# Learning together makes things easier
- URL: https://www.petrikajander.com/sami/
- Author: Petri Kajander
- Date: 2021-09-30
- Language: en
- Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/1cba80bc/podcast/play/40503940/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2022-10-19%2F298068747-44100-2-245f383909d45.mp3
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREoTUoM-rU
## Sami Benchekroun - TALKS WITH PETRI
**Sami Benchekroun talks about the three phases of startup growth from bootstrapping to scaling and raising over €20m in funding. We discuss the role of mentorship and finding the right type of investors but also some French puns are involved.**
#### Bio
Sami Benchekroun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Morressier, the virtual conference provider and platform for the scientific community. Sami has over ten years of experience in academic conferences, scholarly publishing, and entrepreneurship. He drives Morressier's vision forward and is dedicated to increasing the impact and reach of professional and scientific conferences. A frequent industry contributor, Sami serves as a scientific communications lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin. He has a background studying management at ESCP Europe.
[Website](http://www.morressier.com/) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/samibenchekroun/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/samiBLN)
[Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREoTUoM-rU)
#### Show notes
- Bootstrapping and VC funding
- How it all started and the learnings along the way
- Early-stage science research and its discovery
- Initial idea sold as a product
- The early success and positive cash flow while bootstrapping
- Customers started to call and the demand potential was discovered
- Go out and expose yourself to innovation
- Talking to VCs in Web Summit changed the course of the company
- Even if the product works your business model may not scale
- Expensive trial-and-effort that failed with friends, family’s and fools’ money
- How right angel investors and mentors make a difference
- Professional communities and the role of conferences
- Choosing the target customer
- Where your market approach is rather unique
- How to make money in the research field and provide value
- The Project Ice Cream (Matrix 4)
- From conference posters to data teams and content analysis
- Building a startup with family life and small children
- Support network for founders
- Entrepreneurship as a fast marathon
- Role of honesty and vulnerability
- Mentorship
- Listening to other people’s advice and experience is not evident
- Entrepreneurs’ Organisation for founders
- What COVID-19 changed in personal life and in the company
- Raising a VC round in Corona times
- What changes in later funding rounds
#### Show links
(Web Summit)
(Entrepreneurs’ Organisation)
## Transcript (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREoTUoM-rU)
[0:03] This is Talks with Petri show, and today's guest, we have Sami Benchekroun. Welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. What changes when you have raised over 20 million euros in funding versus bootstrapping? What chances? That's a good question. You're putting me on the spot right at the beginning here. That's the point. Wonderful. Well, if you want to hear about probability of success, I would say that I cannot give you really an answer. What I would say, though, is that bootstrapping definitely makes you think hard about where to put your money and where to invest. Versus if you get $20 million in funding, your thought process and the way you are thinking is a little bit different.
[1:01] And it makes your thinking, in my experience at least, much bigger and much further, right? So the horizon that you're looking at is much further in the future. So I would say that is the major difference. What is better? There's a reason for both ways, I would say, to just make a very diplomatic answer here. Well, we don't need to be diplomatic. You also, I don't know, it felt to me that you almost made it sound like that it's like a dessert option. Do I go for the mud cake or do I take an expresso? But I guess it doesn't really happen that way. No, it doesn't. You know, so in my experience, right, we have almost experienced two, you know, both ways in the company that I founded. And there was a time when bootstrapping was really the way to go and to prove the model.
[1:58] and to really understand what are we going to do, what do we need to prove almost. And then there was a time when we needed venture capital because it was exactly the type of growth that we could achieve and that we couldn't go after. So bootstrapping versus venture capital is almost not the choice. I think there's a time for both of them. And both of them are valid options or valid partners, if you will. So, you know, there is a time for both. I think that's the answer. Can you run through quickly or just a bit for the audience as well? What do you do?
[2:44] How did you get here? And I guess you didn't start with the VC. You did a bit of bootstrapping in the beginning. Exactly. Well, I think my first, you know, there's these, sorry for my English, these fuck-up shows, right, where you talk about what didn't really go well. I hope you can beep it out. No, we're not going to do that. We're speaking French here. Very good. So I think I've had a lot of that in the very early, early, early years. So a lot of learnings, a lot of things that really didn't go well. But just in a nutshell, right? So, you know, I've started right after the uni to build the company that is now called Mauritier. And throughout the path, you know, we have stopped, we have started, we have created some other paths in between. So it was a, you know, kind of that tree path, right?
[3:39] There's one way and then there's these little, you know, ways right and left. And then we've went through all of them and really found out that there's some some some paths that have a natural stop it that don't go really further. So so the company that we're doing now is in the area of scientific communication, scholarly communication. Right. So we are making early stage research, very early scientific results accessible that would typically be presented on academic and scientific conferences. It's a world that is completely offline. And in the last year, things changed, but we'll go deeper down, I'm sure. So the path that we took, I think it was now six or seven years ago, was we observed that on conferences, the way relevant scientific research, cancer research, all the relevant research is communicated on paper. So scientists from all around the world printing physical posters, literally printing through an old-school printer and putting it with scotch tape on the wall.
[4:53] That sounds like my school days, you know, arts and crafts. Exactly. Absolutely. But instead of beautiful pictures, that's literally how to cure those crazy diseases. or even in other fields, right? How to do innovation, right? Rocket science is just to get one example. You would communicate that on paper, right? Or on a PowerPoint presentation where you bring the USB key, plug it into a computer, present it, take it away again, and go off. So I think we're not too far off from these overhead projectors. Do you remember those overhead? Yeah, I know. I actually even, I'm that old, I even used them. Exactly, exactly. You know, in my school times, they stood in every corner and we also sometimes used them, right, with these long foils where you would write down. And essentially, the idea of a PowerPoint is the same, right? It's just one idea after the other. So nothing really revolutionary on the PowerPoint. So this is the way scientific information is being communicated, either on paper or on a thing that is very close to an overhead projector, which puts a lot of problems into that world.
