into a topic based on your enthusiasm!

10. Go to events alone!
Many people go to tech events alone and that’s the best way to meet people. In my first article on networking, I mentioned how easily people come to you to talk.

11. Take a notebook for in-person meetings!
I missed too many names or data because I didn’t have written support at the beginning. I think a computer puts too much distance and makes the conversation too formal.

12. Have a CRM on Notion to manage the relations:
I had a “Networking management” table on Notion on which I qualified each relationship with the channel we used to talk (mails/WhatsApp/LinkedIn/Instagram), how resourceful they were, how likely they were to answer me again, and the next steps.

13. Share news with your network:
Share interesting articles, events, and books with the people you meet. This is how it works: share as much information as possible. Also, make introductions between people you meet who have common interests. This will help you maintain your network.

3. My learnings on networking in California:

Here are my tips for adapting to the Silicon Valley way of networking, since I also learned about cultural gaps in California:

14. Be sharp sharp sharp!
Californians don’t have the time and being straight to the point is a rule. Forget about the usual 5 minutes presentation about your prior experiences at the beginning of a meeting. You have probably both checked Linkedin. All you need is a personal tagline: a sentence in which you explain who you are, why you are in the US, and what you are looking for! 🇺🇸

15. Talk to everyone! EVERYONE.
I met people through conversations on a bus, in a bar, at a barbecue. By the way, even going to events on Couchsurfing with the goal of making friends will lead you to meet tech people since, in San Francisco, everyone (almost everyone) works in tech and startups!

16. Be on time.
Californians are on time! I never waited for a call or at a cafe. ⏰

17. Send a “thank you” mail quickly after a meeting.
It will show you’re reactive and be appreciated. It’s useful to remind the next steps.

18. Ask stupid questions: Californians don’t judge!
You don’t need to pretend you know perfectly the US VC and startup ecosystem (as I wanted to do) to meet people! Since I was transparent about the fact that I was new to VC and California, I was able to ask any question I wanted, even “stupid” or “basic” questions. This is how I got the most relevant information.

19. Offer your help!!!
The first tip I was given by Marie Frochen and Donna Bletzinger in my first week in SF was: at the end of a conversation, always ask how you can help your contact. It must be a win-win collaboration. It turned out that I was more useful to American people than I thought because I had knowledge about the French and European ecosystems. I was also useful to make introductions between people I met.

20. Tee-shirt is the rule, not suits! 🌴

21. Be nice 🙂
The mood is very relaxed in SF and LA. Positivity and optimism are valued and people are smiling and friendly (in LA, you call the waiter “bro”). If you’re looking for connections rather than a short-lived meeting, I think the priority is building a fit.
Personally, I always tried to create conversations rather than interviews (meaning giving your opinion too) and personalize them, asking about their personal input on different topics. By the way, I think engaging in a critical thinking conversation makes people tell you much more than if you ask for descriptive things you could find answers on the internet.

22. And again… ask for introductions, as mentioned in my first part 😉

The end

Building a network from scratch in California was much easier than I expected, especially in San Francisco. I’m convinced that the rule is simply to be open-minded all day long and opportunities come to you! I was surprised by the way people are willing to help you and share with you everything they have learned. I met some people I’m sure to keep in touch with in the coming months!

This experience was definitely really valuable for me, I will continue to be inspired by the way Californians are proactive, optimistic, and “go for it”. I loved SF and hope to go back next year :) In the meantime, all my articles are available here.

Thanks for following me during my adventure,

Mathilde

22 Tips To Build A Network In California From Scratch was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Of course, getting it right the first time is the primary goal. But all entrepreneurs make mistakes and California is inspiring on 2 main aspects regarding failure which I’ll focus on here:

• The motto of “Fail & learn”: failure perceived as a positive experience
• The concept of Pivot: failure as a driver for action

By the way, this article follows my 3rd one about “Momentum” when entering a market. When you miss the momentum, or miss the wave, what to do? Well, learn and… pivot!

1. “Fail and learn”: a storytelling

Failure in California startups is valued and encouraged. It is a positive experience: if you made a mistake once, you won’t do it again. All the mistakes you’ve made as an entrepreneur are areas you handle better today. In Silicon Valley, everybody considers that the more you failed, the more experienced you are…and the more likely you are to win: to build a unicorn! It explains why previous entrepreneurship experiences, even the ones you screwed up, are valued when raising funds and are a strong positive signal for investors.

Sophie Durey, Venture Program Manager at Tamar Capital, shares that in France, trying something and not succeeding is sometimes considered a red flag on a resume and can lead to mistrust. Whereas here, experiencing failures is like a medal for entrepreneurs. On the contrary, never having failed means that you’re probably afraid to take risks. At a larger scale, “Fail & learn” explains why VCs and Big Techs do not hesitate to burn a lot of cash and invest massively in projects that have a lot of potential, according to Boris Frochen, both French and American and co-founder at Ramp-Up Lab. Based on this mindset:

Failure becomes a success.

