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TWELVE CHAPTERS TO BUILD AMBITIOUS

STARTUPS IN EUROPE

CHECKLIST: TOXICITY

Europe is a toxic environment for entrepreneurshipThat does not mean that it’s

impossible to be an entrepreneur, it means that in general it is much harder in France

and in Europe than elsewhere. This is revealed in many small things: paperwork, labor

codes, social pressure, and an overall mindset with widespread pessimism, skepticism,

distrust, etc.

To survive in this toxicity, you need to get strongerYou need to get in shape just

like an athlete, but here it’s your perspective that you need to build up: construct an

ambition filter that lets you analyze and sort out what you are hearing (and toss it out

when necessary).

Beware of the startup hypeEntrepreneurship is becoming trendy. The media tell the

stories that people want to hear, not the truth: do not get fooled by fantastic acquisitions

and extraordinary fundraising rounds, things that you read that make it seem so easy. It

is not easy. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t read the content: tech is the only

sector where top minds take the time to share their thoughts and experiences in blogs.

Beware of the Silicon Valley hypeLet’s kill the myth: you won’t fundraise easily just

because you go to the US. Competition is huge precisely because everyone who is

trying to fundraise goes there, including the best startups in the world. And that’s without

mentioning the fact that you don’t know the system or anyone who lives there, making

you into just another immigrant, like all the others :)

If you’re still dreaming of Silicon Valley, just book a fucking ticketSpend 3 months

there and find out if it is where you want to live. If it is your dream, nothing should stop

you: never play the “what if” game in your mind.

If you stay, understand and accept the local gameIf you are in Europe, play

European, not American. You’ll have to deal with toxicity and remember, the less

obvious it is, the harder it is to fight. Obvious difficulties are openly discussed and there

are even startups that launch to try and solve those problems. Invisible toxicity is the

most dangerous.

Never forget that time is preciousIn Europe, we like to take our time. Endless

brainstorming, meetings and debates are the sign that something is wrong with your

startup. Morons make successful entrepreneurs: they don’t think too much and they act

fast. No one plans for indecision, but indecision is where you can easily end up. If you

have enough users, A/B test - don’t debate. If you don’t have the users, make a random

decision, flip a coin. Spend time acting instead of thinking and talking. An entrepreneur

needs 3 things: Capital, People and Time. Only the first two are replaceable.

Be radical: never settle for lessAdopt the “upward push” attitude: always ask yourself,

“What can I do, today, with my means, that would be at the highest level of ambition?”

At the beginning, those things may be relatively simple: ambition does not mean

contemplating unrealistic steps, it means getting better every day. It also means having

the courage to stop and restart something new from scratch instead of continuing a

downgraded project, just so that you don’t have to admit you failed. Get big or go home.

Focus on real workAlways ask yourself “Is this fake work or real work?”: real work is

what brings growth for your startup, and fake work is what only brings you pleasure.

Public grant? Fake work: if you don’t prove your business model, you will have money

but no idea how to use it. Worse, you’ll feel happy with what you’ve accomplished,

which is never a good thing for an entrepreneur. Pitching competition? Fake work:

without a specific goal, it is a waste of time. Building the next feature? That comes down

to the potential impact of that feature on your Life Metric (for the vast majority of

startups it is their revenue): if your life metric is growing, you are alive, if not, you are the

walking dead.

Don’t be scared of making mistakesFirst, nobody cares. Second, thinking about the

next mistake you want to avoid is a waste of time, while making a mistake is never a

waste as long as you learn something. In entrepreneurship, there is an absolute criteria

of truth: if you are right, you make money; if you are wrong, you lose money; and the

amount of money you lose is always the right price for the right lesson. Losing money is

something you need to learn very fast. And remember: you only need to be right once.

Dare to fight backIt is not about changing the toxic culture, it is about preventing the

culture from infecting you. In Europe, we define each other by who we are (our

background, family, studies) and not what we are doing (that’s one reason why we have

a big problem with failure). Fight back, especially with yourself, because the important

thing is what you think, not anybody else.

Don’t be part of the zooEntrepreneurs are hyped and in great demand, especially from

people who cannot bring them anything. Before doing something, always ask yourself:

“Is this useful or not?” Be very disciplined. In a toxic environment, every single tiny

breach in discipline can cost you the victory.

CHECKLIST: LOCAL

We should be proud to be Europeans and grab the opportunities that provides. Here’s

how.

Start where you want to liveDo not move only for business reasons. Choose where

you want to live based on your personal life before thinking about where you want to

start your business.

Copy smartlyCopying a foreign startup is often a good idea as a first experience, but

do it the smart way. First, do your homework: don’t trust the press, do your own

research, apply for a job, go to the interview and ask all your questions. Second, be

careful to adapt to your local environment: the market, the legal constraints, the existing

infrastructures... Finally, remember that copying is always temporary: if you win against

your competitors, you will have to innovate and build your own path.

Do not get caught by bordersEurope is much more united in terms of culture than the

US. The language barrier is not a problem anymore: translation is cheap and

multilingual employees are easier and easier to find, such as in customer support, which

is always a touchy issue when you scale. Expand your horizon: travelling in Europe is

easy, cheap and fast. You can build a pretty useful network in just a few years, which

will be a true unfair advantage.

