- il y a 2 jours
Resourcefulness Doing More with Less
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00:00Hello everyone and welcome back to Vivitech. We're still live from stage 2 here in Paris.
00:05My name is Asha Sampit. I'm your host for the Scaling Up Sessions.
00:09And today the second session is called Resourcefulness, Doing More With Less.
00:14So in this session we'll talk about the importance not only of raising capital, but of being capital efficient.
00:21And of course we'll explore the resources that are other than capital that scale-ups can leverage to grow.
00:27So for this interesting topic, let me introduce Rémy Pesseguier, the CEO of Saint-Gulier, who will be moderating this
00:34session, who is hidden right behind me.
00:36And I would like to leave the floor to you guys. Welcome to your panelists. So enjoy and I'll see
00:40you later. See you in a bit.
00:41Thank you. Good morning everybody. Good afternoon. Sorry.
00:46I would like to, I'm very happy and very proud that we get two entrepreneurs around us today on the
00:52stage and one investor.
00:55It's very interesting because the session is about the elephant in the room, if you want, because we are going
01:01to speak about scarcity and resourcefulness.
01:05So, which are going to become a bit of a new normal in the current context.
01:11As you know, when we are discussing about preparing this session, we are thinking there is a sentence which is
01:17quite known, which is less is more, from the German architect, Maud van der Rohe.
01:22So, I'm sure that you have heard about this sentence, but I'm not sure that you thought about the fact
01:30that it may impact yourself and your business.
01:32And why, why is this sentence? Because, as you know, with the pandemic, with the geographical tensions, with the pressure
01:43on raw material and so on, there are a lot of things which are moving.
01:46And, like, talent, raw material, energy, capital, is becoming more and more expensive and scarce.
01:55And in that context, it's very important to understand what does it mean for the businesses and how can I
02:02solve that situation.
02:05And so, the period where, like, developing a company with a big amount of cash for a non-profitable business,
02:12growing very fast, maybe at least not going fully to an end, but maybe challenged.
02:18And what I would like to say is I'm not a gloomster or a doomster.
02:23I'm just trying, I'm just the founder, the co-founder and the CEO of St. Gullier, as was mentioned in
02:29the introduction.
02:30I have an entrepreneur also, and we are working alongside investors and C-levels in order to develop game-changing
02:41transformation.
02:42And being the sparing partner of that people, we see that there are a lot of strategies that could allow
02:48you and your businesses to grow, to accelerate, to develop, while being resourceful in their development.
02:59So, the question is, how do you navigate in this new context?
03:05What does it mean to be resourceful?
03:07And finally, how can you do more with less?
03:11So, I'm very extremely proud to welcome you three.
03:18And we have Aline.
03:21You have developed many businesses.
03:23You are the founder of WildPix and made it.
03:26You develop very fast-growing businesses in your career by bootstrapping a lot of businesses in a lot of sectors.
03:36We have Rodolphe Ardant.
03:38You are the CEO and founder of Spandesk, one of the most known scallops in France.
03:44You have raised 250 million euros, if I'm not wrong.
03:48And you are transforming the way CFOs and finance departments are working.
03:54And finally, we have William Baobin.
03:57You are the general partner at SOSB, one of the biggest venture capital funds in the world, with 750 portfolio
04:06companies and $2 billion under management, if I'm not wrong.
04:11More or less.
04:12So, thank you for joining us today.
04:18Maybe the first question would be, with the diverse experience that you have, the three of you, the goal would
04:27be maybe to kickstart by sharing your experience, what you have done.
04:32And we can start with you, Aline, sharing your background.
04:36And what does it mean for you being resourceful?
04:40I can say I come from a very resourceful industry.
04:43I come from the affiliate industry.
04:45And it's basically an industry with solo entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires.
04:54And myself, I grew up in a farm in a small town in Brazil.
04:59And to this day, I made at least three multimillion dollar companies.
05:05I created it from scratch.
05:07I bootstrapped everything.
05:09And my story, I have, like, my first business, the Brazilian business, we started out, to illustrate it, we started
05:18out with an advertisement agency.
05:20It was 2007, 2008, while the world crisis was, like, making everything difficult.
05:25So I decided to learn SEO, search engine optimization, to open my geographical range, because I needed to find the
05:33clients elsewhere.
05:35And in a couple of months after I implemented my strategies, I went from zero to 300 quotes through the
05:44website per month.