That’s how failures get to be part of the storytelling. 95% of the entrepreneurs I met here told me their career mentioning their biggest failure with pride. They emphasize what these experiences have taught them. In the end, I accumulated a lot of business cases that I want to share here because they might be useful for you (I’ll personally remember them when launching my project, which I’ll do soon since I’m now imbued with the “go-for-it” mindset 😉)

So here are 3 business cases that led to an unexpected slowdown in startup activity (which could be considered as a failure) and then to learnings:

The first one is Alex Deve’s. He learned from a misidentified target when he founded WhiteTruffle in 2010, a platform aiming at matching Tech talents with startups. WhiteTruffle’s team identified hiring managers as the target and developed a new app for them. The platform was efficient in matching. Problem? Onboarding of the app: the hiring managers weren’t the users of the platform and increased churn. What did he learn? The lack of information from the ground led to a wrong strategy. The target should have been recruiters. Alex considers they executed based on their feelings and were not sufficiently informed about their target’s behavior.

Niv, who I met in my first days in Los Angeles, learned from a wrong focus regarding consumers’ needs. When covid exploded, the issue he identified for his B2C store inventory checking platform was fast home delivery of goods. The team focused on improving the delivery service. Problem? After the pandemic, people wanted to go back to the store. The team wasn’t on the right track and lost consumers. The focus should have been on improving the experience to go to stores. What did he learn? Differentiate short-term demand (due to conjectural situations like Covid) and structural evolution, and always take a step back to anticipate consumer behavior’s evolution.

Jacques-Alexandre Gerber learned from relations with strategic competitors with Intalio. Founded in 2000, his BPM software went from 0 to $3M annually in 3 years. They wanted to expand in Europe. They had engaged with some of their major competitors such as IBM. Problem? Microsoft worked with IBM to enter the market with a competing offering. Intalio was on the sideline. Jacques-Alexandre decided to get back to the US and change the business model, offering a free product and subscription-based features and services. What did he learn? Failing to work with such a big competitor as Microsoft had been a mistake. They should have partnered with them earlier, which they didn’t because Intalio was much more advance in terms of technology.

👉 Learning from failures is encouraged because that’s what leads entrepreneurs to pivot, a key concept for those in Silicon Valley.

2. “Fail and learn” to PIVOT!

Sometimes, projects are stopped because of one failure. Learning from it is the first step, reacting accordingly is the second. For Jacques-Alexandre Gerber, “pivot” is a magic word in Silicon Valley: “entrepreneurs don’t fail, they pivot”! In California, you’re never done. Mistakes and pivots are 100% part of the entrepreneurial journey. But… what does pivot mean? Changing dramatically your way of reaching your objective — your vision.

The idea of pivot reveals 2 main features of California entrepreneurs.

• First: reactivity. “Action-reaction!” It didn’t work? Well, reposition quickly, change the business model, or the marketing strategy. Or build a new startup. But do something to adapt to new events, find a new opportunity!
• Second, ambition and determination: “Start, again and again, until it works.” It’s part of the work culture I talked about in my last article. To Boris Frochen, it’s the mentality of the gold miners, try 80 times before it works. And it will work! That’s the American dream: never give up!

This notion of pivot is part of the big success stories we all know:

• Netflix, for its market trends adaptation, as Doug Erickson, Executive Director at Santa Cruz Works, mentioned to me. Initially, the core business was a DVD delivery service to customers’ mailboxes. But as demands for digital content grew, Netflix not only began offering access to movies and TV shows online in 2007 but also began producing its own original programming in 2013.
• Airbnb (again), for taking advantage of a huge market opportunity, as Donna Bletzinger, ​​CEO of Dyer Stephenson, told me about. In its early days, Airbnb’s goal was to allow travelers attending conferences in San Francisco to stay in private homes, using air mattresses, when hotels were full. It changed dramatically when they noticed that travelers and tourists were not looking for hotels, but for local and cheap accommodation. They then made a huge pivot in their GTM strategy and we know the rest of the story!

The Silicon Valley Playbook also includes major pivots of Slack, Twitter, Paypal, Instagram, or even Youtube, initially a video platform for singles to date each other. This illustrates that pivoting sometimes requires making a shift that no longer fits with the startup’s vision. In this regard, Tximista Lizarazu, CEO of Fraiche, told me: “A dead company has no impact”. Pivots are a way to keep a startup alive and make a future impact.

Dealing with pivot leads me to re-emphasize how central collaboration is in this California ecosystem. To know how to run a startup through pivots, Silicon Valley is considered the best place to be. Not only because all CEOs, Executives, VCs have managed and solved many different strategic business cases to make startups thrive but also because the rule is :

Share your experience with everyone!

In the Bay Area, the principle is that success stories are 90% work and only 10% ideas, according to Boris Frochen. There’s nothing to keep for yourself and Silicon Valley is not afraid to share: share codes, projects, working ways, and share failures and pivots. That’s one of the reasons why CEOs value accelerators and Silicon Valley VCs, not only for the investment they get but also for the experience they will gain through mentoring and networking (that’s smart money)! “Give back. Pay it forward” is the principle: you’ll benefit from others’ experiences and then, it will be your turn to share your entrepreneurship and tech learnings! That’s exactly on that principle that Inovexus is founded: our cross-border experienced mentors are willing to give back the California mindset: ambition, make things done, risk lovers, fail or succeed fast, never give up & pay-it-forward.

In brief: F̶a̶i̶l̶ Pivot and learn!