[6:12] So one big problem is accessibility, right? So that's a huge one. You have it just for those people that are either in the room or that can afford to go to a conference. And this is what we observed very early on. And we saw... Who are we? We, yeah, that's a good one. So we are three co-founders. It's my best friend, Justus, and Reno, who we met in the startup ecosystem here in Berlin, who has done great, great work at IAM, which is a really great company here out of Berlin. And we came together to build what is now Moisier. So it's three co-founders. So are you the only science nerd or all of you guys went just for the Friday evening to just, you know, geek out?
[7:11] Yeah, well, sometimes I would like to do that, right? So sometimes I would like to just say, hey, I'm actually the science nerd, right? I did rocket science. I did all of that. And the blunt reality, I'm just not, right? just a very boring business student that studied at a French, even French business, French is the second time we talk about France, a French business student that just by, I would say, biographical accidents, I would call it, came into this world of scholarly research. So that's the path. And Eustace and Reno, the three of us, we are not scholars. And quite frankly, I think that enabled us to, first of all, be as stubborn as we have been in the very early days to just crack this huge problem.
[8:04] And second of all, I think that's even more important. We were very naive. Yeah, I was actually even starting to think, was it actually a problem? Or was it just, you know, you thought that there was a problem? The other guys were perfectly happy to just do PowerPoints. No, it's a good point. It's a good point. And I think that this is one of the biggest learnings that we have went through. So this entire notion of product market fit that you're alluding to is something that we thought about a lot in the very beginning. It is just nice to have. What is the purpose of the company? What are we going to do? What is this? And it fits perfectly to what we've started to talk about when it comes to bootstrapping versus venture capital-backed companies, right? In the very early days, when we did a little bit of a trial and error and we created a product that would be nice to have, right?
[9:04] It was just nice to have, correctly. Then bootstrapping was exactly the way to go about it, right? get the first client, learn, sell it, see how it works. What was the first prototype or the first MVP? Oh, it was a crappy product. Holy crap. There were a lot of stories. Oh, boy. Now it all comes up. Memory lane, we're on. I think the story of the first client was a conference that took place in 2014. It was before we actually founded the company. And the three of us, we have successfully sold an idea of a product. And that idea of a product would basically digitize these posters and would make them display on an iPad app.
[9:59] So you were scanning them. Well, we had the PDFs. So people were sending us via mail the PDFs. We were putting all the PDFs onto the iPad, connected the iPad with a large screen so that you had the experience of a big poster, but you could interact with it on the iPad, right? So that was the innovation to say, well, you know, we will bring those paper posters into the modern area. You could integrate videos, interactive graphs, links, and so on and so forth. So it was a step up. People didn't really use it. But just the idea of enabling videos and so on was quite nice. And that product that we have sold them, the day before the first day of that conference, that first conference, nothing was stable. Everything just fell apart.
[10:58] These PDF wouldn't render properly. The videos wouldn't really work from those two or three posters. And I still remember, I still remember there was a hotel next to that conference venue where we needed to bring one of the screens into the hotel rooms, you know, put the iPad to it. And we, our engineer, who was one engineer, coded the entire night to just try to make things happen so that nothing would break. So it was two non-tech people, one engineer, you know, the two non-tech watching. Is it going to work? Is it going to work all night long providing Red Bull and Coca-Cola? So we were basically hacking throughout the night. And then the next day, obviously nothing really worked properly.
[11:47] So what we did, the three of us completely tired, we didn't sleep at all. Let me guess. You ran into a print shop and did it, the good old-fashioned posters. well at least that was a backup option i think we didn't have that in mind back then we really really want to make it happen so we stood next to and there we had 15 screens with ipads connected so the three of us we were in that room and jumping from screen to screen to basically support everybody that would use the ipads so that the app wouldn't crash because we know exactly what needed to be done in order to... So, you know, I think that was the first experience of us creating the company with a lot of learnings that came after. So, what happened next? Sounds like that this is the, you know, the exciting and fun part of the story, you know? Oh, well, you know, when I'm thinking and seeing ourselves in that hotel room, I'm starting to sweat again. It was a lot of pressure because quite frankly, we were able to actually sell it for a decent amount. So the value that it provided retrospectively was quite big. So just to put that into perspective, I talked about it in a funny way, but We managed to put 1,500 posters that needed to be displayed in an entire hall, huge hall, in a much smaller room with these 15 screens.
[13:29] And suddenly people were interacting much better in front of these screens, were asking questions. The dialogue sparked suddenly. So, while being there and while being all stressed out and all being, wow, is it really the path that we want to go, we realized that the value of what we have created there was actually much bigger than we initially anticipated. So, the learning brought us to one idea after another. And we've obviously made the first version a little bit more stable. We got more clients based on that case study. we've sold you know to to more conferences and it was a nice path right so we've had two three partners that very closely supported us also on that you know providing those screens and and the iPads because we didn't want to do anything with hardware we were always you know very focused on the software and slowly we begun to realize that there is a very good path that could scale right and And the path that we have discovered there is the data, right?
[14:40] The documents and the data that we would collect, that's very relevant, very relevant to a lot of people out there. Not only the research community, not only researchers around the world, but also suddenly we got calls and emails from pharma companies that were saying, hey, didn't you digitize these posters? You know, we would love to get access to it. We need them for our research. So, you know, by accident almost, we stumbled into this world of, oh, wow, it's much bigger than just putting a paper into an iPad and make a little bit of zoom and pinch to zoom. But there is a whole world that emerged out of that. And that world is what we now work on at Mauritius. And that's where we started and where we now raised over, I think, 26 million in venture funding. And the way it proved us right, in a sense. Did that insight come from you, from the founders, just observing what was happening, or was it actually coming from the market, like the farmers calling you and asking for the data?
[15:56] Yeah, I think it was a little bit of both, right? So, obviously, I didn't sit in the dark room and, you know, how am I going to change the world? It wasn't that. I think it was a connection of very interesting, serendipitous moments that happened. So we've created these moments almost as a founding team. And we've created, let's say, that platform in order for the market reaction to come. And that's my firm belief to say you're not going to change anything while sitting in a room and just thinking. or what's going to be big, but really putting yourself in those situations.