Our specificities are opportunitiesWe are used to uncompetitive markets and

monopolies. European customers are eager for disruption. Even pessimism is an

opportunity: you will be the one bringing water in the desert. And what’s more, don’t

underestimate our lifestyle: it is an argument that can attract talent, so don’t hesitate to

use it and market it well.

Take the best of every country: decentralizeLet’s face it: for the moment every

European city sucks as a whole. But each of them has its own advantages and you

should capitalize on them. Skype for instance has its engineers teams in Estonia, its

social headquarters in Luxembourg, its corporate headquarters in London and its

Accountancy Department in Switzerland.

Think of Europe as a whole: optimizeLocal operations should never be launched by

local people. Uber has a launching team who launches every city around the world: they

are specialized and have a strong know-how. As a first step, you can have specialized

teams based in a particular country that operate for all of Europe in Sales, Customer

Support or Engineering. Even on the longer term, your team does not need to be where

your market is. It’s not easy, it’s not perfect, you may have to over-invest in your internal

communications, but you have to adapt to your constraints.

Stop being obsessed by the American marketLaunching in the US as the second

move after launching in your mother country does not make any sense in 80% of the

cases. On the contrary, becoming pan-European is an opportunity: take strong positions

to fight against your US competitor when it does arrive.

Let data guide youDo not launch randomly - trust the data. Communicate in every

language and see where it lands best, see where your early users are, and then launch.

Meet the Internet nationA new country is born, a transversal one, with citizens who

speak English and share a digital culture. It could be the first country to launch your

product.

Be ambitiousBeing smaller means we need to be more ambitious than average, not

less. Small things are not ok in Europe: think big

CHECKLIST: PROBLEM

Your idea equals your solution, your problem equals your market. Many entrepreneurs

are obsessed with their idea: that’s a mistake, because startups are market-driven, the

result of an intimate relationship between a team and a market with a problem. So

what’s your problem?

Is your problem real?Fake problems are problems that only the entrepreneur sees. Be

careful not to think that your bubble is reflective of the outside world. BUT never use

traditional market research methodologies such as a market study or going to a market

expert. Those are based on the assumption that exploring a market means asking what

people want. But people do not know what they really want until you push it to them,

such as was seen with cars, TVs and cellphones. There is a huge gap between what

people say, what people think, and what people really think. The question, “Does my

problem matter or not?” is a very good clue of your project’s long-term value.

Can it be defined?If you have a well-defined problem that you are trying to solve, your

“why” will be obvious (watch the TED video “Start with the why”). By the way, you

should always explain the problem and not the solution because that’s how you’ll

connect with people.

Is it big?The present market is not the reference, the future market is: you can become

as big as you can make the market grow. That means you have to conquer the existing

market AND create a market that does not exist yet. It’s that latter opportunity that is

key.

Is it difficult?Be ambitious: the more difficult a problem seems, the more valuable the

solution will be if you succeed. In the European paradigm, difficult problems are the one

that create big companies on the long term. You have 2 choices as an entrepreneur:

Do things that lots of people are trying to do - this will be quick and mainly

consists in execution, as you’ll need to be the best to succeed in a very

competitive landscape;

Choose a very long-term approach and work for the next 10 years on a problem

that is not obvious - within 10 years you can become an expert in any field, and

that path never fails.

Is it obvious? That is to say, has it been solved?Obvious problems are already

solved. But has it been solved the right way? There is always room for competition, but

the more a market has been solved, the more impressive the new solution must be.

Is it getting worse?There are 2 kinds of problems:

those that are naturally improving, meaning that the market is decreasing;

those that are getting worse and more painful, which means ever-bigger

opportunities to offer a game-changing solution. Remember, it’s much easier to

sell painkillers than a vitamin ;)

Understand your marketAll of the above questions should help you truly understand

your market. Markets are alive: they are like animals, they all have their personality

traits and they are very unequal, and something that applies to one market is dead

wrong for another. That’s why early-stage startups should not talk together about their

businesses.

Focus first on the target marketMarkets are too big to be conquered at once, so first

find your problem (the big vision). Then, as a second step, narrow your vision and find

the small segment of that problem that you will solve - that is your target market.

Forget the competitionComparing your inside with the outside of your competitors will

only distort your decision-making.

Unless it’s for inspirationStill, it’s better to look at other industries for inspiration and

adapt it to your situation, since when you look at your competitors you never know if you

are looking at winners or losers (and then you take the risk of copying mistakes).

Inspiration is everywhereYou can read blogs and Techcrunch, watch how-to videos,

but the most important source of inspiration remains the outside: movies, novels,

biographies of non-entrepreneurs, your Facebook newsfeed, and your own history. One

life changing article you should definitely read: The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret

Sauce. A Cook is someone who follows a recipe, a Chef is someone who reinvents

cooking.

It takes timeIt takes time to know your problem, to understand your market, to become

an expert. Stay a project as long as possible because as soon as you become a

company, collateral problems will arise. Be a project that becomes a company and not a

company that is looking for a project.