The same experience can result in a failure or in a pivot: it depends on the way of looking at it and California is an inspiring place for that. Experiencing the “Fail & learn” motto and sharing it with the ecosystem is how Silicon Valley works and succeeds… to no longer be “Fail & learn” but “Pivot and learn” 😉

In the end, this mindset creates a virtuous ecosystem, attracting like-minded people to Silicon Valley, as Sophie Durey highlighted it.

In my next and last article, I’ll apply the famous motto: “Give back. Pay it forward”, giving my tips and feedback on my experience in San Francisco and Los Angeles, meeting entrepreneurs and investors.

See you next week 🇺🇸

Mathilde

From Failure To Success: 2 Concepts From Silicon Valley #5 was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The culture and societal framework in which startups operate strongly contribute to their success.

So far, to answer “What’s the California DNA in startups?”, I’ve focused on the best practices of entrepreneurs. Beyond practices, startups are part of social ecosystems that, through their culture, history, and people’s mindset favor — or not — the emergence of unicorns!

After being in SF and LA for several months, I’d say that being based in California helps startups thrive. Based on my interviews with entrepreneurs and investors and my personal observations, I’ve identified 3 structural factors:

1. Society is individualism-based
2. The attitude is tech-focused
3. The mindset is work-driven

As Randall Fahey told me, the last thing to disrupt to make entrepreneurship a global ecosystem is culture. Is the Californian one the most appropriate for startups?

1. Society: individualism-based

When I met Carlos Diaz, who founded several startups both in France and in San Francisco, he told me “freedom was the most important value in the US, when in France, it’s freedom and equality”. This changes how society and economy are structured: it leads to more debates in France, to more unicorns in the US. 🤪

What emerges from freedom is individualism. It means doing what you want but also being fully responsible for yourself. Only individually will you rise higher, by yourself. People collectively focusing on independence build a system that pushes entrepreneurship. A system that makes people take risks and leads to innovation. The way it applies in the economy is liberalism — what we all know about the US. For Americans, liberalism rewards entrepreneurship when the European system doesn’t:

• Andrew Van Valer’s vision: “You won’t be rewarded for being a good entrepreneur in Europe, but you will for being a good employee. The working purpose is to get a position and make sure you’re safe and secure.“

• Patrick Consorti’s vision: “In Europe, if you win, you must redistribute your winnings to others. Here, you win, you’re freer to use your money as you want.”

Since welfare benefits are lower in the US:

What you don’t get, you build it by yourself.

For Americans, a basic principle in Europe is individual responsibility for the common good. The notion of the “nation-state” in France contributes to the feeling that taking care of the people as a whole is a priority, which exists less in the US. This partly explains why our economy is more controlled and regulated by public authorities.

To make the US system work, everyone has to be competitive… and to live in the “now”, as Californians do.

Being short-term-focused is opportune for startups for 2 reasons:

• First, because “If you don’t do it, your competitor will’’. The need to move quickly leads to business relationships that aren’t personalized or exclusive. For Angelika Blendstrup, the US is task-oriented. Relationships last as long as the task does: when it’s done, the relationship is over. Making it last in time isn’t the rule.
• Secondly, what I’d call a “pay-culture” is valuable for startups. In California, people are willing to pay whereas, in Europe, money is sacred and sometimes used as a reserve for the future. Here, it’s a way of getting what you want right now. Big corp will easily give you a big budget (x10 compared to Europe) to develop new products. On the other hand, price isn’t the major issue. Startups can fix it higher. It’s the “Charge for it. Charge for everything” as I once heard!

The individualism principle, through pushing people to go fast, moving forward, and being independent more than secured, helps to raise unicorns. But to build decacorns, tech has a role to play!

2. An attitude: tech-focused

Californians, seeking independence more than security, have a particular attitude towards technology: they are excited. They don’t mystify it.

The autonomous cars topic is a good illustration. In France, its democratization left me perplexed because I was wary of the potential drifts of this new technology. In SF, first, many of my conversations are about it. Second, they are heated because people are excited about the revolution that could happen in transportation, both at the personal and corporate levels. San Franciscans trust more data and computers than I do: their argument is that humans cause more accidents than algorithms do. Convincing, after all.

More generally, Californians are excited about changes. 2 main explanations:

• History: Europe is based on centuries of old buildings, laws, fights that we are reluctant to destroy or move now. American History, being more recent, is more likely to be willing to start from scratch and rebuild, no matter how much time was invested, as Sophie Durey pointed out. In business, it’s easier to jump into new opportunities.

• Education: the high exposure to technology of universities’ students, is an explanation Jeremy High gave me. Stanford, located at the heart of Silicon Valley, and Berkeley offer many innovative programs. These universities and tech companies collaborate: my friend Ruby Peven in SF changed the direction of studies in her former College while working at Intuit, an American unicorn. Knowledge is transferred immediately, from senior to junior level. Here, people don’t consider creativity as high in the French educational system.

This change-friendly attitude has 2 main assets for startups:

1. A faster decision-making process. Looking forward, Californians don’t go into the “what if?” and don’t analyze all the potential consequences of a decision before making it. In Europe, it’s more perfection-oriented: make sure a product will work before making it, which takes time!
2. A democratized and early technology adoption: in California, people of all ages and social classes use tech all day long through connectivity and apps. A good illustration of how tech is at the core of their daily life is how SF streets are full of B2B SaaS ads. The message is clear: everyone is familiar with startup jargon! In the Parisian subway, the ads are more diverse: they are neither full tech nor B2B-oriented.