[16:47] And when it comes to, I don't like the word innovation, but let's call it creativity, right? If you want to have that creative mindset, I think you need to put yourself in a situation where it can happen, right? And you need to be open for these. So that's how it led to where we are now and where the market reacted as it reacted. So in the beginning, you were basically doing bootstrapping with revenues. When did you start to take some external funding? And I think there were some pivots also somewhere along the way. So it wasn't like usually afterwards and more time goes, it's more like from A to B.
[17:36] and, you know, straight into success story. No, it's from A to G, and then you just switch the letter system, and then you come back, and that's somehow how it goes. And there was also, I think there was at least one trip to Ireland as well. Was that the detour? Oh, yeah. There's a lot of questions in here, but I'm just going to put one after the other. Oh, Ireland, yes. So the detour, right? So when we've started, and after that conference that I've talked about, after that, we have done maybe 10 or 15 or 20 more conferences, and it led us to profitability, which is quite interesting.
[18:26] How quickly did that happen within a year or two? Yeah, it was a year. It was a year, maybe one and a half. So we had a small operation. We were just three. I think we got two interns. We were five. And it was enough, right? I was selling. My co-founders built the product and did the customer onboarding. And so on. It worked quite nicely. Customers were very happy. And we took some very small salary at the very beginning, and we got a little bit of state funding as well. But after one, one and a half years, we were profitable for the first time, which is quite interesting. And I think that was the moment when we were talking about those systems, right? We jumped ahead.
[19:16] And that was the moment when we started to understand that there is a world of venture funding, or at least that there's a different path of the one that we took. Because we started it off without thinking about it. We just wanted to do something. And that's where the trip to Ireland came actually to play. So you went to the toilet. So we were proud. We saw a profitable company. We have 15 clients. We digitized posters, right? It's nice. That's big. That was our world. And we said, all right, you know what? We have heard of that conference happening every year in Ireland, which is called Web Summit. Back then, I think it wasn't too well known.
[20:10] So what we did is we said, because our product consists out of the screen and the hardware stuff and the software, we needed to bring everything to Ireland. So we took a bus. Bus? Yeah, these Volkswagen buses, right? Oh, yeah, your vans, yeah. I thought you were just basically taking it as the regular, you know, commercial and no service bus. Hey, can you guys take our screen as well? No, we took that van, yeah. And we drove from Berlin to Dublin, which is obviously interesting because you need to take twice the ferry, which is an interesting experience. So we slept in the car. It was, I think, one and a half day drive or so, changing back and forth.
[21:01] But with that clear mission and that big hope that on Web Summit we'll find VVC that will fund us and that will, you know, for whatever we wanted to do, I think it wasn't clear at all. And when we arrived in Dublin and put our screen up and we had the first conversation, we very quickly realized the ideas that we had and the expectations that we had. And on the other hand, the reality, it didn't match at all. At all. We didn't know how to answer all of those questions. And it was frustrating, quite frankly. So your poster didn't work? It didn't.
[21:48] So the poster was displayed very nicely. But when I talked with all my excitement, hey, hey, VC, look at this. We can digitize poster. And it's big. Look at that. Nobody really got that fire. And obviously, there was no storyline. There was no business case. There was no real, it was a little bit of a stretch. Not even a little bit. I'm realizing that I never talked about that in that detail as with you now. Here we go. So I think that this was the first realization. And this was the moment when we started to think, oh, you know, it seems like we have two choices, right? The choice number one was we'll build, you know, we'll go further to conference organizer in order to sell our hardware, you know, iPad poster solution. Or way number two, we will think different and scale the business and create a big business based on venture funding and much faster growth.
[22:55] And I would say that that was a time when we needed to rethink completely and needed to learn again. So I would even now say that there are these three times in the building of the company. One was that bootstrapping time. The second period came right after Dublin, after driving with a van and sleeping in that van on ferries. By the way, when we went back, there was a huge storm. And that was a scary situation, now that I'm thinking back of it. I have a similar story. This goes back in the 90s. I was studying in the UK, and we were going from England to UK, island for just for the holiday i think we were coming back and you know handing our tickets and we were asking because it was the weather was not good so it was like how is the weather and and the person from the tickets you know both are saying well have you seen titanic and you know yeah well it wasn't even stormy Very good.
[24:05] Well, you got that feeling, right? It's that slight salt on your lips, right? Because the wind is so crazy going against you and that you cannot really sit straight and you see already those bottles of those whiskey bottles in the bar falling down. You know, that was exactly it. So I'm still hearing those. It was absolutely crazy. middle of the night. Yeah, well, it almost is that, that was kind of the battle, when things changed, right? That was the second period. And that second period, I would consider a lot of failing. And that was all pre-2017, by the way. So I would say it was the years between 2015 to 2017, those one, two years, where we've even started a second company that was our first try to build a venture-backed business, which also miserably failed.
[25:01] We've put a lot of money in there and lost it all. And the idea came a little bit through that poster concept to say, how can we facilitate researchers to create posters? Well, let's give them a tool, an app, where you would throw a lot of things together, a lot of pictures, videos, and text, and it creates kind of a poster builder. I can almost hear like that damn, you know, these PDFs, it's a mess. You know, the standard of PDF is not really a standard. You know, it always crashes our app. What about if we actually just make the, you know, the tool, you know, which doesn't crash our app? Yes, yes, yes. You got it. Spot on. And additionally, what we thought is, and we could scale it much faster.
[25:52] We don't need hardware. We can just distribute it to researchers and so on. It obviously didn't work because researchers and scientists, they, let's say, had their way on how to put posters together and they had their pros. And changing habits for researchers and scientists is, I guess for everybody in the world, is tough. And especially in that field is even harder. So what we did is we tried very quickly to say, Well, this could be a perfect thing for fashion. This could be a perfect fashion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We thought about fashion. Now we're going to France again, are we? Or Milan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are. It's immediate. It's right there, right there. Well, we thought, you know, where we wanted to create this PDF builder or this beautiful poster builder should have an aesthetic appearance.
