YouSaid · the spoken record

Guillaume Pousaz

lines on the record: 32
first: 2021-04-08
most recent: 2021-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think nothing compounds like payments, so it's kind of hard to say, but I think it's going to be more growth, more people, more merchants, more products, more geographies. One thing I will say is that payment companies, or at least a company like Checkout,”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just be genuine. If you're not genuine and authentic, people see through you. They always do. And if they don't, it will fail later.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From a Tisha answer, but I would say Bill Gates. And the reason I'd say Bill Gates is he built one company only and it pretty much admitted rise. And I was mentioning how Pentium changed my life when I was 14 years old. I'm always amazed with him. And by the way, other amazing book, Hard Drive, about his life, great book. I'm amazed how at 53, when he's on top of the world with Microsoft, he says, hey, I'm going to quit and I'm going to work in my foundation. The bill in Melinda Gates Foundation. And he takes all the learnings that he had from business and tries to make the world a better place. Really like take problems, solve problems, and move from a completely capitalistic view to like a good impact. So I think like for that, you would be up there.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Humidity for sure because I think like this is in our DNA at checkout and for me as a human being passion because I want my kids to have the same passion that I have and I think like if you don't have passion in life life is probably a bit less exciting and then I think kindness because it's about helping others and irrespective of where you are in life you should always think about the others”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Omed Medition is very good, keeps you on the tip of your toes, and MySpace particularly we have a very big town, and it's exciting to see other people doing a good job because it's going to force us to be the better version of ourselves.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Balance everything, you have constant people coming to you for questions and things and like being able to say no and just find the right balance is definitely the hardest thing right now.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a tough question because ultimately you read so many of them. And actually, I listened to a lot of books as well. Audible is actually hugely important to me. If you ask me favorite book, I'd go back to the childhood and I'd say Dune from Farmhavert because ultimately it's an amazing book. It's one of the best sci-fi books ever. And if anything, I'm forcing my daughter to read it right now if she wants to see the movie. So I think this one is probably top of mind for me.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am behind on WhatsApp as well. I was giving you my tips for Gmail. I don't have the tips for WhatsApp yet. And especially if this is personal, so you're not going to give it for somebody else to manage. The reality is that, and this, by the way, is very important. I write all my emails, but I have somebody who labels them for them and sorts them for me. WhatsApp is personal. I have my wife sending me pictures of my kids and things like this. So that's not something that, you know, I'm going to give to an assistant. But WhatsApp right now is mostly on fire all the time. By the time you and I are finished speaking, there's probably like a hundred messages. So yes, this is still a struggle”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My time is that we raised two meetings. Was that a good meeting? Yes or no? Was that a meeting where I needed to be there? If I didn't need to be there, then we killed a meeting. Push the decision down. Somebody else could do it. And I think this is, then we iterate and progress this constantly to try to make the best use of the time. I wish I could follow the inbox zero, but it's absolutely impossible when you get 600 emails a day. So that's like an urban legend for me, or actually it's a dream that I'll probably never achieve. But I have three labels only in Gmail. I have urgent end of the day, end of the week. It's these three labels and the assistants, they file the emails, and urgent is what I do every single 15 minutes and every hour. End of the day is what I do when I finish my meetings and end of the week is what I do on the weekends. And this little formula has worked quite well for me and it allows me to be quite smart with my time.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So first of all, I have an amazing team. Let's put it this way. The second thing is I have zero issue delegating. So for me, it's like the less decisions I see, the better. I'm very much more like empower people to make decisions. And you come to me if you really, really, really need me. The truth is, the bigger the company, the more geographies, there's an exponential amount of decisions. So you ultimately, you're going to still see a lot of decisions. But in spirit, it's all about pushing the decisions down to other people. I would combine that with the fact that I love my job and I really do work a lot. So I certainly do more than eight hours a day. And now, yes, I mean, with Jess, with my chief of staff, we started really implementing certain processes. So if you want like, you know, factual tips, I have three types of meaning. I have the 15 minute meeting, the 30 minutes meeting, and the 45 minutes meeting. You have to choose between these three. And I always keep 15 minutes and each hour do the emails and WhatsApp. I'm a very big WhatsApp guy and WhatsApp is always on fire. What I do at the end of the week, every single week with the team that actually helps me manage.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A company with business plans and financial models and everything, you kind of deviate from that. That's why we are a value driven company. A mission-driven company, and I'm not here, but it's like it's all after the mission. We need to deliver the mission. A value-driven company is about the people. And we believe in our values and we believe in people like, you know, like we want people to believe in those values because they are what made us who we are today. And that's all about the people, 100%.