Of course, this particularly applies to San Francisco: a small, interconnected, high-tech area. Andrew Van Valer told me about a myth in the Bay Area that says that “If you were a waiter, you would end up getting rich just by listening to the conversations at the table because you would know where to invest”.

Well, this technology, in addition to contributing to startup emergence, also makes people save time… to work!

3. A mindset: work-driven

When I once asked a woman in a startup why Californians were successful in business, she answered: “We work a lot!”. This probably meant that we Europeans were working less: I was a bit upset. So I investigated and understood that work, here, is at the heart of Californians’ lives and occupies their minds 24 hours a day.

• First, they work in startups from 7:30 am to 6 pm without a break. They have lunch on their desk. No “friend’s” coffee. And when they’re done, some startuppers start to work on side-projects. Working is the lifestyle!
• Secondly, apps are familiar to everyone and are used for all the daily tasks that are considered time-wasting. Thus, using Lyft or Uber bikes is the most efficient way to get around, the same thing with delivery apps for lunch, Amazon Delivery for shopping, and Meetup for going out. The massive use of tech makes Californians save a lot of time! This lifestyle is growing across borders, as a large part of today’s successful B2C businesses are those that save people time.
• Talking about the work culture with Andrew Van Valer, he told me: “Enjoying life is a European thing”! He didn’t mean the US lifestyle is boring but that taking time for meals, going to bars after work with friends until midnight isn’t the culture (in LA, it’s hard to find a bar open after 9 pm). As I heard many times, if they have 10 vacation days per year, they’ll take 6!

What’s important here is changing the world and leaving your mark. Sacrifice a lot today to build a better tomorrow: as the US did for 100 years between the 19th and 20th centuries to build their empire, as Boris Frochen explained to me. And here I come to mention the American Dream (I waited for my 4th article, I think it’s allowed 😉).

Before coming here, the idea of “Go to the US, you’ll make money” was utopian to me. Actually, I was wrong with my understanding of it. One of my friends in LA, born in a middle-class family in Boston, has always been told that if she worked, everything would be fine. She had never been pessimistic about her future. It’s an idea shared by the majority: if you work hard, you’ll succeed. The American Dream leads to a strong empowerment desire. How? By being productive. As Mélanie Girod highlighted:

“Productivity is a social currency.”

Being active, trying, and doing things is valued and is a social rule. It doesn’t necessarily aim at making money: my host in Venice was 65 and was creating surf suits. My friends in San Francisco were either passionate about drawing or photography and invested the majority of their free time in it. It wasn’t an occasional hobby.

Does this mean Europe cannot compete?

The more time I spend here, acculturating, the more I understand why California startups are known as being inspiring and successful. There are cultural drivers in California that push entrepreneurship, which makes the emergence of startups almost natural! Society as a whole supports this technological ecosystem, and for many people here, Europeans don’t do it as much yet.

Does this mean Europe cannot compete? If culture is the last thing to be disrupted in order to make entrepreneurship a global ecosystem, it’s a good thing for Inovexus: our very essence is the Californian culture. Our goal is precisely to infuse this mindset, well known by Philippe Roche, the Inovexus’ founder, to European entrepreneurs. To do this, we can count on our mentors who have all lived in California for about 20 years. That’s our cross-border DNA!

Americanizing,

Mathilde

Californian Startups Ecosystem: The Culture of Individualism, Tech And Work #4 was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We had the experience, and wanted to give back.

Launched in 2018 out of Paris & Los Angeles with a unique group of European entrepreneurs who thrived in the Silicon Valley, Inovexus is one-of-a-kind Cross-Border Acceleration Fund that plans to disrupt future of early stage funding.

Our ambition is to boost cross-border early stage funding, between American investors and European innovative startups. We believe that bringing American investors at an early stage helps build a specific mindset to become a global company. Our Acceleration Program is in fact custom designed to help startups become US investors ready.

Inovexus will be focusing on the European market as we see outstanding opportunities. Since our business model is self-sustainable, we would plan to expand in strategic locations such as South East Asia, Middle East, Japan and more.

We are proud to bring together 80% entrepreneurs as shareholders. Most shareholders are also actively supporting both startups’ mentoring programs and Inovexus development, and our acceleration fund team is composed of 15 members with international backgrounds.

Our goal is to build the largest portfolio of meaningful projects, attracting top investors from US, Europe and Asia.

Launching this fund, we bet on the proven methodology of prestigious acceleration funds and adapt it to European startups’ specific needs. Inovexus Ventures invests €150K in startups in SAFE mode, alongside top business angels, family offices and VCs from the US and Europe. We are a fully-fledged acceleration fund.

Inovexus Acceleration Fund is a unique way to get first access to the top deals in Europe. Out of 15,000 startups each year, we cherry-pick the top European.

Our program is tailor-made through an individual roadmap and supported by a community of dedicated high valued mentors. On top of that, we give our startups in portfolio the opportunity to benefit from a strong soft power ecosystem with a “pay it forward” mindset.