05:45That's when we saw the potential of SEO and traffic.
05:50So we decided to do a side business, an SEO business.
05:53Well, we were creating and optimizing over 50 niche websites.
05:58And we monetized them with Google AdSense or affiliate offers.
06:03Affiliate offers, basically, is when somebody else has the product they create, they take care of logistics and customer support.
06:11All the affiliate needs to do is promote the product, and they will get a commission from it.
06:16And we were making a lot of sales, so we decided to start an affiliate business as well.
06:22That's when we were approached by ClickBank, one of the top affiliate platforms in the world.
06:27And they were actually looking for a joint venture, a JV partner, to translate the best-selling products, which are
06:34digital products and e-books, to the Brazilian market.
06:37So we did that.
06:39And then in the first month, we published the first product, and the owner of the product contacted the affiliates,
06:45and he asked them to promote the product in Brazil.
06:48First month with affiliate marketing, this affiliate guy alone made 300,000 reais in sales in a month.
06:56And so fast-forwarding, we had like 20 products like that, in the same affiliate area.
07:05Now the company transformed, so we bootstrapped everything.
07:08I have the same partnership for 15 years now.
07:12Now we're a little different.
07:13We have our own e-commerce.
07:14We have, we create our own, we manufacture our own products abroad, and we import them to back that up.
07:21We also have a logistics center in Brazil, and we were made partners by a payment gateway, so we can
07:27have full control over the checkout process.
07:30And the funny story is that during the pandemic, I was in lockdown in London.
07:35I couldn't leave the apartment for seven months.
07:36So I decided to bootstrap another business, and I opened the business abroad, and sitting down on the floor of
07:42my apartment, I went from zero.
07:45We put 3,000 euros in capital, just to start.
07:49And with that, 3,000, we made a million in sales in less than a year from the floor of
07:54my apartment in London.
07:55So I can say I'm pretty resourceful.
07:57Yes, this is very resourceful.
07:58I fully agree.
08:00Maybe, Rodolphe, if you want to share a bit, present yourself and explain what you have done and what it
08:06means for you resourceful.
08:07Hello, everyone.
08:08I'm super happy to be here.
08:10So my name is Rodolphe.
08:11I'm the co-founder and CEO of Spendesk.
08:14So what we do with Spendesk, we help businesses to be freed from all the constraints of purchasing and spending
08:22the company money.
08:24We started the company in 2016, so five years ago.
08:30Today, we are operating mainly in Europe, in three main countries, France, the UK, and Germany, and we are serving
08:37more than 4,000 SMB businesses.
08:42To give you some of my background, I'm an engineer.
08:44I graduated as an engineer.
08:46I started my career as an entrepreneur.
08:48My first business was more on the bootstrap one, and the second business is a very different archetype because, as
08:55Remy said,
08:56we have raised with Spendesk more than 260 million euros since our inception, so in the past five years.
09:05So about resourcefulness, I think we had two different challenges over the life of Spendesk.
09:13The first one was when you come to the market with a very innovative way of doing something, so something
09:21that is very new, you change the usage with the ambition to build the norm.
09:27The first challenge that you have is, okay, people have a problem, but how do they know that there will
09:33be a solution out there?
09:35And I think this was the first challenge that we had was how we can evangelize a market.
09:40And our business model is SaaS, it's SMB.
09:42I'm talking about thousands of customers, you know, you need to reach this level of scale to start having strong
09:50traction and to build your business.
09:53And we had to find ways to easily, you know, in a scalable way, start to evangelize our market, telling
10:00them, hey, payment at work sucks, and there is a solution out there.
10:04And the second one is more, it's a second stage, and when we saw that the traction was there and
10:10people were using more and more solutions and more and more customers going in, it was like for us, okay,
10:17the market is here, the category starts to be creating, and we really need to accelerate, and we need to
10:24accelerate fast.
10:25And for us, the paradigm has changed at that time, it's how we raise the necessary amount of capital, and
10:33because the figures of our business were great, but when you've got this capital, what kind of choice do you
10:39make on where you are locating your scarce resources to the things that deliver the most impact?
10:46So this is something that for us was more, okay, how do we can do more, even more, even with
10:51capital, with what we have?
10:53Thank you a lot, Rodolphe.
10:55Williams, if you want to share your experience?
10:59Yeah, sure.
10:59So my name is William.
11:02I, you know, I was a pretty shitty CEO, so I became a VC.