Are you willing to take the risk?If not, try something else, because entrepreneurship

is about great risk and even greater boldness.

CHECKLIST: FOCUS

The objective of this session is to give you very concrete explanations of what being

focused means for an entrepreneur, because it is a key to success.

Do everything with intensityBeing focused is not about doing only one thing at a time:

entrepreneurs are forced to deal with multitasking. A better definition is to do whatever

you do at the highest level intensity, i.e., the highest level of energy. For instance,

focusing on Sales means you will try to sell your product to every single person you

meet.

Growth is your only jobYou should separate your tasks into two categories: tasks that

result in growth and everything else. Focus on the first ones: as an early stage startup,

before product-market fit, the only 2 things that result in growth for your company are

talking to customers and building your product. For the other things, you need to do

them anyway; but keep them as backend processes, and for the stupid, repetitive and

non-value-added tasks like data crunching, either outsource or automate them.

Focus gives you convictionBeing focused is the only way to learn how to do your

startup. It is exactly like learning to ride a bike: you’ll learn by doing, not by thinking,

you’ll learn with your instinct. Being intense forces you to have a very concrete and

precise idea of what you are doing, letting you know much faster if you are right or

wrong.

Hire for growthDo not hire too fast or too big. Do not hire because it is an enjoyable,

self-esteem boosting process. Do not hire to solve a problem. Do not hire in advance,

hire for the present. The right time to focus on hiring is when you are growing: you need

to find the right people to sustain that growth.

Seek the right kind of validationBeing unfocused make you feel good: going to

conferences, networking, having an article in the press and being congratulated. Do not

be fooled: that is the wrong kind of validation, it doesn’t say a thing about your startup’s

health. So create your own agenda of celebrations: clearly define your milestones and

be sure that each fulfilled milestone is celebrated internally.

Understand what not to doIt is what you do not do that defines your company. Learn

to say no. Distractions may seem like opportunities, so filter carefully, do nothing that

cannot bring you anything and be comfortable with missing some good opportunities if

they are outside of your focus.

Do what matters todayEntrepreneurship is about being good and getting better every

day, not planning the future. Reduce your time frame: one day, then one week, one

month maximum. That way you’ll automatically focus on the right things, the ones that

result directly and quickly in creating value. Forget everything about strategy: strategy is

defining how to spend capital over time, and you have no capital. Say hello to survival

mode.

Discipline yourselfOrganize your time and schedule. Everybody’s life is defined by

Work, Family, Friends, Entertainment, and Other. Pick two. If you are serious about

making your company take off, you have to make hard choices in your personal life

(don’t worry, it’s not forever).

Investors have their own agendaBad investors (= 80% of investors in Europe) have 2

tools to unfocus you:

Asking for stupid reporting: reporting to your investors is your duty as an

entrepreneur, but it is not your job to do their portfolio memo; be sure to build a

reporting system that is valuable to your company, and keep track of your

numbers;

Providing random introductions: never meet anyone without a clear agenda. Be

hardcore, build your own spreadsheet to rate people based on their matchmaking

talent and the value they bring to you, and reply to their intros accordingly.

Beware of your inboxA mailbox is basically somewhere anyone can write to you

without any barrier to entry, and above all it is an unsolicited To Do List that others

impose on you. As a CEO, customer support must be in your mailbox as long as

possible; internship applications or invitations to random events must not.

Your KPIs are your best friendsBuild a dashboard with your carefully chosen KPIs

and track them weekly. There are 3 kinds of KPIs:

Life Metric: most of the time this is your revenue. It must be the last step of any

process in your company and it must always go up (in absolute value).

Operational Metrics: track as few as possible or you will get lost and receive the

wrong message.

Vanity Metrics: they do not mean anything but they impress PR :) Play with it,

make it scary, but never look at the Vanity coming from your competitors.

Protect yourselfWrite down simple rules that will act as a test for everything happening

in your company and always check compliance with these rules.

Be the captainIf you lose focus as a founder, your entire team will do the same. Every

new hire is a threat to your startup during the first 6 months, because people come with

their own intuition and methodology and they will try to impose it. A key success factor

is your speed of onboarding new hires, which comes with a very intense culture: people

adapt or leave.

CHECKLIST: FOUNDERS

The very definition of a startup at the beginning is a company that lives only by its

founders’ will.

Be DeterminedIt’s your intensity that makes you different from the others. Being

determined means never taking a “no” for anything other than a “maybe”. Pursue what

you are doing at whatever cost. But do not confuse determination with being obstinate:

obstinacy consists in endlessly doing the same thing, thinking you will succeed one day

- but that never works. That’s why determination is closely linked with flexibility.

Be FlexibleJeff Bezos said: “As someone smart, I change my mind ten times a day,

because ten times a day I have a new data”. You must be able to tell yourself, “I was

sure that A was the best option, but now I have data showing that B is better, so let’s go

for B”. That’s what learning is about. That kind of flexibility will help you figure out what

works, evolving along the way.

Be braveYour goal must be to maximize the upside you can get, not to minimize the

downside. Most of the things you do will fail and it will hurt, and you have to be ok with

that. Courage helps you to never give up. Everything in your life should be driven by

what you think and not by what the others think of you: do not run after social status and

recognition.