Moving forward, we will also invite all Inovexus LPs to benefit from the most attractive projects and participate through syndicates-follow funds.

0% Management fees policy. 100% of the LPs funds go to the startups. The complete model is supported by a €40k flat fee paid by the startup to finance the Acceleration program and enable the model to become highly scalable and sustainable.

Early-stage funding is embracing a new paradigm driven by acceleration programs.

Inovexus intervenes on all the factors of startup valuation, and thus contributes to optimize the chances of success during the most difficult stage of a startup.

Our acceleration programs are shaped from the US and designed by cross-border mentors.

• Californian DNA (risk/ambition/business first)
• Founder Centric (experienced mentors / mentoring program)
• Remote (best founders/adapted to the new world/ Future of work)
• Custom/ Adaptive / cross Culture

Joining the program is very straightforward for startups: we commit on day one on a €150k SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) that converts at the next round, and the startup is automatically admitted in the acceleration program.

Our vision is to build the future of early stage funding.

We support European founders to shape global companies. All entrepreneurs in Inovexus Acceleration Fund portfolio have a unique story, a meaningful project and tremendous ambition. We invest in European cutting-edge tech verticals with the prospect of rapid growth.

By 2025, the ambition is to invest in the top 200 early-stage companies in strategic locations and become one of the largest Acceleration fund in the world.

Our portfolio includes:

AngelList investment vehicle is a perfect match with our ambitions.

To raise the fund, we are taking advantage of AngelList’s Rolling Venture Funds, an investment vehicle that raises money through a quarterly subscription from interested investors versus all at once like with a traditional fund structure.

It means the fund is raising money continuously: at the end of each quarterly investment period, a new fund is created. This process repeats each quarter for as long as the rolling fund is active. The total amount of capital raised will grow over time as the fund is always raising.

The recurring nature of capital commitment allows us to:

• Raise a fraction of traditional fund and start investing in startups right away,
• Leverage portfolio rounds to accept new capital, anytime,
• Increase the fund size whilst never needing to raise another fund again.

Joining Inovexus Acceleration Fund has many benefits for investors:

• Access early-on to the best European dealflow (25 startups are handpicked each year out of over 15,000 companies)
• Flexibility to put forward more or less capital as aligned with their own investment goals through quarterly fundraising
• Portfolio diversity with companies from all over Europe
• No management fees
• Derisking investment through acceleration programs
• Investing through a US-based fund, increasing attractiveness for follow-up rounds with international investors

The fund has a one-year minimum subscription period with commitments starting at €25K annually. Limited Partners are business angels, family offices and early-stage VC funds.

To learn more about subscription to Inovexus Acceleration Fund, click here.

Inovexus launches the first cross-border acceleration fund for early-stage European companies 🇺🇸… was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who we are

Born in the US, Inovexus is a global acceleration fund targeting European early-stage companies. The ambition is to disrupt the early-stage funding market. More than an investment company, Inovexus is a global community of 300+ cross-border entrepreneurs-investors willing to give back to the most promising pre-seed startups in Europe with funding and mentoring.

With 3+9 months Acceleration Program, we enable a path to fast scalability through our international pool of 50+ top-tier mentors.

In the meantime, the Ventures arm comes to invest a €150k syndicating access to global angels' capital.

We believe in passionate entrepreneurs who want to change the world and therefore think global from day one.

We invest in pre-seed & seed tech B2B companies. Beyond that, we provide a tailor-made acceleration program for spirited entrepreneurs with global ambitions.

Our focus is on investing in European tech startups.

Since 2018, Inovexus has supported more than 40 startups to raise €90m+. In January 2022, Inovexus Ventures launched its funds based in the US and backed exclusively by global angel-entrepreneurs.

Our method

1. Handpicking founders

First, we identify cutting-edge verticals. To do so, we’re monitoring the most dynamic tech trends coming from US early stage investments, conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis. We identify trends that are booming in the US and invest in comparable verticals in Europe, taking into account European culture & market specificities.

Second, we organize a startup diagnostic. It’s all about the TEAM. We make sure our founders have a unique story, a meaningful project and think globally from day one. Our diasgnostic aims to assess strengths & weaknesses to define the acceleration roadmap with our mentors.

Third, we invest. For each investment opportunity, we select 3 complementary Inovexus General Partners (GPs) to compose the Investment Committee, combining sector experts’ insights, investors’ flair, and entrepreneurs’ experience. We chose the right time in the process to organize a successful investment for both founders & investors.

With our community. Every time we invest in a startup, we give the opportunity to our close community of entrepreneurs-investors to engage personally and financially in our portfolio’ startups. In the best startups, we invest €150k in pre-seed & seed. We like to co-invest alongside angels, VCs & Family Offices in +€800k pre-seed rounds.

2. Training leaders

Every athlete needs the best coach to become a world leader!

Beyond funding, the real engine to success is our fully customized Acceleration Program. Our programs are shaped based on the US mindset and designed by our cross-border mentors. In a nutshell, there are 4 key components:

• 🤝 Mentoring: mentoring roadmap with 3 complementary skilled lead mentors (1 business profile, 1 product engineer, 1 VC profile),
• 📚 Market intelligence data: all the data needed to take the right decisions
• 💬 Network: founders’ community, mentors’ community & VC co-investors community,
• 💸 Seed funding: fundraising playbook to get all the best practices to raise with the right investors at the right time.