[26:48] So we were thinking, well, where do you need aesthetic? And fashion was the thing. And, you know, I'm a little interested in fashion, let's put it this way. So it was a natural way to just experiment. No, I'm just wondering, what were you smoking in Berlin at the time? I don't see the connection so clearly. It makes sense in my brain. So it made a lot of sense, but obviously it very much didn't. So yet another learning, right? We obviously miserably failed. Nobody wanted to use it. We never had that social media idea in mind, right? Because you needed to scale back then.
[27:38] Instagram was, I think, was already very big. There were more and more apps in that area that came up. So, you know, it was a nice idea, let's put it this way, but that's it. So, did you have two companies at the same time? Was it like a subsidiary? Or you said also you put some money in there, and was it also external funding in there? Yeah, no, it was two complete different companies. And we put in kind of the friends, families, and fools money in that company, in that second company. So all the money that was left on my bank account, we've poured into that. That wasn't a lot in the first place, but it didn't really bring us any further. So after a year or one and a half year, we stopped that second company.
[28:32] Fashion was too expensive. Better to stick to the science. Well, yeah, it was a frustrating time. It was a very frustrating time. It was a frustrating time. It was a completely new team. I was in the beginning, obviously, very exciting because I had these learnings from our bootstrapping time. A lot of learnings also our crash with our Web Summit experience. So there was more learnings, and it was a completely different team. So you basically almost stopped, or did you stop the Web Summit, the first one? No, so our initial company in the science world, it continued, right? Because we had clients, you know, it was still profitable, right? It was just running, no exciting things happening.
[29:25] It was just step by step, very slowly, nothing spectacular, if you will, but solid. And then the other business was, you know, I was very excited about it, very naive. I think that I needed this type of excitement, if you will. If you come to that realization, you just need something that sparks your interest again. And it did, right? And after that failed, and that's kind of the second period, if you will, the more recent times started. So that's like 17, 18, 2000. Exactly, yeah. since end of 17, right? So almost beginning 18 to now, end 17, beginning of 18, that's the time that where I'm still in, right?
[30:18] That's the period where we've learned a lot, where I grew up, I, you know, learned much more. I wasn't so arrogant. I wasn't so, let's say, stubborn with the initial ideas that I had. and we've built the company that we have now, Mauritier. For me, that is the beginning of that company, right? 2017, beginning 2018, that's when we got the first angel funding, proper angel funding from an absolute brilliant angel in the industry, Jan Reichelt, who founded Mendeley, he sold it to Elsevier, so he knew, right, he went through the entire path and knew all the ups and downs.
[31:08] He gave me a lot of great insights. And how I met him was also an interesting path, right? Throughout that time of my second period, I engaged with a lot of VCs, right? I started to learn their language to try to understand how they think, who they are. And from that time, I've had a lot of great connections. And one of them told me, I know that guy that is very familiar with the scientific space and with scholarly research. You should speak to him. And that was day X, if you will. And from then on, we got great angels on board. Our second angel was then the CEO of The Guardian, which we were very, very happy to get on board. We had three further angels.
[31:58] We've got the first funding from a VC in 2017, the second funding of a VC in 2018. We've got another funding in 2019. And 2020 was a brilliant growth year for us. And the most recent funding was in the beginning of this year. So a very typical growth path, if you will, after a lot of stuff happened in period one and two. So has it been like a smooth ride after the third sort of start or phase? Has there been... Obviously, COVID happened as well. Yeah, smooth. I wouldn't call it smooth. I would call it more... It's smooth. It definitely... I'm just checking whether you're actually telling the true story. You know, I laid down and everything just happened.
[32:51] No, it wasn't smooth, right? It's a typical structure, right? It always took longer and cost much more than you initially thought it would. So it wasn't, but it was much more clear. Let's say, I think the vision that we then created, the clear vision statement, mission statement, really showed us the path very clearly. And I was always very, very passionate about that. And just because we had it and because it was a very big one, the market was much clearer. It went, it was more stringent, right? So still a lot of stuff, we failed and we learned a lot. But it was much, much clearer.
[33:41] So for me, it helped me kind of that corridor was very clear. And within that corridor, there was obviously a lot of ups and downs. But it moved quite nicely. So this was basically when Google meets Hopin, or Hopin meets Google, became clear. Yes, that's exactly right. And Hopin back then wasn't a thing. So the mission statement that we've had is we want to be the platform that organizes scientific research um in the from the very early stages on um and on on a global scale so we still took a lot of things from from our you know first period where we've done a lot of learning um we've made things much clearer and um and that's where that's that's where everything you can you know your google meets meets meets hopper So it starts to sound almost like those conferences and events are just like the honeypot to get to the good stuff, the data, and organize it and start to sell it.
[34:51] Yeah, well, so we see scientific conferences a little bit differently. For us, conferences just generally are communities that meet on a physical location. And what we never understood was why do you stop a conversation of a conference after the last beer at the bar of that conference and then only restarted at the first beer of the conference that would happen next year. That concept for us never made sense. And I wanted to really switch it and say, why don't we create a systematic? Why don't we create a system where you had a conversation ongoingly?
[35:41] Why don't you have a system where you basically share preliminary results, early stage ideas, maybe not even in the format such as a poster or presentation, online consistently, and have these moments in between where you meet. Either physically, that's fine. I don't have anything against physical meeting. I think it's good. It creates a different type of experience. Or you can do also fully virtual meetups, workshops, or so. So I don't want to be too dogmatic about that idea of fully virtual conference or fully hybrid. I don't even want to be dogmatic about conference at all. I think there is a reason for all types of conferences. What I believe is that the conversation needs to happen.
[36:32] So conferences for us was a very, very good entry point into that world because they had a lot of challenges. You had a lot of offline elements. You had a lot of things to improve. And I think also when you look in 2020, there was almost a big realization happening that you've got to do something around it. And that's what happened, right? And that's where we got. So I wouldn't call it a honeypot or even almost negatively speaking a Trojan horse. We want to really integrate what happens on the conference into a much bigger system. And I don't want to see a conference just separate to everything else.
[37:22] So for me, it's about the connection. It's about the community. It's about bringing people together, bringing content together, making this world where scientists exchange much freer and really enable everything. And just maybe another anecdote, I think one of the reasons I strongly believe in that is I was born and raised in Berlin by a Polish mother and a Moroccan father. So that idea of coming from worlds that do not have full access to a huge scholarly library stays in my head. And I really want to go down that route to really enable everybody to have access to everything at every time.