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, we are in a very strange time. I mean, when COVID hits, there was 550 of us, and now there's nearly 1,200. So we onboarded 650 people completely remotely on Zoom. Fundamentally, you know, I'm kind of like, I'm a student of the situation there and I'm learning along the way. One thing we did do is that we've opened all these channels of communication and at all our all-hands meetings, we have a list of things that people tell us they want to change or they want to see change. And fundamentally, we lock them one after the other. Just like, hey, we want a better scheme to buy chairs and like laptops at home. Okay, we're going to build something like this. We want to look after mental wellness or after well-being. And I think as a CEO, my job is to obviously drive the business forward, but the people of a company are the catalyst of that company. And I think like one thing is the company is only as good as the people. So you need to really make sure that as many people as possible are happy. I think this equation is very simple. And the more happy people you have and the more good outcomes you get. And I think quite often if you try to run.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not one of our operating principles, but it's something that everyone knows at checkout is the obligation to dissent, is that if you don't agree with something, you should raise your hand and say it straight away. We love debates. We have our whiteboarding rooms, which are like 360, like whiteboards where you can really spend a lot of time whiteboarding and debating on topics if you want to. But the reality is that it's ingrained in our culture that”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most important because everything starts from the top and then it's being pushed down. So if your management team is strong and has the same vision and share the same vision and goes to the N minus ones and it aligns everyone and then the N-1s goes to the N minus 2 and like fundamentally the bigger the company is and the more important this is.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is where you have a series of interviews that follow your first meeting we are a value driven company. So you have certain companies that are mission driven, that's not us, we're a value-driven company. We believe in our values. We believe in our operating principles. We have certain things that really drive our decision making. It's like really important to us. And what we do is that if we have kind of the match with somebody, then we send them through a process which is pretty data driven with scorecards and everything. And then fundamentally there, if pretty much everyone agrees that he's one of us, then it's like we go with the heart, like we're all in. We want that person to join and we figure out a way to make it happen. But the reality is that I'm not the sole decision maker ever, especially for a role like the CTO where, I mean, two-thirds of the company is product and engineering today. So I think there's a lot, I mean, OID entropy with a lot of people. But the reality is that I ignite the fire if you want to. And then there's a lot of people who are going to make sure that this is the right person. And if it is, then we go for it. But I think like a united management team is probably...”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think on the hiring front, you just hire OIDS from Toy that he was the best entrepreneur in residence, but we did a lot of interviews. Then I met Hoyt and I knew he was the guy. And, you know, that was a nine months process. We met all these amazing CTOs from all around the world. And then I'm having a coffee with Hoyt and San Francisco, known for the CTO role, just to meet the guy. And I was like, this guy has her DNA. He loves to solve complex problems. I want to work with him. And I was like, not nearly an instant decision. Of course he's going to go through an interview process and everything, but I knew that he was the guy. It just like, it's the light bulb moment. And I think like talent is really, of course you want people who have experience in everything, but talent is not the only thing. The cultural fit, believing the same things than this person and just having that right match is actually what makes you win in the end. And I think like, you know, building a team is obviously super critical to any entrepreneur. And for me, I would go back to what I told you before is that I would not over engineer it. You meet a lot of people because that's the real big numbers. Of course, you try to.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mistakes sometimes, and the reality mistakes are a good thing, they're just an additional piece of information that helps you be a better CEO. And fundamentally, what matters when you make a mistake is to learn from it and that's it. It's the ratio of good decision and the average waited time that you take them that is actually the key.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a framework. I make a lot of gut feel decisions and instinctive decisions. And by that, what I mean is that, of course, as a CEO now, I mean, I have a CEO office, I have a great leadership team, and I do have access to data, but I don't think that data is the answer to everything. The life of a CEO is a bit like a probability tree. You arrive at a fork. You have to choose between A, B, C, and D, and you have to make a decision. If you make a lot of good decisions, you move on the tree. If you make a bad decision, it sets you back. I think what matters is the amount of good decisions that you're making on that tree and how quickly you do them. So I see a lot of people quite often, you know, try to overthink a decision. Hey, I have 60% of the data that allows me to make a perfect decision. I'm going to go and try to grab another 20%. I'm not like that. I'd rather do a lot of quick decisions. I get, you know, obviously data being pushed to me and I consume that data. But then I'd rather make the decisions quickly move. I have no issue making mistakes. I've apologized to my entire company for making mistakes.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the revenue is still sitting in the incumbents, so why would we rest now, now that we have an amazing products and amazing customers that are really happy with us and have amazing investors that are helping us go after the opportunity? So that hunger and that willingness and resilience are key things. And I don't know what your shrink told you, but I would say contemplate stuff, but don't stop there.