Be creativeDivergent thinking is the capacity to imagine the usage of something for

something else. What makes an entrepreneur exceptional always comes down to the

ability to think that something impossible may be possible. Imagination, like courage, is

something you can train.

Be a good friendFriendship is the core element that makes a co-founding team. It’s a

relay race, and you alone cannot always be at the top of all of these qualities. Building a

team is not about skills nor about being complementary, it is about human qualities and

mental comfort. PS: trust people, since nothing can fully protect you, anyway

:simple_smile:

Be naughtyYou cannot play 100% by the rules. You must know which rules are

important and which are not. Take spam, for example. Do not hesitate to spam but do it

the right way: spam is unsolicited emailing, but you should target people who will be

happy to receive it, and be ready to answer any reply and apologize sincerely if needed.

Be smart... or notBeing stupid or smart has no impact on your capacity to be a good

founder. Being smart has become a commodity: anyone can learn anything at anytime

with hard work and the Internet. Advice for smart people: always be stupider than the

market you want to conquer. That way you’ll never be bored.

Focus on the presentPeople plan because they worry, thinking they need a plan to

feel comfortable about what they’re doing. But that’s all an illusion. Don’t overplan, and

reduce your timeline.

Beware of golden rulesNo one can be the best at all of the 6 qualities above, so build

a team that complements itself. Build your own story. Find someone you genuinely trust

and admire.

Do not let yourself think you are a democracyDemocracy cannot work for startups

because startups need execution more than anything else and execution dies with

debates. A startup needs someone who can make a very bold decision when no one

else agrees. That doesn’t mean that the team should not have strong opinions and push

back. But there is only one person who has the last word and makes the decision.

Be comfortable with chaosBe fine with the fact that you are totally late with whatever

is happening.

Do not forget that cash is kingForgetting that cash is king is a startup killer. It is your

job as a founder to always look after your cash position and make it increase. Cash is

the only metric that makes a startup alive, especially in Europe where there is less VC

money available.

Beware of founders’ fightsFights between founders are deadly. Most startups cannot

survive an early divorce between founders. If needed, divorce clean and quick, do not

look back, put your ego aside and focus your energy on building something new instead

of fighting about the past.

CHECKLIST: BOOTSTRAP

You do not necessarily need external funds to grow your startup: another option is using

your own cleverness and revenues to grow. That’s what we call bootstrapping.

WHY BOOTSTRAP ?Bootstrapping is hard but rewarding:

Nothing is more satisfying than people paying for your product because they are

happy with it.

Money talks: successful bootstrapping (real users, real traction, real revenues)

puts you in the best position to negotiate with investors later. There is no such a

thing as a negotiation if you do not have leverage.

Bootstrapping is not Consulting A very common bootstrap strategy is to begin by

selling services to fund the development of the product. The truth is that it is very hard

to stay focused when you have clients requiring a lot of customized work: you’ll end up

being a service provider. Here the focus is how to build a product company, how to

scale, how to become self-sustainable.

Do not believe what you read/see What you read in the press about fantastic

fundraising and entrepreneurs is storytelling: the press writes what people want to read,

what people will share, stories that sell. Do not believe it, do not benchmark yourself

with it, do not compare your inside with the outside of the others. Only losers

benchmark - never look at your competitors.

Be creatively cheap At the beginning, your budget is a mistake budget. While you are

learning and making all those mistakes, do it for free: having no money means you are

forced to use your imagination to solve problems. Having too much of a budget makes

you stupid :)

Small savings make big games It is counterintuitive but with no money, you have

access to things you will not be able to get after that: your best hires for example,

people who come to you because they are in love with the project and not for money or

social status.

Do things that do not scale Every entrepreneur wants to start at scale: it is impossible.

The first steps require a lot of manual energy, there is no possible shortcut. The right

methodology is to be on the market on day 1: find a cheap, unscalable solution, fake it if

needed, but go to market.

Use your network to prove satisfaction Do not try to convince strangers before you

convince your friends. So before buying Facebook ads, convince each and every friend

that you have. This is true as well with B2B and old colleagues.

Be aggressive The only way to bootstrap a company is the collision methodology: do

not wait for people to come to you, force them. Focus on people you know to get your

early traction.

Follow your KPIs weekly You need a KPI dashboard to know if you are on track, if

what you’re doing is working or not.

Pay with risk - cash now is more precious than cash later Right now you do not

have cash, so pay with agreements / promises on the future, conditioned by milestones:

if you are successful, it was an investment; if you are dead, you don’t owe anything.

Plus that way the service provider is aligned with your interests. And never pay people

with equity because equity is forever.

Pay late, collect early, sell high, buy low Startups are afraid to pay late - they always

pay their bills first because they are nice and inexperienced people. Be shameless. By

the way, be hardcore with your bank. The only limit is to never put yourself at personal

risk and to never accept any personal loan.

Skip the seed - better valuation, more time saved

Seed rounds cost a lot, especially in Europe: around 20-30% of your company for

a very small amount of money. That money can be built from revenues. So skip

the seed, go directly to a 5-10M first round for the same 20-30%. This completely

changes the final ownership you can get.