[38:14] I'm curious to hear who is actually the customer, because just what you described, I'm thinking that it's the actual question you're solving, like, how do I find or discover early stakes research? Yeah. So our customer is the societies and the institutions in that world, right? So it's academic societies such as, you know, the World Cancer Organization. These are our clients. And the reason for that or the reason we chose that entry point is that they are quality owner of their dedicated fields. and I strongly believe in a system where scientific, let's say, processes or outcomes are at least vetted in a proper way.
[39:19] So I think it can be very dangerous and that's a whole new topic that we'll need more hours for that. I'm not sure we're going to the political side. Let's stick to the French side better. Come on. We will see. Maybe you reschedule your next meeting, then we can go on. This is like a bonus session. I need a little bit of a darker background, a little bit more mysterious, I guess. So, yeah. So, the societies and institutions are really our main entry point, right? So, their responsibility is to manage their members. their responsibility is to basically foster the scholarly research process and really engage the community.
[40:09] And so far, these academic societies and associations, there wasn't too many innovation on the technical side happening in that area, I would just very carefully say. And I think we were or we are still one of the only ones that with, you know, that fresh venture backed software driven, SaaS driven mentality that enter that society and association market and really shape it properly for good. And that's something unique, right? I'm thinking about that ongoingly, but our market that we're acting in, there is not thousands delivery services or scooters. So it's just not that type of market.
[41:00] So we are quite a unique player in there. And same goes for universities and institutions. There's a lot of research happening on universities. There's a lot of people at universities. So the same goes there. But then again, you have also large corporates, right? Large pharmaceutical companies or R&D heavy companies that in a sense go after the same idea process, right? You have a lot of research that happens. So it needs to have a home. There's a lot of researchers that need a home. So you have suddenly these three areas, societies, institutions, societies, associations, institutions, and universities, and corporates who all have a very, very, very similar challenge and a very similar problem. And we are exactly solving their issues.
[41:53] And by doing so, bringing the entire communities together on one platform. And that's what we are working on. That sounds so lovely and great. And actually, it is. But I'm just thinking how you make money. Because there's so many stakeholders. And there's obviously the researcher who should at least hopefully own the research they're doing. And then there's the organization that they belong maybe just temporarily or on a permanent basis. And the budget may come somewhere else. So it's not the easiest market to target. Yes, no, so that's definitely true. And I would split your question in two. There is obviously the element of market size, right? And then there is the element of entry into the market. So when it comes to market size, I'm just going to give you a couple of numbers.
[42:46] I think they always make sense. So if you look into the world of societies and associations, you will have associations and societies for literally everything. I was absolutely amazed by the sheer diversity and size of that market. You would have for everything, right, for your left eye and then, you know, just some part illnesses in that. You would have societies for just your little finger on your right hand. You would have all of these sub-sub-sub societies. And then you have societies for every country in the world. You would have societies on an international level. You have all those different societies.
[43:35] So there's just a huge amount of societies around the world with all the same problems. Then you have roughly 17,000 universities around the globe that all have the same problem. And then you have that huge amount of R&D heavy industry and pharmaceutical markets. So just by the numbers, it's a massive, massive, massive crowd that we are supporting. And when it comes to the entry point, you are right that our sales cycles are a little bit longer. And the reason for that is, you know, the processes are a little bit more bureaucratic and the entry points. We basically hear your pretty education there, you know, the understatement in the little bureaucratic. I'm not going to go down that path we can talk political oh now we found the limit now we're hitting the money stream you know this was the revenue question can we stop you now where's the stop button so the entry point is it is a process but how large ticket sizes are that we are looking at.
[44:58] So since there's a lot of documents that we process, there's a lot of things that we do in the background, there's a lot of analysis that we do, the sizes of our accounts are significant. And the value that we are providing is massive. Societies that struggled a lot in 2020 because they suddenly didn't have any revenue streams through the conferences or they struggled a lot because their clients, which are typically institutions, also didn't have too much money. We suddenly brought them a foundation where they could earn money. And we only took a very, very small chunk to cover our own cost. And so it's basically for us, we're creating new revenue streams for these societies and associations.
[45:51] institution. So even though the process to go into is a little bit harder, the way our business works is that we are always making sure that our clients are very much benefiting from the services that we are using and getting their own revenues cleared up. They are having a good stream of money coming in. So, yeah. It sounds like you're becoming like AI company. And I heard they're making ice cream next to you. Very good. Yeah, ice cream, project ice cream. So AI, yes. They're making Matrix 4, you know, in the next building there. That's what he told me before we went live. So that's the reference. That is true.
[46:37] Yeah, Google the ice cream and you figure out Matrix 4. Project ice cream, exactly. Project ice cream. So we, and it was a fun connection, right? That, you know, yet another connection. So in the beginning of 2020 in January, I was in San Francisco for a couple of conferences where I spoke, by the way, about hybrid meetings, right? In January 2020 and in March 2020, things went down south for the conference. Yeah, you go. Here we go. I'm the Neo. I saw the glitch in the matrix. in January. And I saw how they produced the metrics in San Francisco. So when I came back to Berlin, I suddenly discovered this little paper on the office next door.
[47:27] And it said, Filmpark Babelsberg, Project Ice Cream. So a big film studio here around the city with a code name Project Ice Cream. There's funky stuff in Berlin. So let me make sure to understand what it is. Project Ice Cream, it turned out that it's the metrics for production. So everything was basically dark and you cannot really look into the window. You have to read the code, you know. You have to read the code, exactly. I'm not sure how I'm making now the jump into AI, but hey, I'm just going to take your question there. Yeah, so they just make the ice cream, you actually making the AI stuff. We're making the code.