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, we are super grateful for what we have, and that's something every day I look at the company, I look at my kids, I look at my wife, we're happy family, and achieved a lot with work. And certainly you have to contemplate what you have and be grateful for that. So that's a given. But then at the same time, I think all best entrepreneurs and all people who've built category defining company have that hunger inside of them where you just want to do more. You want to build more. At checkout, we want to add more geographies. We want to add more products. We want to win more merchants. It's this whole thing of like, do I stop and pause and look at what we have achieved? And yes, absolutely, I do that. Is that enough for me? No, not at all, because I want to build really a company that is long-lasting, that transcends generations, and you have a town, a total addressable market that is huge, where if you take the three leaders today, which are Adien Striving checkout, we're literally scratching the surface of what's possible. This is my”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that ultimately relationship to money will change over time with everyone. One thing I'll say is that checkout.com was never started to make money. As a matter of fact, I think it's fair to say that we never thought it would be as big as it is today. And now we still believe that we're at chapter zero because we really believe we're scratching the surface of what's possible. As an individual, you change your relationship to money for sure over the years, especially if you have access to it in a certain way. But now when we go back to the kids, I have three kids. And for me, it's a lot more important”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, to have kids, you need to find a good wife. I think that's the first one I would put out there. But if you have the good wife, I would say, this is not something you engineer. When you feel it inside of you, this is a good field decision. When is the right time? Is the right time? And if you try to think about it, I'm not saying you're in the wrong, we're all different, but I wanted to have kids when I'm 32. I ended up being a father when I was 26. So I think, you know, some of our thinking was similar when we're trying to plan. And being a father at 26 may be a better human being and probably immensely contributed to who I am today and where it took out as today. So I'd say have the kids straight away.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I had my daughter when I was 26, and that happened a point in my life where she really came as a rebirth for us because we had lost her dad and it was something that was kind of really important. She brought me a lot of stability. She brought me a lot of personal discipline because now you're responsible for another human being. At checkout, I'm basically responsible for 1,200 people. And the reality is that you learn from one another. I always said, like, you know, being a good dad also makes you being a good CEO. You can be super thorough and you can be super nice. And the reality is that the kids, they bring me that stability that allows me to go and deal with what I'm dealing with every day. And I learn from one another. And, you know, fun fact is you always, I have so many friends now who are kind of my age and they're still debating what is the right time to have kids. And I always joke with them. I say, there's no right time to have kids. You can look at that decision under any angle that you want. You can always find a counter argument to not have kids, like not the right time next year or whatever. I think the answer to this is just have kids now and deal.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Combine these things, you know, like the right mentors, the right investors, the right family setup or the right set of friends if you're not married. I think that helps a lot in kind of dealing with the hardship that you have as an entrepreneur. The other thing eventually that I would say, you need to be ready to keep learning all the time is like I read 30 to 40 books a year and travel. I meet people. I have access to incredible entrepreneurs and tech leaders that actually process on checkout. We like to solve these problems. And the brain is a bit like a muscle. You need to keep training it. And the reality is that that's what allows you to sail through the life of an entrepreneur.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The main reason we took the investors was for mentorship, and we've always taken a super humbling approach to how we run the business. I was never the CEO of 100 people company 300 or 1,000. So first of all, don't be an entrepreneur if you don't want to deal with hardship because I think that's part of the job and you're going to have to live with it. But fundamentally, I have a good group of mentors that really look after me, that are people that don't have any vested equity or equity in the company, and then have the investors. And I think also I have to give it to her. I have my wife who's always there, you know, kind of help me. She's almost like the co-founder, the spiritual co-founder. We've been together since we're like 15 more or less. So, I mean, we've shared more of a life together than not together. She gave me three beautiful kids and I like this analogy is that SEO is a bit like a sailor. You leave the harbor, you do things during the whole day, and then you come back home at night and you go to the harbor. If your harbor is safe, you got a lot of peace and that's resourcing. And I think like this is something that has always worked quite well for me. So I think like if”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a complicated question. Obviously, checkout is a huge part of my identity, and I think it will always be. But at the same time, now Checkout is basically building its own identity. I mean, there is a management team. It's being shaped by the leaders we have on the C level, the 1,200 actually employees we have in the company and the other 500 we're going to hire this year. And I think identity is something that is organic. So there's the CEO, founder identity, there's the company identity. These two in the very beginning are very kind of the same thing. And then they start building their own path. And what's important is that these two paths kind of complement each other, that there is a bit of a coherence between the two. And I think like, you know, they can completely complement each other. You don't need to try to like, how do I escape this? I think for me, it's more a question like, you need to be happy with what you build. You need to be proud of what you build as a founder, but also as the people that work there in the company, they need to be proud of the company they work for.