The Acceleration Program is 100% remote and managed by weekly catchups with the startup manager. It lasts 3 and we are supporting founders until they reach their Seed funding with global investors.

Smart funding always goes with the combination of funding & mentoring. The Inovexus value prop is a service for founders, paid post-funding via mentoring fees.

Inovexus’ aim is not to help European entrepreneurs launch in the US. Inovexus supports European startups to scale the US way.

3. Co-building success stories with top global VCs

The acceleration objective is to make the startup Seed round VC fundable with the best global VCs. More than cash, an investment brings all the smart strategic expertise to help startups move to the next funding.

At Inovexus, we believe that Seed VC co-investments come with wise ecosystem influence.

Inovexus Ventures is powered by the community. The Inovexus community includes the ops team, founders, pre-seed investors, seed VC co-investors & startup Alumni.

All have the same US mindset: ambition, get things done, risk lovers, fail or succeed fast, never give up & pay-it-forward.

We are from the US, but also from London, Paris, Berlin, and Singapore. We are cross-border. We are working with the best of the ecosystem, no matter their location.

Wise ecosystem influence

It’s time to change perspective: think global from day 1.

How Inovexus supports early-stage founders in Europe 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Having the best idea of the century is great! — but useless if it does not fit the century’s momentum.
So far, I’ve met 50 entrepreneurs and investors between LA and SF to answer the question “What’s the Californian DNA in startups?”. I first dealt with the Mindset, then on Project-Holders teams. Now comes the startup strategy. This 3rd answer focus on “Momentum”, a concept Californian entrepreneurs are paying attention to. And the process of catching it is quite similar to… surfing (LA vibes!)

At Santa Monica, I observed a lot of surfers hesitating on how to catch the big wave. Since it seems to be a common entrepreneur’s hobby, I thought it would double my chances of getting your attention. 🙄
Let me explain: Entering a market is the same process as standing on a wave for surfers.

Let’s assume the entrepreneur already identified his market, as the surfer identified the beach spot. Now, there are 3 steps:

1. Identifying the right moment: the “Time-to-Market” for an entrepreneur. For the surfer, it’s identifying THE wave to catch, the wonderful opportunity. How? By looking around them 👀
2. Giving the impulse: the product release. As the good wave’s coming, it’s then time to stand up on the board for surfers. How? By not missing the wave 🌊
3. Surfing the wave: once successfully entered, it’s time to disrupt the market. The surfer, standing on his board, is now ready to enjoy a long and cool slide! How? By keeping the flow 🏄

Now, let’s dive deeper into the subject. Follow me!

1. Look around you 👀

When surfing, you want to identify the right moment to stand on the surfboard. Basically, you look around you to identify a strong wave.

In entrepreneurship, it’s being aware of the right moment when consumers will be receptive, when people are ready to invest in and when the competition isn’t threatening yet. At the end of each meeting here, I’m surprised by the quantity of sources entrepreneurs recommend me to read: their mind is a library! They inform themselves A LOT.

Staying tuned to the ecosystem can seem obvious. Still, a lot of entrepreneurs I met weren’t as successful as they expected because of a lack of focus (that’s my 5th article) or because of a wrong momentum!

Jacques-Alexandre Gerber, an Inovexus mentor, is now launching his B2C startup — after succeeding in B2B businesses. Since what he develops is new, Googling anything that comes to mind is part of his daily work as a CEO. To him, it doesn’t have to be specifically related to his business. It’s about the entire tech ecosystem.

When I discovered the existence of Indie Hackers, I wondered why there were so many information platforms targeting entrepreneurs. As if Linkedin, Medium, Twitter, Podcasts did not cover every possible entrepreneurship subject. Now I understand this amount of information, continuously updated, is not only valuable but vital for entrepreneurs. By the way, in the most used media by Californian entrepreneurs, there are Crunchbase (in the first place), The Verge, Business Insider, or even Re/code.

Keeping your eyes open at 360° is making sure there’s a product-market fit, anticipating future players, and analyzing how they might disrupt you.

👉 Identifying a huge wave is great, but if you swim too slow or too fast on it, you might miss the right moment to catch it.

2. Don’t miss the wave 🌊

At the Santa Monica pier, I saw a lot of surfers starting to swim on big waves. Few of them succeeded to stand on the board. Some of them made the impulse too early. And sometimes, the first ones to get up on their board were also the first ones to fall.
👉 If they had waited, the slide might have been longer.

For entrepreneurs, after assessing the right “Time-to-market” and after building a strong team of Project-Holders, the next step is releasing the product. It’s the “how”: does a good time-to-market mean entering it first?

Almost everyone I talked to in the Bay Area about momentum told me:

“Big Tech weren’t the original inventors of the the technologies that made them successful later on”

Before, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, or Apple, there was a generation 0 that failed. Jacques-Alexandre Gerber has been living in the Bay Area for 20 years. He pointed out that:

• Before Facebook, there was MySpace.
• Before Google, there was AltaVista.
• Before Apple, there was BlackBerry.