11:08You know, that's what you do if you can't be an entrepreneur, right?
11:12You become a VC.
11:13So I've been doing tech investment 25 years, and we focus on, for the most part, emerging markets, developing markets,
11:19and we help companies go cross-border.
11:22All things which are very unpopular with investors.
11:27Most investors are single market, they don't do cross-border, and there's not that much VC in emerging markets and
11:33developing markets.
11:34It's like, you know, Europe eight or nine years ago when there was no VC here.
11:38You know, China was like eight times the VC market of Europe combined.
11:43But now, you know, Europe's come a long way.
11:45That's great.
11:46So what happens is, the problem is, for us, we write really small checks.
11:52And so, and basically, we need to help our companies survive on our very small check.
11:59And the challenge is that it's very difficult for them to raise money because of that cross-border nature.
12:05So our focus is on helping companies get as quickly as possible to some sort of product, market fit, or
12:13positive unit economics.
12:15Because if they don't, they're going to die.
12:18And so, with this, we went from 70% of our investments dying to 70% of our investments surviving,
12:25and about 50% doing well.
12:27And just a question there, for cross-border, maybe for the audience, could you just explain a bit what does
12:32it mean?
12:33Well, think about it like trying to build a business in, I don't know, Brussels, or whatever.
12:38It's like a really small market.
12:39You can't actually build a real company in a small market.
12:43So unless you're in the U.S. or China, your home market is not big enough.
12:46You need to go into multiple markets.
12:48And so we help companies go cross-border so that they can actually become a really big company.
12:54You know, with Europe, you know, you've got a bunch of markets sort of glued together, kind of, a little
12:59bit.
13:00But, you know, for Asia, it's very fragmented.
13:05Thank you for, and very happy again to have you with us today.
13:09There was a question regarding resourcefulness, a question of the agility.
13:14As we can imagine, when you don't have all the capital that you want, you need to be agile in
13:20changing your model.
13:20So can one of you maybe share your experience of how agility and the ability to change very quickly and
13:28to decide quickly impact your business?
13:30I don't know, William or Rudolph, who wants to start?
13:34You can continue, maybe.
13:36Yeah, so this is not one of my portfolio companies, but it's a fun one.
13:41So one of our biotech companies, basically their scientific idea failed.
13:47So usually what happens when your scientific idea fails is you get drunk.
13:51Now, somebody happened to have a bottle of Dom Perignon 1983, which at the time cost about $3,500.
13:58So, you know, scientists, you know, they drink it, but they also decided to put the Dom Perignon in a
14:04chromoscope and figure out the, basically figure out the molecular content of Dom Perignon.
14:11And they're like, oh, shit, this is actually pretty simple, right?
14:16So they made another bottle of Dom Perignon in the lab.
14:22And then, so instead of, like, building this out, first they wanted to test it.
14:27So they put Dom Perignon 1983 for $50 on a crowdfunding site, and it immediately sold out.
14:35And then they immediately got sued by Dom Perignon.
14:39But the key thing is that they gave all the money back, but they knew that there was demand without
14:44having done anything.
14:46So they decided not to give the rest of the money back, and they went into molecular spirits, which is
14:52basically, you know, we have a Macallan, you know, 35-year-old, 50 bucks a bottle.
14:58Okay, very interesting.
15:01Maybe, Rodolphe, if you want to build on the question of the agility in the new environment we are experiencing.
15:07Yeah, I think the, particularly in early stage, when you've got a lot of opportunities in front of you, like
15:19you've got a lot of ideas, you don't know what is working well, what is not going to work well,
15:23etc.
15:23And you've got so much constraint resource.
15:26I mean, if I, you know, at first it's you and yourself when you're starting your business, so that's the
15:31only resource that you have.
15:33One thing that has been very, very important for us is how can you move with speed into knowing if
15:43this idea, this opportunity is worse continuing or worse topic.
15:48And there is a need for me of having a very, very strong discipline, particularly in the early stage, towards
15:57one, testing many different things, but cutting them very, very fast when it doesn't work, and doubling down very quickly
16:05when it does.
16:06So for us, for example, at the beginning of Spend S, again, people had the problem, no one was there.
16:12We had to understand, okay, how we can create demand, and we tested many things, you know, online marketing, but
16:17demand was not there.
16:18And in the end, what worked well was purely outbound acquisition channels, so reaching out to prospects, to customers.