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean, we have lightened the fires because the company is growing at 100%, but we have never spent a single dollar of the money that we have raised. So, I mean, all the money is sitting on the balance sheet. We kept the same discipline. And I remember speaking to the vision fund and there was like, how are you going to spend all our money? We're like, we're not going to spend it. We've built a business with discipline for like nine years. And I think that's who we are. And I mean, if you should invest in who we are in our vision, it was like, we invest for people to deploy capital. And I was like, at that point in time, it's like what I need from my investor.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marketing teams who had scaled businesses, and that was like insight. When we met inside, we're like, these guys, I think they have 65 IPOs. All they do is scaling B2B SaaS softwares. They do that pretty well. I met Devin. I was like, deal, I want to work with this guy. That was a given. And then in the round came DST, and DST was basically, you know, like Tom is a super thoughtful guy. He gave us like, I think the international breath, understanding how the Silicon Valley works, then you have access to URI and URI is like one of the best investors in the world and one of the most well-connected guys. So that kind of opened the doors in the Silicon Valley. Then there was like ribbon capital that was like just the knowledge of fintech gets it better than anyone else. And then there was GIC. And GIC was really the access to Asia. I think these four things together, we had an equation that kind of made sense for us. We had built a lot of the business, but we knew that the time was infinite. So we were like, hey, time to make a deal. And that deal came together.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Moment where at that point in time I have 275 employees, 280, and I was never the CEO of such a big company. We're going to go global. There's real potential there. And this is where I was like, I think it's the time to take the external capital, just taking a step back. We built a payment gateway first, then we built an acquiring bank, then we built the payment processor. That was the first six years of the journey. Then we started selling. Then we won that big company. And I was like, we've done so much on our own. Now it's time to really thinking of like how can we do more? When I went on the fundraising for the Series A on the back of winning that deal, I was like, hey, what is my equation about? Actually, it's a fun fact. We had never spent a single dollar in marketing before the series A. Just like none. It was pure word of mouth, product-led company. There's like four salespeople. There was no commercial organization. It's actually when you think about it pretty funny. But the equation of value for us in terms of fundraising is that we wanted somebody who had built sales teams, who had built”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So first of all, B2B payment processing, which is what we do focusing on enterprise, is pretty capital efficient. I think also that five good engineers are better than 100 average ones, and there's two different ways to kind of build a company. Either you try to hire a lot of people because you want to grow super quickly. For me, it was really like a life journey. I knew I would be doing this very, very long time. I knew that the time was infinite and I was just like super committed to do the things right and really build the infrastructures before we try to scale. I think this is something that was like ingrained in my mind. And if I look in the European market right now, you go to a company like Molly, same thing. He built a business without taking capital for quite some time and just build it step by step. The other thing also is that the capital came in after we won what was still probably our biggest contract, which is the largest video streaming company in the world, one that everyone is actually using. So I think that when we actually won this, we then realized that we were like changing gears. And this is the”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Computing power, put this together, younger people like us, that commerce on the internet would actually only exponentially grow. And this is something we believe like, you know, 14 years ago now, and I still believe today, I still believe that we're at chapter zero and this is the beginning of the journey and the digital world. And I think there's a lot of numbers that back this. So I think that would be the right answer.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's been a few themes that got me there. So I think there's not a single moment. One of the things I will say is that I started with the computers at a very, very young age, probably 10 years before you were born. I still remember my Amiga 500. And then I remember basically just the computing power going and getting better. I mean, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, my first Pentium computer was like changing my life pretty much. This is something that was always like an ingrained technology. Is it going into one direction only, which is it's getting better and cheaper? If I fast forward now to 2005 when I kind of dropped out of college, I ended up in California and took a job in a payments company. And that payments company, we were basically helping U.S. merchants selling internationally. And I think if we really have to nail down an aha moment, that's pretty much the aha moment is that it didn't take two and two for me to understand that commerce on the internet was going to be a big thing. This is 2006. So this is like pre-iPhone, pre-Facebook. But, you know, faster internet, but cheaper bandwidth, you know, you hear on year.”
2021-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Checkout.com Founder Guillaume Pousaz on The Transition From Bootstrapped Founder to Raising $830M and a $15Bn Valuation, What It Means To Have "3 Roadmaps For Life" & How Becoming a Parent Changes the Type of Leader You Are · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source