The next problem with seed is that anyone can be a seed investor, because by

definition you don’t need a lot of money. That means you never know who is

good or bad. Skipping seed prevents you from committing to toxic investors.

And last, by skipping the seed you will reach a much higher valuation because

you will have a very high amount of goodwill: valuations are made on the ratio

between the resources you had and what you did with them.

Hire only who you can trust. Hire to do something you understand You must know

every function before thinking about delegating it; then when you are comfortable with

the work, you can hire someone who is better than you.

Delegate what you know best This way you know exactly whether or not your

employee is any good.

Focus your attention on what you are not good at, find a solution, then delegate it. Your

ultimate goal is to delegate everything: do not keep the most important things for

yourself just because you are good at it, or you will become the bottleneck of your

company.

Beware of interns Interns are great in a growing environment but they are dangerous

before product-market fit: you do not know what you are doing and you’re delegating to

people who are even worse. Remember: if you bootstrap, you cannot make any

management mistakes, they cost too much.

Do not do stupid things - outsource Outsource repetitive tasks, optimize every

process.

How to end the bootstrap?You have to understand that you do not decide when to

fundraise. No one is waiting for you. The good moment to end bootstrapping is the

moment the bootstrap ends :) Just put yourself in a position where fundraising becomes

obvious, where you are getting chased by investors.

CHECKLIST: CARE

Care (noun): serious attention; inclination; liking; fondness; affection.

Care is a huge competitive advantage Big Companies don’t care: established

companies are so big that they treat individual clients as liabilities to be managed en

masse. Additionally, there is no customer service culture in Europe, as care is

considered a luxury feature. But clients care: people want to feel that there are real

humans behind a website, that they are close to the company and the product they’re

using. At the beginning, your luck as a startup is that you have few clients and so you

can do things for them that no one else can. Caring makes you special. Extreme care

can be the reason why people talk about your startup and even a way to transform

haters or disappointed people into fans. People always remember care.

Care or die Care about your customers at a level they don’t deserve or you will die

because you will never stir up any feelings in them or give them the urge to fight for you.

Care not only for your clients but for any person in your community: employees,

investors, partners, suppliers… you’ll create a virtuous circle of positive vibes.

Be authentic The winning trio for successful entrepreneurs: personal, sincere, honest.

Be available Be ready to reply, quickly, anytime.

Be committed Never delegate customer support and customer relationships. Everyone

in the team, all departments, should receive every customer support email and read it,

so that no one forgets along the way that the company exists only because real people

on the outside are using your solution.

Be generous Make gifts a habit: gifts are the best marketing expenses you can have.

Make your clients happy, whatever it takes.

Scale the acquisition along with the careYou have to be aggressive, violent in your

sales campaigns, but never mean or disrespectful.

Treat people with respect Ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Spam, but with

fine-tuned emails and apologize sincerely if needed.

Reply to everyone Emails should be sent by a real person. Email addresses in “no-

reply” are forbidden. Always use the tone your customer used to write to you. Consider

every customer writing to you as a potential friend. As soon as you have a little traction,

you’ll have haters / Internet trollers / crazy people writing to you. Just ignore them: the

upsides of a close dialogue with users are more important than the downsides. But don’t

hesitate to reply harshly to false accusations and jerks. Care is not about being nice

with everyone.

Unsubscribe people yourself Never ask a user to do something you can do yourself.

Care is not just to enroll new usersYou also need to care to keep them: retention is

as crucial as acquisition.

Email is your friend Email is a very simple way to keep in touch with everyone. Keep

replying and make it quick

Support is everyone’s job People cannot be kept waiting. Never refer a problem to

someone else, everyone is responsible for fixing problems. The only possible answer to

a problem is, “We screwed up as a team and we will fix it”. Don’t find excuses or

scapegoats. And as usual, it begins with founders. Lead by example.

Take advantage of existing tools There are thousands of tools that exist to scale

customer support: learn how to use them. The golden rule: make it look human. Care

has a necessarily high cost.

Give them your own number Answering your phone is a part of your job. It can sound

impossible but being a great entrepreneur cannot come without a great level of

commitment.

Check Twitter and Facebook constantly Do not leave that to a community manager.

Discover who your users are Events are another way to create proximity and sincere

relationships with your customers, to understand what they want and make them

understand who you are and how you define yourself.

Don’t leave anything to chance A good event is prepared: it has an agenda, it starts

on time, everything feels right and people are happy to be there.

Be present Do not send anyone other than the core team to events. Be present even if

you don’t speak on stage, do at least the introduction or the conclusion, show that you

are there and you care.

Be cool Make people feel comfortable: offer nice food and goodies, for instance.

Help them connect Be sure to help the attendees get value from your events.

Get real feedback People feel more comfortable saying tough truths in a group.

Adapt to your crowd Gathered feedback is an opportunity to learn and evolve.

Execute to earn respect Show how to do it instead of just explaining what to do. Once

again, lead by example.

Results are all that matters Care is not about making people feel better when they fail.

Accept it and move on.

Love your users It is a collective responsibility and you must show the way.