16:25And when we saw that the transformation was well, moving very, very fast into building teams that can operate this
16:33level, these things at scale.
16:36Thank you.
16:37And Aline, if you want to share your experience of agility, I think it's really also at the heart of
16:42your model.
16:43Yeah.
16:44Your business model, if you want to share your experience there.
16:46Yeah.
16:48In my industry, everything is pretty agile, from having an idea to finding a product, to source the product, to
16:55put it on an e-commerce.
16:57The power of social media, anybody can share their products or ideas and be able to have, like, very fast
17:03customer feedback and scale it.
17:06So it's very fast.
17:07And for us, I have, like, the trained eye.
17:12I got it.
17:13And so to find, to do, like, a product research is, like, very fast.
17:18I can see the potential in products very fast, digital or physical.
17:24Then to test it out, for us, it's super fast.
17:27Like, usually we test, like, 10 different types of products.
17:30In a week, I can already tell you if that's going to work or not.
17:34And then we go into, like, the product development, like, my abroad company.
17:39We found a product that's still going on for two, almost three years.
17:44And we made it better, right?
17:48We got a factory in China.
17:50We made a new model.
17:52We made it better.
17:53We improved it by customer support.
17:55Because these days, customer support is very important.
17:58And, like, customer satisfaction.
18:00So it's a very agile business.
18:02It's very easy.
18:03And maybe if I can complete there, when we do, when we look at the markets today, the agility in
18:09developing products, the feedback loops from customers in the product you develop, and the ability to integrate that in your
18:15development process is key and is at heart of your model.
18:18How do you take it very quickly to adapt it and to invest in what is the most important?
18:23We had, there is another question where I think it would be interesting to get your perspective.
18:28It's a question of the operational efficiency.
18:31If you are speaking about resourcefulness, the key question behind is how do you make sure that when you allocate
18:36your capital, when you focus on something, you really operate at the best practice level.
18:42So, basically, for you, maybe, Rodolphe, what does it mean?
18:47How do you integrate operational efficiency in your model?
18:50And what is the role of that in the efficiency of the allocation of your capital and feeding your growth?
18:57Yeah, I think the, so, the first thing is on your business model.
19:01When you're targeting SMB, your business model needs to be extremely efficient.
19:07Basically, it's small amount of money that your customers are paying you, and there is a cost of acquisition that
19:14can be important.
19:15So, if your unit economics are not working well, the more you grow, the more you're going to spend capital,
19:20and in the end, it's not going to work for you.
19:22So, the level of focus in terms of efficiency on everything that relates to your customer lifecycle is super important
19:34because it drives the economics of your business.
19:38The second thing is how personally, you know, people are one of the main constraints that you may have.
19:46So, how you can hand power, make every one of the people working with you, give them super power.
19:54We are a SaaS solution, and we are huge users of software, tools, service that can augment the productivity and
20:07the efficiency on our people.
20:09And it was a rational choice since the beginning.
20:12So, again, early stage, it seems that it's a cost.
20:16I'm not going to use this tool because it's an extra cost, etc.
20:20But actually, the biggest cost that you have, and particularly when your market is hot and you have to move
20:26with speed, is your ability to not deliver or to not execute.
20:31So, everything that you can bring that augment the leverage of every one of the people working with you, for
20:37me, is a very good investment.
20:39Thank you, Rodolphe.
20:41Maybe I lean on the super-rational efficiency aspect.
20:45You started a bit to explain on the social network, do you use it, but do you have examples of
20:50how do you apply operational efficiency in your model?
20:54Since day one, there are like three steps that I can mention.
20:58The first would be increasing the average order value of the product and the lifetime customer value.
21:05So, that's like number one thing that we think about.
21:08So, first, bundling, bundling discounts, upsells, downsells, before the sale, after the sale.
21:17We have a funnel.
21:18Like the funnel has like many steps.
21:21And so, we work very hard on it to have the biggest average order value that we can.
21:27And then, of course, cart recovery, everything needs to be very tight.
21:32Second thing would be landing page optimization allied with campaigns.
21:37So, we do a lot of A-B testing.
21:41And we also test a lot of angles to see what people are interested about, what aspect of the product
21:47are they interested.
21:49Because I don't have a variety of products in my e-commerce.
21:53I have one product, you know.
21:54I have many one product stores.
21:56So, I really work that product.
21:59And then, the third thing would be, then we sit down and we think, where are we going to allocate
22:02the budget in my business?