[48:14] We're we're definitely making the we're definitely making the code. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's so AI, right? We are again, you know, also one of the values that we are providing to our clients is indexing and making sure that you can take all the research out of the content items right out of the posters, presentations. We are trying to bring those together, really, say, all right, that was the first research output. There is a second research output. There is a third research output. So we have a big data team at Mauricie now that really analyzes that. And we try to innovate ongoingly in that world to make sure that we can provide more and more value over time and to create maybe some other glitches in the metrics. I also understood that you have a family, small children. And it seems to be that there is quite a lot of new people in your office as well. So I would assume that keeps you busy. So how do you have a work-life balance? Or is there such a thing? Yeah, I try to not use the word work-life balance, quite frankly. And I would encourage everybody to rethink that concept of work-life balance. I find it very, very, very strange to not consider work part of life, right? So work-life balance is something that just from the expression, from the semantics, for me doesn't make any sense at all. So for me, work is part of life and life has different elements. And one element in my life is the company that we're building that I'm very passionate about. Another part of my life is my family with two kids that I'm very proud of and that I'm spending a lot of time with.
[50:05] So all of these different parts consist, you know, my life. And sometimes, you know, the priorities are not too clear. And, you know, the time split is tough to manage. And, you know, that's something that I spend a lot of time with to see how much time do I spend, spend actually working? How much time do I spend at home? It is a tough choice, if you will, to make that I'm discussing a lot, that I'm talking a lot about. Part of this entrepreneurs group where my wife always say, "Well, that feels like an anonymous alcoholics group and an AA group." And it is.
[50:55] You talk about really deep stuff. You start to be very vulnerable. Talk about the feelings as the founders, right? The pressure that is all there, right? Because in the outside and towards investors, towards stakeholders, you've got to be that. You've got to be that very firm, that very disciplined guy that has one goal and just go after that. I think we just shattered that just maybe 20 minutes ago. True, that one part. And then once the door is closed, once the camera is off, you'll see a little bit of tears coming up and you'll see a little bit of sadness also coming up. But on a serious note, I think that's part of life.
[51:45] It would be very strange to say that we as founders, We, you know, humans building companies are machines that are just, you know, going and knowing exactly what we want to do, where we want to go. And I think that that part of life where we really question our abilities, where we question ourselves, where we don't really know where it goes, where we really have problems in understanding, you know, what are the priorities currently? What do I need to do? All those questions, they need to have a room. And for every new founder out there, I can just invite them to be open about it, to talk about it, to be very clear that it's not everything is sunshine and butterflies flying around and the grass is green. And it's not how it works.
[52:39] And I think if you don't really embrace that part as well, it's going to be tough to stay sane on the long run because it is a very fast marathon. But it is a marathon. It's long. It takes time. And there's a lot of dark sides as well where you don't know where to go. And, yeah, it's important to talk about these as well. You said that you found really good angel investors, but you've also been using or getting advice from mentors in addition to that group. So can you elaborate a bit about the mentorship and the ways you go about those dark nights and doubts and things what happened in any business?
[53:33] No, definitely. I think I was very, very lucky and I was very, very fortunate to have large groups of mentors that supported me throughout my professional career. They were all individuals that were, first of all, much more experienced than I am. They were a great sparrings partner almost in all those times in the very early days. And I think I didn't value that too much in the very beginning where I was still too stubborn and said, well, I'm going to do it and they don't know what's the right path. And I learned throughout the path that it is important to exchange with them and to be very honest also.
[54:26] And again, it comes to the point of vulnerability that is important. In the last two, three, four weeks, I've had a couple of also private, let's say, struggles where I learned very intensively that being open with your angels. And quite frankly, we are very fortunate about our VCs, our investors, absolutely brilliant, brilliant folks that we also have on the board of the company. And I was very transparent about how I feel currently, what my state of mind is, where also my thoughts are. And that openness, I was obviously in the beginning when I started to share a couple of those thoughts and stories, I didn't know if it's the right way.
[55:19] Should I communicate it? Should I talk about it? Or should I just pretend I'm that strong individual that doesn't have any private questions in my head? and I chose the path of being very transparent and talking about what I have on my mind with them. And even though it felt hard, it was a huge relief that they were so kind, so helpful, so understanding, talking with me and trying to give also support on a private side. So this concept of having people that you can trust and that you can rely on and that mentor you, turned out, let's say, I realized that it is a very, very important part of my life.
[56:16] And when I speak to other founders, They also describe the concept of having mentors that you're very transparent with, that you're very open with, as something almost necessary to really go through all those steps of growth, all those steps of moving forward with a company. so I am I couldn't be happier to have such incredible group of people around me that support me in whatever way be it on the business side or be it on the private side so after all we are all humans we have all our challenges we are not just machines brings me back to the matrix topic we have topics you realize France where you have you know, Matrix, you have also the Frenchman in Matrix.
[57:12] It's interesting all coming together. So, so, so yes, so mentorship for me is a huge one. It's a huge one. I only invite everybody to, to make sure to have this group of supporters along the way. How many years did it take you to get that realization? You mentioned at the beginning, was it after the second started, the beginning of the third, you started to take other people's advice or, I think it was only in the third stage I think in the first and the second stage I let's say valued the information exchange for me it was simple and informational I got information out and it's nice I used them and it's good I benefited from it but only in the third stage I really saw and realized that there is just a much bigger value behind this concept of mentorship in there but you know better than than than than never and you know and another another activity that goes into that and then into that world is you know again that entrepreneurship um group of people where we meet every month and exchange about challenges about problems that we have about our inner feelings and not only about challenges right also about the highs right so it's about both uh talking about how exciting things are and you know how fortunate we we all are and and then And then again, there's the dark side.
[58:39] So talking about both is very relevant. So how often you communicate with your mentors and what is the relationship like? Also, did you mention the name of the secret AA club? The fourth rule was that you're never supposed to talk about it. But maybe we can break that one. You're not allowed to talk about it. So please be quiet. Yeah, you know, this is quite small podcast. So, you know, nobody's. It's only going to YouTube, by the way, as well. Very good. Well, then, that's good. Good to hear. So, this group of people is called Entrepreneurs' Organization. And in that Entrepreneurs' Organization, I think there's mainly three fundamental rules, right? You're coming up with the fourth rule.