Build your culture Caring for your users and your internal team results in your culture.

If you care for your team, your team will care for your customers. Your inside is a

reference for the outside. By the way, your employees and you yourself should be deep

users of your solution.

Just care :)

CHECKLIST: GROWTH

In a startup, growing is about doing things that seem impossible, discovering secrets

about your market that no one else knows about because no one has pushed so hard.

Growth should be your obsessionStartup equals growth. For everything you do,

wonder first “Will it make me grow?” If yes, push harder; if no, stop it - now. You have to

build your growth, it won’t be handed to you on a golden platter.

It’s not comfortableGrowth hurts: it cannot be planned, decisions cannot be made in

advance, you’ll always be late and have no choice but to work harder and harder.

Growth has a very personal cost: it costs your time, your mental and physical health. Do

not expect anything other than chaos.

Growth creates valueGrowth is the only way to build value and the only thing that can

solve any problem in your company.

Growth gives you controlWho runs a startup? If it’s growing, it’s the entrepreneur; if

it’s not, it’s the investors. If you don’t grow, there is no one to protect you - that’s the

deal. The more you understand your growth, the more you will be in charge of your

company because no one will want to stop the train.

Don’t make plansPlans kill growth, because people always believe their plan. If you

plan to do something within 6 months, you’ll actually do it in 6 months or more. Never

think in terms of timeline, think in terms of milestones, with KPI-based objectives, not

time-based objectives. Your only obsession about a timeline should be to reduce it.

Learn to ignore your investorsInvestors are afraid of growth because it costs money:

European funds are small, they have little money and they are not used to losing a lot

very fast in a growth situation.

Don’t be afraid of deathStartups’ biggest problem is the difference between

stakeholders when it comes to their risk tolerance level. The fear of death is a great

danger: it keeps you from being bold. You’ll recognize it when you’ll begin to think twice

before doing something. Go against that. It is part of the job to fail or go bankrupt.

Go for the obviousForget any big plan for the first 1000 customers and focus on doing

things manually in order to learn. Short-term growth is manual. Leverage your friends

and your entire community as a beginning. Be dead simple and be good at it. Repetition

is key - it is very hard to get something into people’s minds. Then you’ll find the limits of

manual growth and start using automation and growth hacking solutions, developing

softwares and marketing.

Think MetricsBenchmarking is for losers. Do not compare yourself to others, compare

to yourself one week before. Use the “Up or Out” methodology: look at your “natural”

metrics on the first week and then make each of them grow, pushing up from whatever

the starting level. Never add metric goals that are not relative.

There are 3 kinds of metrics:

Life metric: it is the very metric that tells if you are alive or not. In 99% of cases,

the life metric is revenue. Growth obviously means growing revenues and more

revenues equal more means for growth.

Optimization metrics: they are key metrics that fuel the Life metric.

Vanity metrics: they are useless as they have no impact on your life metric.

For a social network for instance, the number of subscribers is a vanity metric:

what counts for this kind of project is not the acquisition but the retention rate, so

the number of daily active users is an important optimization metric.

Measure by weekIf you keep doing small things in a tight timeframe, you’ll have big

effects on the long run. If you try to do big things on a large timeframe, you’ll get

depressed, because you’ll never know if what you did worked (or not) and if you are

successful (or not).

And please: growth rates must be calculated week over week in absolute numbers, not

cumulative numbers.

Be ambitious as a teamEveryone in the team must be aware of the goals and feel

concerned about reaching them. Celebrate the right things and similarly, share

desperation: communicate internally about every piece of news, be it good or bad.

Create an automatic email sending the numbers to everyone in the team. Be harsh. Be

clear about what success means and what failure means, on the basis of your KPI.

Choose your sideApply the Achilles dilemma to yourself: happiness or glory. Glory

means doing something that matters, not being mainstream famous. The glory path is

hard: everything you’ll do can fail at any moment. At the same time, the happiness path

would be boring for a lot of entrepreneurs. There are as many kinds of entrepreneurs as

there are ways of life and ambitions. Make a true decision, choose which kind of

entrepreneur you want to be. It is a one-way ticket.

Grow or die At every step, you must find a new solution to reach the next level of

growth. And if at every step you take you are not at risk of dying, it means that you are

not growing fast enough.

CHECKLIST: AMBITION

Ambition (noun): strong desire for success, achievement, or distinction.

Muscle yourselfAmbition is not an innate gift. It is like a muscle, you can train it. It

means that anyone can become ambitious.

Muscle your environmentAmbition is deeply linked to your environment. Surround

yourself with ambitious people, it will raise your expectations. Maybe you’ll fake it first,

then you’ll end up being truly ambitious. Your investors are a good indicator: if they are

ambitious, they’ll push you to do more, but if they are weak, they’ll drag you down.

Be radicalAmbition is not about making good decisions. Ambition means that

sometimes you’ll fail or even die. That’s part of the game. In addition, being

remembered should be your secondary goal as an entrepreneur. No one remembers

average. Everyone has a CV (in Greek “path of life”), even entrepreneurs: you should

build yours. Ambition is like a secondary money that applies to entrepreneurs: you trade

it against memory.