22:04Usually, we start investing and reinvesting everything again into advertising.
22:10Because we need data, we need customer feedback, and we need orders to check if it's going to work, right?
22:17If this product has potential or not.
22:19Then, when we're way in, like we have a decent campaign, it's steady, it's going well.
22:24Because our campaigns, when we start a product that is very new, we try to find new things, right?
22:30Our ROI in campaigns, like Facebook campaigns, are 50 to 100%.
22:34Yeah.
22:35So, in the first year, we're very profitable, very profitable.
22:38So, then, with that kind of money, then we work on improving the product.
22:43Because that's super important.
22:45We cannot survive over a year if the product is not good.
22:48Yeah.
22:49Basically, that's it.
22:50Thank you.
22:51I think it's a really great example of bootstrapping for, like, young entrepreneurs launching businesses.
22:57It's a very cool story.
22:58Maybe, William, when we were, just before entering on the stage, you were sharing the fact that you are investing
23:05in small businesses.
23:07All operational efficiency matters.
23:09And what do you do, like, from data-driven topic, decision, to best practice level and aligning?
23:16What is your perspective on it?
23:18And what is the role of it?
23:19Yeah.
23:20So, I mean, it might seem sort of obvious, but there's this thing called Lean Startup.
23:25And everybody reads the book, but nobody actually does it.
23:29Okay.
23:29So, our program is not rocket science.
23:31All we're doing is helping the entrepreneurs that we work with implement Lean Startup.
23:37And basically, what that means is you run experiments.
23:42So, you have an idea.
23:44Then you hopefully design the experiment properly.
23:47You have a thought that, you know, what the outcome will be of the experiment.
23:51And then you run the experiment.
23:53And you do it over and over and over again.
23:55It's actually pretty simple.
23:56But most people, you know, they start building things first.
24:01Generally speaking, don't build anything until you already know that it's going to work.
24:05And so, everything's dummy.
24:08Like, the things that you do as an early stage startup is it's not fake until you make it.
24:13But everything is fake.
24:15Right?
24:15Everything is fake.
24:16And then it's humans and Excel spreadsheets in the background.
24:19Once you know that it's worked, okay, fine.
24:22Then you build it.
24:23So, the biggest rule of thumb here is that you should, you know, really not, don't build anything until you
24:32know that it's worked.
24:33Once you know what works, you build it.
24:36But you don't build the whole thing.
24:37You build the pieces, like the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest pieces to automate.
24:42Right?
24:42And then over time, you will get a scalable product.
24:45But the rule here is that when you're doing early stage startup, you're not building things for scale.
24:51The things that you do as an early stage startup are not the things that you will do as a
24:56later stage startup.
24:57Right?
24:57You're going to be doing a lot of things manually.
25:00And then, you know, once you're spending a dollar and you're making more than a dollar, okay, then you can
25:05scale it up a bit.
25:07But until you have positive unit economics, it's all experiments.
25:12I think also, I can imagine, to the risk.
25:14You are taking the risk of selling maybe more than what you could or handling more sales that your staff
25:21is able to handling, to handle.
25:23But just trying.
25:24Oh, yeah.
25:25You just try it.
25:26And, you know, basically, the easiest way to raise money is to not need the money.
25:32Yes.
25:32Or the easiest way to raise money is to have so much demand for what you're doing that it's like,
25:38I'm flooded here.
25:39And if you give me money, I'll be able to sell more.
25:43But actually, I don't need your money because I'm growing, you know, well enough as it is.
25:47But I have so much demand that I can't handle it.
25:51And then, okay, I'll take your money if, you know, if you really want to give it to me.
25:54Thank you, William.
25:57So, we spoke about, like, different topics which are really interesting, I think, on responding to that question.
26:04How do you think about the non-financial resources?
26:09You know, from my perspective, trust and human capital has been the core of the development of my entrepreneur journey
26:17and how to develop my businesses in the past and still today.
26:20What is your perspective on this non-financial criteria or, like, assets?
26:28Maybe, Aline, if you want to start.
26:31Yeah.
26:31I've always been very active in the community.
26:34So, I've always done articles, podcasts, interviews, public speaking, because I find it very important to have authority.
26:42When you have authority, you can not only find the best solutions and the best ideas to go over any
26:52problems that you might be having,
26:54but you also have, like, inside information about businesses that are actually working now and even JVs, which changed my
27:01life completely.