[59:32] Let me just share the first three and let's talk about the fourth one later on. The first rule is everything that obviously is being discussed in that, within the rooms of that, we call it forums, stays within those, which gives a lot of comfort to just share very, very openly what you have in mind. The second question is you don't give suggestions or recommendations. There is no place of saying you should do this or you should do that, you should do that. And the reason for that is you suddenly switch the levels. The moment you give recommendations, it has a different feeling. So never give recommendation, never judge. That's the second rule. And the third rule is never talk about everyone and only talk about the I perspective, right?
[1:00:25] very egoistically to say, I have that experience, or I have that problem, and I have that challenge. And these three rules taught me a lot about that concept of mentorship, because that is exactly what I think in a relationship between a mentor and a mentee are very important, right? You need to have that relationship of trust. That's, you know, relating to the first rule. The second rule is don't talk about, you know, these crazy, you know, you should do that, or you should do that. but formulate it a little bit different. Talk about sharing experience. I think that notion of sharing experience is very relevant. And don't say it always works or it never works, right? So kind of these very judgmental, large frame expressions, right? You've got to do this because everyone does that.
[1:01:15] It doesn't really work. It doesn't really work that way. Yeah, and the fourth rule is you just mentioned it. So is that like a virtual thing? Does it happen only in Berlin? Is there a website for the founders who are interested? Yeah, so there's a website. You can just go entrepreneurs organization. It's a worldwide network. And how it's structured is you have chapters in different locations. We have a Berlin chapter here. And within the Berlin chapter, there's forums. And these forums always consist of, I think, seven to 10 people or so. And we meet regularly because we are all in Berlin. And it makes sense to meet because there is just a much better connection that you can make, especially with those topics that we talk about.
[1:02:04] In the last one and a half years, it was a little tricky to meet, obviously. But we are starting to meet again. And it makes a huge difference between meeting offline and meeting virtually. but the concept is also that you can meet everywhere in the world people members from from eo and and they know the set of rules right they know exactly what it is all about so suddenly you have a vast network of folks around the world that you can always meet and you know exactly that they have the same concept in mind when you talk about experience share and and communicating with one another. So it's a very valuable, valuable way. And, you know, in 2019, I traveled quite a bit. I think I looked into the calendar lately, and I saw 160 days in on the route. I was really, really traveling a lot. And I met a lot of people around the world and gave me a great new, you know, way of thinking. And I learned a lot through that, you know, talking again about different perspectives, giving you great ideas and great, great new thoughts.
[1:03:14] did the 2020 non-travel policy change something in the company and personally for you you said that you were growing quite rapidly so was there any any sort of pivoting or anything any any difficulties a lot a lot a lot changed a lot changed for me personally it changed a lot i never spent that much time with the family that was a big one um and it brought me much closer to my kids which which I'm quite happy about in that sense. And it made me realize just how little I've just seen them before. So it was a nice way of really reconnecting again. So that's one big realization that I've made from March 2020 on. So it's almost a restart with the relationship with my kids.
[1:04:04] The second element was obviously in the company. We have never been a remote company. We always had our office here. And I'm a big believer in meeting in person. I'm a big believer in meeting and making workshops, putting post-its on the wall and really discussing things. I love that. I love that, exactly. And the third thing was the way we started the company was always very much unrelated to the conference itself. We supported the conference, but we never had a software that would cover the entire conference experience. And with entire conference experience, I mean virtual conference sessions, Q&A, chat, networking sessions, and all of these elements that you would basically have.
[1:04:58] So in March 2020 or a little bit earlier, the entire team sat together and said, oh, this is a huge opportunity also for us because we are already in that world. We have a lot of clients that use our platform for their content needs. So if we now step up and really crank out the virtual conference tools, that would make a lot of sense. And it did. And I must say that the team did an incredible job. It's absolutely marvelous how powerful they threw everything in that bucket and really worked day and night to make things happen. And it benefited the entire company. So we, based on, I wouldn't call it pivot, it was definitely a step up and the communication around what we did that suddenly turned and changed.
[1:05:51] So it was very much focused on that virtual and hybrid meeting that we've focused much more. And I think that helped the entire company very, very much. So we've created a lot of value for everyone. And, you know, one of the reasons that I think we were also on the map for a lot of VCs out there, we are being contacted ongoingly now, still until that date. And in the beginning of 2021, we got that absolutely incredible investor on board that is the largest education technology investor in the world from the Silicon Valley. And I think the story of this venture round started definitely in the beginning of 2020. Did you need to just pick up the phone and just select the VC or did you actually need to do something?
[1:06:45] Because I think even in this show, we've been talking about when you already, you know, quite well with your business, it turns the table the other way around. The business start to call you and offer good terms because they want to get in. And you're like, okay, we don't need the money, but well, we can discuss. Yeah. No, and it definitely turned out. And it was yet another realization, right? It turned my thinking upside down. Because before 2021, quite frankly, I had a big struggle to really make people understand what we do. Web Summit again. It is exactly that.
[1:07:32] It was a Web Summit 2. It's not like a horror series. Hopefully, there's not a third episode coming up. So nothing against WebSummit, but for me, definitely the... The perfect storm. Exactly. No, so I had two venture rounds. It was tough to get venture capital money, and I'm so happy to have these great funds that believed in us in these times where it was really a complex problem that we were solving. I think it was still very much appealing to a lot of VCs. So we've had a lot of great conversations and we also had several offers on the table for every of the venture rounds. But it's not a trivial problem.
[1:08:21] It's a non-obvious challenge that we have. It's not bringing within 10 minutes grocery to the store, which I benefit from and I use very often. But it is not as easy explainable as that. So you need an entire story. You need the ears from the VCs to really listen to you and really understand. So you've got to meet that partner on the VC, on the other table, that really understands and really tries to understand and believe in. We have, on the first two VCs, really these partners that listened to me and that understood the crazy potential and the crazy opportunity that we are looking into. And you're right, in 2021, so this last funding, everything turned upside down. So we've had a lot of activities, a lot of VCs were contacting me or us.