Polarize to winIf you want to check if something is ambitious or not, just look at how

people react. Ambitious ideas/moves always have hard supporters and hard opponents.

You are not a politician: your goal is not to create consensus. Searching for consensus

is a total waste of time for entrepreneurs. It is your decision and anyway you’ll be the

only one to pay for the consequences. Be clear with your team and investors: you aim

at making the right decision, not at pleasing anyone.

Choose your campThe lack of ambition can be much more damaging than the excess

of it. The safe and secure path can be hell, even if your decisions seem rational. Do not

try to avoid bad things, it will get worse anyway ;), and you’ll end up doing nothing. So

be 100% optimistic. Things will always go wrong but you’ll always find a path: jump,

swim and keep moving.

Do not fall into a caricature of ambitionAmbition is about acting, not just selling

yourself. Ambition often looks small: it is hard, it is slow, it is a step-by-step journey.

Manage your own psychologyEmotions are real, deal with it. The most important

thing is to talk and to share your feelings. Find a partner who will be your rock. Do not

confuse storytelling and sharing your feelings: do not lie, do not fear being transparent

about your struggles with trustworthy people that surround you.

Build an armyYou’ll never build ambition alone. Each and every hire must share the

same level of ambition as yours. Any teammate that is not in the right mindset is a

threat for the others. Personal behavior and courage are as important as skills when

recruiting. Build an army: not a team, an army.

Go viralAmbition is also key in your communication: it creates a bond with your clients.

Showing ambition will allow you to create a tribe that will become viral if the message is

strong enough: people will find it crazy and share it. Be careful: It’s not about making

buzz. Buzz is not a goal nor something you can decide or plan. Work hard and do not

expect it, since that’s the best way to achieve it.

You need superfansAt the beginning, when your product is not yet fancy, the only way

to gather superfans is to spend a lot of time with your users. Make friends with your first

users, organize parties, take that relationship to the next level. Be ambitious about the

bond you build with your users.

You also need hatersEach and every time you increase the level of ambition, you’ll be

hated. Celebrate it. Your haters’ level of intensity is an incredible indicator of success.

Gustave Flaubert said: “You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his

enemies”. Same applies to startups.

Be crystal clearIf you are confused about anything in your business, if your

communication is not clear, you have a problem: it means your product / offer is not

radical enough, which means you failed to make a decision.

Be wrongBeing wrong is the only way to get answers and learn fast.

Don’t worry about your reputationDo not be afraid to ruin your reputation: you do not

have one. And by the way, nobody is waiting for you and you are not the center of the

universe. Do not be childish. However, there are some things you can do as a very

young company that you won’t be able to do as a more mature firm: being spammy for

instance. So don’t hesitate ;)

Have funBeing an entrepreneur is a luck. You are outstandingly free. Do not forget to

enjoy.

Let your soul out Be honest and true to yourself.

CHECKLIST: MISSION

Your Mission equals your Why and embodies in your Culture.

Start on day 1Mission is not something you can just decide, you have to build it. You

do not need to have a mission on day 1, it works like a virtuous circle: success brings

confidence, confidence brings a more ambitious mission, that brings success… Mission

grows in ambition with time but culture should be clear and strong on day 1: be crystal

clear about who you are and how you want to work. You can pivot, iterate, change your

name, your processes, etc: your What and your How can change, but your Why cannot

change.

Do not recruit on skillsBe with people that look like you. At the beginning, diversity in

terms of age, family situation, etc never really works. It is not about age in itself, it is

about mindset. Hire only stars: stars are not the persons with the best CVs, they are the

persons who feel that your company is where they truly belong. Remember that the

awesomeness of a company is proportional to the number of employees who work there

for the Why more than for their salary.

Align your words and actionsCulture is not what you say or what you write: it reflects

in who you hire, who you promote, how you pay your employees. Your culture is strong

when there is a perfect alignment between what you think, what you say and what you

do.

Do not try to look goodCulture does not necessarily look good. A good culture rejects

as much as it adopts. Every culture relies on a set of values. Beware of bullshit values:

these are values that no one can be against such as being innovative or honest. Real

values are easily recognizable because their opposites are also acceptable values such

as Facebook’s openness vs Snapchat’s secrecy.

Do not try to imitate or to compareCulture is about expressing something very

intimate. If you try to copy the culture of others without sharing their goals, you’ll hurt

your company badly. Besides, there is not a culture that is better than the others.

Culture is a choice that is not good nor bad, what is bad is when you do not make a

choice.

Do not confuse building culture with establishing perks and sticking cute

postersDo not confuse symbols with real management actions. Bermudas, babyfoots,

cats etc are only nice-to-haves, they are the consequences of your culture, not its

foundations. Posters are nice, they convey what you want to say, but writing things is

not enough.

Define your enemyEvery good culture has an enemy. Who is yours? Knowing what

you fight for will create a sacred unity. It is a very old political trick: create a war to focus

people on it instead of internal politics. Same applies to startups. The enemy is outside.