27:03And also, I got such a big authority in the affiliate industry that right now, whatever product that I need
27:11help scaling,
27:12I can just contact my affiliate friends and they will promote whatever I throw at them because they know I
27:19can deliver a very highly profitable offer.
27:22And they trust you, I can imagine.
27:24Of course.
27:25Yes.
27:25I have years of experience.
27:28William, if you want to share your perspective.
27:30Yeah, sure.
27:31So, I mean, we write small checks and we take relatively a lot of equity.
27:35So, it's a pretty shitty deal.
27:36So, we had to justify our position in the market.
27:40We had to get very, very creative.
27:42So, one of the things on the consumer side that we did is we reached out to our corporate partners.
27:47And it took four years of getting, you know, people saying no.
27:50But we have now convinced companies like Samsung and Xiaomi to give our companies free advertising.
27:57So, we call that unfair advantage.
27:59We're the only VC in the world where that gives our portfolio companies free advertising as part of the investment.
28:06So, no one actually works with us for the money.
28:08They're working with us because they get free advertising on the consumer side.
28:13And now, the first four years, it didn't work.
28:15I mean, we are kind of like a startup.
28:17But we've now, 2019, we had 6 million monthly active users in the portfolio.
28:22We just hit 154 million monthly active users, all with a customer acquisition cost of zero.
28:28And now, our companies are starting to cross-promote each other.
28:32And there's no advertising fee, but there's revenue share.
28:35So, it's like a, you know, basically like affiliate.
28:39So, this is a non-financial approach that is becoming very powerful.
28:44We hope to get to a billion monthly active users.
28:46Very impressive.
28:48Maybe, Rodolphe, on this aspect of non-financial resources that you have been leveraged for Spendesk.
28:55Yeah, I think the, what is particularly hard in the beginning is, again, you're just no one, nothing, right?
29:04So, why are your customers are going to trust you?
29:07Why are they going to believe that your solution is finally the one that is going to solve their problem?
29:12How can you, you know, learn from them without, again, having all the resources that needs to accelerate this learning?
29:22And so, one of the things that we built and helped us establish this trust in the market, and it
29:32equals what you say, Alin, is investing massively into the community.
29:36So, surrounding ourselves with finance leaders that meet together, exchange together, build the future of the finance function with us.
29:48And we've been building a community around that that is called CFO Connect that has more than 7,000 members.
29:54And again, it was just about how we create something together that enables us to build the future of this
30:01function.
30:02And this community, by growing, give us an asset that is very, very interesting, is this authority saying, okay, we
30:12are not just no one, but we're actually one of the actors that is changing and building this future.
30:18Thank you on this one.
30:21So, it's interesting in what we just discussed on non-financial assets.
30:24You have the trust, you have the community and the partners, the people who know you and trust you.
30:29You have the ability to develop partnership.
30:32So, and you have, as I mentioned at the beginning also, the teams that you are able to build in
30:38your company in order to grow.
30:40Maybe, you know, if we wrap up a bit what we have discussed on this resourcefulness question,
30:49what is interesting is we are in a context of, like, scarcity of resources, of maybe more challenge on getting
30:58access to capital.
31:01What I would get, maybe your final perspective on this one, my perception is that being transformational,
31:08finding new ways of doing things is a key aspect.
31:11Transformation internally, how do you operate more efficiently?
31:15Transformation of your market, you are transforming the finance market, you are transforming, to some extent,
31:20like the e-commerce market being very agile and you are helping small companies to transform by cross-borders.
31:27I think it's positive that you see new ways of developing businesses while not only counting on capital and on
31:34cash and on burning cash, if I may say.
31:36Okay, maybe in a few words, what makes you feel optimistic about the months to come and the years to
31:43come in the new context we are?
31:45I can start on that.
31:47So, I believe that, you know, the future is going to be kind of hard, just, you know, general, on
31:58a macroeconomic level.
31:59It's been, we found out after 30 years that natural resources are not infinite, etc.
32:06And all our economic model works on that.
32:11However, I'm an engineer.
32:13I'm an engineer.
32:14And what engineers do is they love solving problems, you know, and they love optimizing things under constraints.
32:23And I truly believe that when you operate in a world, when there is constraint, that's where innovations come.
32:31When you don't have any constraint, there is no innovation.
32:33I mean, everything is quite easy, right?
32:36It's because there is a lack of something.
32:38It's because you cannot, you need to figure out a creative way of doing something with the poor resources that
32:45you have, that you start innovating.