Bill Reichert, Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures, would even say: the first-move advantage, is actually a HUGE disadvantage. Bill worked on a similar project to the iPad in the ‘90s. The momentum wasn’t right:

• The price of making it was so high that investors laughed at him.
• What he “should” have done was wait for the cost of primary resources to decrease to make economies of scale.
• And waiting for better customer acculturation.

There is a common principle in Silicon Valley: others have worked for years on solutions you’re developing. So use their ideas! It will save energy, time, motivation, and cash. It made me think of “The Social Network” in which Mark Zuckerberg is depicted as “having stolen an idea”. What if he actually was a fast-follower? What if he saw the idea and adopted it himself?

If momentum isn’t necessarily being first… what is it? It’s above all being a fast follower.

3. Keep the flow 🏄‍♂️

So far, our surf champion has identified the right wave, started to swim correctly, and has been able to catch it. Now it’s all about keeping control of the surfboard and surfing the wave!

Translation for entrepreneurship? After identifying the momentum and entering the market (not necessarily first), the last step is to develop your product as quickly as possible while adapting to market evolutions: act fast and execute to disrupt the market. It’s a flow: waves to control.

After the failure of generation 0, the revolutionary idea spreads in the hands of many entrepreneurs. As Angelika Blendstrup, an Inovexus mentor, said:

“The secret of success isn’t always the original idea, it’s the execution”

The value lies in the execution period: a better-identified target, a cheaper price, an easier adoption, more traction, the go-to-market strategy, and an easier ability to pivot (again, my 5th article 😉).

“Not being the first one will allow you to have more time.” Alex Deve, who founded Whitetruffle 12 years ago and has been living in SF for 23 years, told me that the more time you spend on solving problems, the more aware you are of new problems and the more efficient the solutions will be. However, you’re not looking for perfection, as Angelika indicated to me.

In Silicon Valley, I was told that:

• Steve Jobs isn’t considered a visionary — brilliant, for sure. But “the game is that ideas are stolen” (think about Xerox’s story). And Jacques-Alexandre reminded me that “History is written by the victors”: in the end, you remember the name of the one who cracked the code, not the first one who invented it.
• An efficient execution for startups is the ability to scale it. As you can guess, I will quote a Silicon Valley-based company to illustrate it: Airbnb. The scaling of their marketplace is admired by many entrepreneurs here. They managed the hardest part well: increasing both offer and supply proportionally to avoid the lack of balance that would have made their business a flop. They found the flow, not on the surfboard but in business!

In summary: timing (and luck)

There’s no playbook for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Still, a “Time-to-market” is definitely part of a success story. Keeping eyes and ears open 24/24 not to miss the wave or be too early.

Time-to-market is definitely part of a success story… if it’s not THE whole success story. Here, a lot of entrepreneurs attribute Apple or Amazon’s success 99% to the timing: it was the early days of the Internet. This timing is a concept that often leads to a question: is being a successful startup all about execution or is it luck? I’ll leave you with this philosophical reflection.😇

And for me — uh, for Inovexus — it’s also a momentum: the time to shape the future of the European early-stage landscape with smart investors by launching our fund: Inovexus Ventures! 🚀

My 5th article will deal with a situation I didn’t mention here: what if entrepreneurs miss the wave? If they weren’t enough focused on catching the wave?

See you in 2 weeks,

Mathilde

All pictures from Pixabay.

Surfing vs. Entrepreneurship? No Difference, All In Momentum #3 was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In my first answer to the question “What is the California DNA?”, I talked about the California mindset. Once you’ve imbibed a mindset, you then need to surround yourself with the right people to build a successful startup. This is what Christophe Cazes, an Inovexus mentor who spent 20+ years building international teams, has always prioritized.

During my meetings in San Francisco, I was surprised by the degree of dedication of some employees in startups. Several times, I had a 45-minute conversation with someone before realizing I wasn’t talking to one of the co-founders but to a Sales or Marketing Manager. They embodied the project as C-level usually do!

Maybe it was because the startup was revolutionary. Or because of natural enthusiasm.

But after 3 months of meetings with entrepreneurs and startuppers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, I would finally say that California founders have a unique capability in making teams 100% invested in their project.

You’ve probably read 130 articles talking about teams and the importance of taking care of employees.

👉 Here, I want to draw on my personal experience to focus on 3 main aspects of the California entrepreneurship I’ve observed that explain why people are so invested:

• The startup vision isn’t just a tagline but a project that employees buy into.
• Entrepreneurs capitalize on youth.
• They involve their employees in the company, in a financial sense.

1. A Team of Vision-Holders 🌍

Building a team with people who share and are convinced of your vision is the first step in getting them invested in your project.

I think being motivated and invested are 2 different things: motivation is short-term and can last 1 day. Being invested is for the long term. And since a startup is not a one-day project, it sounds good to make a team invested in it ;)

So it’s not about day-to-day actions but about a vision: how will this project change people’s daily lives? What real people problem is it solving?

In October, I met Sasha in Los Angeles: she’s the perfect example of that. She didn’t talk to me about her personal life, but about how SnappToon, an app for creating memes, will help democratize memes and thus NFTs for everyone, especially those who are unfamiliar with creative design and software. It wasn’t until the end of our conversation that I realized she wasn’t the CEO but the Marketing Manager. She presented me SnappToon as if it was her baby, something she had built! What’s certain is she believed 200% in the vision and it made so much sense to her.