[1:09:16] We've had great opportunities on the table. We've had great offers on the table that we needed to then choose who do we think suits best for us. And we choose our ventures. And we're very, very happy about that. decision that we've made. You mentioned once, now I'm just thinking that the perfect storm, but you were also driving with the convertible in a snowstorm. Was it before or after you were also sealing a deal? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was 2009, maybe two anecdotes. And it comes a little bit, before I talk about these anecdotes, It comes a little bit from the studies that I had.
[1:10:05] I was fascinated by this one course at university. And it was a course that I had in France called Marketing Post-Moderne Sensorielle et Experimentale, or something like that. And again, France. So it's a topic. I think when we name this series, it's got to be some sort of French name. French pun. French pun, exactly. So this course was brilliant because the idea of the course was about marketing concepts that would just not be a crazy and great clickbaiting headline, but we're playing with all those different sensors, right? So the biggest example would be something like Abercrombie & Fitch, right? So you could smell them from three blocks away.
[1:10:54] They have these party atmosphere in those big stores. And the final presentation at the school was actually in a shopping mall. In a shopping mall at, I think, 11 p.m. or something like that, where we presented our ideas on a little bit of a different kind of marketing. And that idea stuck with me all the time on how you need to put yourself into different settings, if you will, to have a much different thought process. Now, for someone that comes from Berlin, you could have now different hypotheses of what that different state of mind is. But I don't want to go down that path. That could be part three of our podcast series. But when I talk about these, it's always different moments in life that are just so crazy that they give you a completely different perspective.
[1:11:54] And one of those stories that you were alluding to is I, in 2019, end of 2019, in winter or so, yeah, in winter, I was in Boston. And I needed to take a very, very quick meeting in New York. So I flew over and it was a crazy storm, you know, winter storm and the snowstorm. It was snowing crazy and the wind was also brutal. And when I landed in New York, I think it was one of the last flights that actually landed in New York. So I had my couple of meetings there in New York, but the flight back was canceled. So that was, back then, it was, you know, one of the, you know, the first time I was in winter on the East Coast. And I didn't realize that it's quite, it is quite cold.
[1:12:47] It's very cold. And so I chose, right, as a proper European, I'm choosing, is there a train? Well, Americans and trains have, let's say, an interesting relationship. I looked at buses, all the buses were sold out. So I said, well, the last option for me is renting out a car. So I went to the car rental, and they said, well, yes, we have one car left. You got lucky. I didn't even care what car it was. I just needed to go back from New York to Boston. It's just, what is it, four-hour drive or five-hour drive maybe. So I took the keys, went to the car, and it was a white Ford Mustang convertible that they got me there in the middle of winter.
[1:13:37] So I went into that car, and it was almost that American story, right, that typical U.S. American story in that loud Ford Mustang. and I needed to have a couple of more calls as well. And it was very tough to really have proper calls in that drive from New York. I made it on time. That's good. But it gave me yet other perspectives of life and created great moments of creativity. What is your favorite word? What is my favorite word? I would say my favorite word is extraordinary. I like that. Extraordinary. What is your least favorite word? My least favorite word would be maybe concern. Yeah, concern.
[1:14:26] I don't like that. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? So I'm a big fan of classical music and opera. So I'm always in August at the Salzburg, the Festspiele, and so on. So I love opera. opera and gives me always nice goosebumps and it really is a great moment for me what turns you off um i would say every sort of negativism everything of uh every every time when when people say it's not gonna work um it turns me off and here we go again what is your favorite curse word oh yeah that i'm using a lot of them you know my son and my daughter are always saying don't use that word but i think my most favorite is is the german word for the german word what sound or noise do you love oh a lot a lot i i sounds sounds are wonderful so um you know the the sound of when you're in a harbor and then there's sailing boats and all the all the sails are and when it's windy i love that sound or the sound of you know of a coca-cola can it just pops open right that's ah that's brilliant that's brilliant yeah i could come up with more what sound or noise do you hate um the sound in a silent room when there's a clock ticking very loudly.
[1:16:19] Absolutely annoying. And the second sound that I really hate is every ad-funded, ad-featured radio station or television station. Sorry, did I say something wrong here for you? What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? I think that this world of art is really something very inspiring for me. So I talked about opera earlier. So, you know, conductor or producer of opera festivals or something like that would be absolutely wonderful. or creating these art installations, right?
[1:17:10] So I love these. I love everything that inspires me, and that's something that I would have loved to do as well. What profession would you not like to do? Very clearly, banker. That's straight. That's easy. But, you know, everybody that is a banker, they're doing a wonderful job. I just couldn't. If you could be a co-founder of any startup in any era, which one would you choose? Are you referring to topic or to really the startup? You can define the question how you like, but basically you could name a company or you could say that I would love to be the co-founder of that one. Yeah. So as I talked to you earlier about it, for me, education is a very big topic, right? I'm spending a lot of time thinking about education. I'm in a couple of groups that we think about the future of education because I think our system is absolutely broken.
[1:18:15] And that's why I feel that the startups or startups in that education sector that are really in that educational world that are shaping up educational systems are brilliant, right? So the early ones would have been Audacity or Coursera or these guys. they were a good starting point into a complete new waves of education technology startups. And I think that that is a topic that will grow even more. Also, within the pandemic, it just grew massively. So education is a big one. I hear like the fourth states coming up soon. Yeah. You know, I'm not going to...
[1:19:03] Let's talk about that in a year or two. Let's see where my mental state is there. So far, the third one is working very, very well, but there will definitely at some point be a fourth stage. Yeah, fortunately for you, we are in the end of the episode. So, you know, but you still have a chance to have a final word for the audience, whatever you want to say. No, no, thank you. Thank you very much. So first of all, thank you for you. This has been a very nice conversation. And I think that you made some provocative questions that I liked and made me think about the entire journey. So I'm just maybe inviting everybody that has an exciting story to tell, to really tell it out loud so that everybody else gets inspired because that learning path, when you learn together, it makes things easier if you're not only by yourself.
[1:20:03] So I think that's my biggest take on that. It stays in my head now after our wonderful conversation here. Thank you so much. This has been so thrilling. Hope you enjoyed as well as an audience. And I guess it's goodbye for now and the next time. Thank you very much. And au revoir, right? So that is the French goodbye. Yeah, the final French word.