Do not implement processes too earlyEvery time a process is implemented, your

employees’ behaviour is impacted. It is called mechanism design: it is how people act

when incentivised to do something. Mechanism design is the architecture of culture. For

instance, Facebook implemented the “one mile rule”: FB employees earn 2 000$ less

on their salary if they live farer than one mile from the office. Beware: rules take over

people’s brains, every process has a side effect. Budget allocations for instance, with

new budget being increased only if the previous one were totally spent, can kill a

company.

Follow the threefold code of Culture: coherent, visible and sharedHaving a strong

culture will allow you to attract the best talents, because at equal salaries, people look

for a meaning in their job, to manage your downs, because at the very moment when

everything seems wrong, deeply believing in your mission is the only way to survive,

and to take quick decisions, because if your mission is crystal clear, your strategy will

be obvious.

CHECKLIST: INVESTORS

The power is in the investors’ hands: if you want to reverse it, the first thing is to know

them and to think like them by putting yourself in their shoes.

Begin local We are used to hearing that it is more difficult to raise money in Europe.

The truth is that there is less money available for startups in Europe but there is also

less competition and less pressure. Moreover, everything in the Silicon Valley costs 3

times what it costs in Europe: raising $1M there equals €250k in France in terms of

means. Salaries, rents, everything is cheaper. Don’t take it wrong: Silicon Valley is

expensive because it is the most efficient place on earth. It is like living in the center of

Paris vs the suburbs. But the more early-stage, the more local your investors. The more

successful, the more international.

Do not hesitate to take love moneyLove money is money that comes from people

who do not care about what happens next and above all it is money that comes without

any constraint. If your family and friends can give you money, take it - don’t feel

ashamed or guilty.

Focus on the Who For your first fundraising, “Who” gives you the money is as

important as how much they give you: 1€ does not equal another, depending on who it

comes from. Every investor has an impact, especially in Europe where everybody

needs to sign everything before proceeding. No money is better than bad money.

Beware of big names. An easy due diligence is to call someone from their portfolio, to

talk with people who actually work with the investor. If it is your first company, play it

simple: avoid non-traditional investors such as hedge funds, business people, industrial

figures...

Be clear on the What “What” is how much and which kind of money (capital, loan,...)

you want to get. First round valuations are very low in Europe, or even unacceptable,

such as 150k€ for 30% shares. First round valuation should be between 1.5 and €2M,

never less. The first valuation is totally artificial so you have to put a high level. Do not

wonder how to reach that valuation: reverse the problem. You should fundraise only if

you reach that valuation. Try again and again until investors are ready to pay that

valuation. Fundraising is an auction. A good strategy is called the “double divide”: divide

by 2 the amount you want to raise and divide by 50% the valuation you are looking for.

This way investors have the feeling it is cheap, you end up having more term sheets,

you then double it all and you finally raise at a higher valuation than you expected, and

for more money.

Do not do a business plan Playing with numbers is useless. Cash flows are

unpredictable, especially for startups. A BP consists in building forecasts based on the

past: as an early-stage startup, you don’t have a past, so making a BP makes no sense.

Plus, it is your job to be optimistic, so of course you’ll come up with exponential

forecasts, but it is really rare to reach them. So give your budget, show how you plan to

spend the money and explain that the goal of this 1st fundraising is to establish a model

you can believe in. If an investor in the first round puts a BP as a condition, they are not

the right Who.

Beware of the How “How” is about the legal terms. What’s dangerous is that the

conditions negotiation always comes after the money negotiation. The simpler the

conditions offered, the better the investor. Do not search for equality with your investors,

search for risk alignment.

Be true about the Why Investors are not sincere about the “Why” and entrepreneurs lie

to themselves: it cannot work on the long run. If you are ready to sell at some point, say

it, if not, say it. No one cares about the “Why,” but this is the true parameter that will

make your relationship with your investors work.

Celebrate A successful fundraising is a nice milestone. Of course it doesn’t mean

anything about your future, of course it is just a beginning and not an achievement, but

still it is social proof, it boosts morale - enjoy it.

Use the money smartly Every investor knows that when they invest in a company, the

following month is always the worst month ever in terms of performance. The pressure

goes down and the entrepreneurs need a few weeks to get back on track (and some of

them never do). A successful fundraising is a hard test for founders: the only way to

know if they are capital-efficient is to give them capital. Remember that raised money

makes you go faster only if it is well spent.

Become a star at reporting Reporting is not just about tracking data: you have to

make that data understandable for people who have one hour to dedicate to you per

month. Data reporting is key to your investor relationships and the future of your

business. Your goal is to instill confidence with your performance.

Protect yourself by building your own insurance Whatever happens to you, your

VCs get paid. So do not feel too uncomfortable losing their money: put it to work, if it

pays off it will pay big for you and for them. Also, realize that anyone can be fired,

including founders, so be comfortable with that. Our opinion at TheFamily is that you

should build personal wealth from serie-A to secure yourself and your family. A basic

way to do it is through secondary: secondary money is money that goes in the pocket of

the one who sells its shares, vs primary money which goes into your company through

new issued shares bought by external people. To do secondary, when you fundraise,

you sell shares that you own with a 20 to 30% discount (never more). The discount

comes from the fact that the money going in your company generates value, not the

money going in your pocket.