👉 The vision is something EVERYONE can act on, not just the top-level managers. The application of such a vision in the work organization is based on people’s expertise: on their skills and what they like to do. Empowerment is a golden rule: employees have a specific mission they fully manage. They own and are responsible for their entire decision-making process.

From my experience here, there are a lot of people who aren’t only READY but WILLING to invest so much time and energy into Bay Area startups.

The consequence for CEOs:

It’s no longer about making them employees but Project-Holders!

Inspiring advice, isn’t it? 😉

And the good news is you won’t need to go to networking events anymore: your Project-Holders will pitch your startup better than you do!

The process of being invested is not limited to individuals on their own towards an exciting vision or mission. It’s also a dynamic internal process to achieve the ambitious vision! And what’s better than youth to do so?

2. Youth: A California Major Asset

Being in California changed my vision of youth, which I’ve always considered as being a disadvantage in the workplace.

My logic was:

Youth = inexperience = a burden for the company, a lack of credibility with managers.

An old mindset, for sure. But the one I believed in. 🤷‍♀️

A good practice I learned from California is looking at youth as an asset in the entrepreneurship and technology ecosystem. And young people are quite good at turning themselves into Project-Holders. For 3 reasons:

1. They’re risk-lovers.

California entrepreneurs like Doug Erickson and investors like Jim Brandt profile young people as follows:

• They typically don’t have a family to consider in their decisions. They have no money to lose. They just have time. Because they’re still green and fresh, they’re easily emboldened with a vision to build an exciting world.
• These factors lead youth to be more creative: they see dreams before problems. They make decisions faster: they don’t think about it ten days before making a decision!

One of the first things our mentor Angelika Blendstrup told me was: “People don’t care about age”! She was right: what people care about is the Go-For-It attitude, remember? 😉

2. Growing up with social media is an unfair advantage over the previous generation.

• Stephane Giraudie, the founder of Walkie-Talkie, let 20yo people manage the whole Marketing Plan of his new startup. He knows they will be talented since they manage TikTok and technology trends like NFTs to target GenZ better than anyone else.
• In fact, I’ve often been told that young people are considered the BEST marketplace makers because they know how to leverage social media.

Nevertheless, young people need parental guidance at a strategic level. A common practice of startups in this regard is to implement programs to combine the experiences of older and younger people.

3. My last point about GenZ is… the Resignation Generation!

GenZ — a concept I didn’t know I was part of. Here, San Franciscans are really aware of its trends, movements, and impact on society.

We are called Resignation Generation because when we don’t like something, we won’t make any effort.

Jon Orozco, a Chief of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in several startups in LA confirmed it to me: since we’re no longer worried about stability or pensions and are asking questions that weren’t asked before, we easily quit if a company isn’t mission-driven or inclusive enough.

We’ll go freelance, work “fractionally”, create our own startup, or invest in NFTs, like Antonin Hartwood, founder of the Instagram account objectif_smartlife.

What does this have to do with being invested in a project?

Look at it the other way around: if we love it, if it’s meaningful to us, we can invest 100% in it. We won’t count hours. We will tell everyone about the wonderful vision and we’ll get over-informed about it! We’ll do part of the CEO’s job. Not out of obligation, not for money or their resume. For passion.

By being more creative, more passionate, and by moving faster, youth is in itself Project-Holder.

By the way, that’s something Inovexus’ founder, Philippe Roche, has well imported from California in France: he has built the entire operational team with young people. The result? 22 seed-startups accelerated in 2021 and €28M was raised!

3. S̶h̶a̶r̶e̶ Project-Holders!

Now it’s time to focus on the “Holder” part of my new expression 😜 My last California motto for getting your team invested — your employees become Project-Holders — is:

Equity is the new wage.

People working in California startups are neither shareholders nor employees.

When talking to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I was surprised by how many of them built their team by giving their employees stock options. 50 years ago, you would have had a fixed salary. Then, a bonus was added. Now, it’s both plus equity.

This has a strong meaning to me: successful startups are the result of a whole team, not the vision of the CEO.

For these entrepreneurs, the logic is the following:

• To build the best startup, you need the best talents, who are expensive.
• Early-stage startups don’t have money.
• Equity reconciles both.

If the startup grows, your share grows: pretty convincing to be a Project-Holder! And it goes along with my argument: since everyone is responsible for an entire mission, it seems logical that they have their share of the pie 😋

Based on my conversations here, stock options usually range between 0.05 and 1%. It makes sense when you know that 5% could be a problem to get further investments!

Next steps

Most of a CEO’s job is managing relationships. We think primarily of external relationships — with business partners, investors, customers — not those within the team.

I hope my focus on what’s going on inside the California startups has inspired you: building a team of Project-Holders based on a vision, on youth, and on a horizontal work organization is a win-win collaboration.

It’s really inspiring for me to meet so many people with a positive outlook on the future, with hundreds of ideas on how to make it better — even more from my youthful and green perspective!

After the mindset and the team in a startup’s strategy, my third observation on California entrepreneurship will be published in mid-January and will focus on momentum.

Meanwhile, you can follow my adventures on Linkedin! 😉

Mathilde

Build A Team Of S̶h̶a̶r̶e̶ Project-Holders #2 was originally published in Inovexus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.