32:47And to me, and foreign engineers, and particularly, you know, believing in tech, I think that's going to drive a
32:55lot of opportunities for us, for our business, and beyond for the whole humanity to have the opportunity to work
33:03into these developed constraints and solving the problem that we are facing today.
33:07It's interesting, if I may, Rodolf, what you say, and it will make a bridge to Aline, is that when
33:13you look at e-commerce, if I take e-commerce as an example, was really the topic of the year
33:182000, until 2010, 2015, really the emergence of e-commerce.
33:24Most of the e-commerce players which have succeeded were the players with limited cash because they are focused on
33:30efficiencies, they are focused on being creative in developing the model.
33:33Most of the players and some big, big multinationals invested a lot of money to be good at e-commerce,
33:39and most of them have failed, or a lot of them have failed, because they got too much money, too
33:44much cash, and they were not inventive.
33:45It reflects a bit what you just said, creativity when you don't have everything.
33:50Yeah, and building, obviously, something solid, as our friend Buffett is saying, it's when the water goes away that we
33:58see what people have in a suit.
33:59Exactly, exactly.
34:00And that's, you know, in period when there is plenty of everything, there is a lot of inefficiency, and when
34:06the period starts to be more tense, the most efficient business is going to produce itself.
34:12Very interesting, thank you, Rodolf.
34:13Maybe, William, what is your perspective on, like, makes positive about the years to come and the months to come
34:22regarding this, like, more challenging condition, I would say?
34:27Yeah, so the funny thing is that this is the best time to do a startup.
34:32It's actually also the best time to be an investor, because in a hot market, any idiot can raise money.
34:39And what happens, you know, the number of good startups does not increase when the market is hot.
34:44It doesn't decrease when the market is down.
34:47The challenge is that there's just too much money washing around.
34:50So now, if you can survive, if you can build a business in this context, you know, the best of
34:57the best will get funded over time, but you will have a lot less competition.
35:01And, you know, statistically, if you look at, you know, the most successful companies out of there, they were always
35:06born out of downturns.
35:08So we've actually been waiting for this downturn for a while, because now it's, you know, things get a little
35:14bit easier.
35:15Now, it's tough because it's tough to survive.
35:18But if you can manage to survive through this period, you'll be battle-tested, you'll be under fire, and you'll
35:25be that much stronger than any other company that comes in in that hot period.
35:31Thank you, William.
35:32And Aline, last but not least.
35:34I'm usually very optimistic during crisis, because that's when I thrive.
35:39That's when I force myself into doing something that I should be doing a long time ago.
35:44And for e-commerce, it was very special, the pandemic, because Shopify reported that they were having daily the same
35:53amount of traffic that they were having during a Black Friday.
35:56It was beautiful.
35:58I've never seen something so beautiful in my life before.
36:01So every crisis we go through, we actually, example, another thing that happened, Facebook became, like, very, it's very hard.
36:11It's very expensive, and it's very hard.
36:13And because of that change, we actually had to improve our products and get, like, very good customer satisfaction.
36:19And that's good.
36:20That's a good thing.
36:21And now we're focusing on creating brands, not only selling offers anymore.
36:26We're actually thinking of a story behind the product and creating good, very good products.
36:33And right now, for us, at least, it's like the industry is already thinking alike.
36:40We're actually looking for investors now, because we didn't before, right?
36:44We always bootstrapped everything to help us scale, because the business became way more complex than it used to be
36:49before.
36:50So, yeah, I'm very optimistic about it.
36:54Thank you, Aline.
36:55Thanks a lot for your presence today.
36:58We are just on time, so I think we are perfect.
37:01Thanks a lot.
37:01I think it was very insightful with very diverse background and very diverse trajectory of your history.
37:09And I wish you a very good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for the audience attending this conference.
37:14Thanks for having me.
37:16Thank you.
37:16Thank you, Remy.
37:17Thank you for being on time, and thank you to all our panelists.
37:19Thank you very much.
37:20Thank you.
37:21Thank you.
37:22Right.
37:23So, ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes, our third session on scaling up.
37:28Thank you.
37:28Which is IPO VS acquisition.
37:31Is there a better exit strategy that will start in a couple of minutes?
37:35If you're online, stay there, keep watching, and make sure you enter the stage two banner to ask your questions.
37:41We'll take a short break, and I'll see you in a bit.
37:43Thank you.
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