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Maëlle Gavet

lines on the record: 30
first: 2022-11-17
most recent: 2022-11-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That can be an all consuming endeavor. And the reality is, this is a marathon. This is not a sprint. And the best way to win that marathon is to be surrounded by people who are here to help you from a business perspective, but who are also here to support you just as a human being.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I usually tell our entrepreneurs one be very, very clear on your priorities and you can't have more than two or three. Like you need to be waking up every morning thinking this is what I'm trying to achieve. And anything that does not help you achieve this goal, you need to be ruthless and say no to them. Learning to say no is really, really important. And then I tell them no one succeeds alone ever. You need to have people who are ready to be with you in the trenches, whether it is your team, your investors, your board. And then the last thing, never, ever, ever forget about their friends and family because business is important. And if you're an entrepreneur,”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you build a team, when you want to be part of a team, you need to think about is that the right sport for me, but also do I fit well in this team? Do my skills complement everyone else in the team and good coaches the same way good CEO do? Good coaches are actually very mindful about the team dynamic and how it plays with each other. And I think about it in the exact same way when I mentor entrepreneurs, I'm like, look at the business you're joining. First of all, is that a sport you want to play? Is that an industry you want to be in? And then second, look at the team you're joining. Is that the team that you want to be part of? Because it's going to be a lot of training, a lot of time spent together, some victories, but also some failures. Are these the people that you want to spend time with? And are you going to help them be better? And are they going to help you be better?”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely large companies where it is totally impossible because you have to follow the rules and all the approval processes. But there are absolutely companies where you can come up with a new idea, run it, own the P&L, go to the board and get the next stage of funding.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing I pushed back on was the young entrepreneurs the idea that you are going to be successful almost overnight. And one of the key questions I asked them, are you ready to spend the next 10 years of your life going through a roller coaster of emotions because you believe so much in that problem? And if the entrepreneur says to me 10 years, no, I think I can do it in five. I usually tell them that they are probably in the wrong job because it will take them about 10 years. And that's if they're successful, less than 1% of startups which get funded at the preced level will actually be successful. But then I also push back on people who say, oh, you cannot be innovative. You can't be an entrepreneur if you work in a big company.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The blessing and the curse of an entrepreneur is that every day is different. Everyday brings a new hide, but also a new low very often. And it can happen within an hour. You don't have the infrastructure, the support if you are suddenly a hundred billion dollar probably company. Now some entrepreneurs will tell you, every day is new and every day is my day. I decide what I want to do with my day. And other people will tell you that they prefer to have a slightly more structured environment with a lot more infrastructure and platform around them. I think it really depends on your personality and what you're good at.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've done both and I liked both. I have very consciously decided to not be an entrepreneur for the fourth time because it is gruesome to go through the zero to one. And I love working with the entrepreneurs we support, but it feels good to be advising them and mentoring them, being in the trenches with them, but not being the one doing the zero to one.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are definitely in the wartime right now. A war seal is someone who is very comfortable with uncertainty back to what we were discussing earlier, someone who is capable to switch very quickly between defensive and offensive all the time because sometimes you need to preserve cash and sometimes you need to invest. So war CEO tend to be people who are more likely to take risk but are capable of making decisions, big decisions with partial information. That makes them very different than CEO who are more there to maintain a status quo, making sure that all the right things are in place, foundations are very robust, the business is humming. We need Boast the world needs boast type of CEO. What is important is that you match the profile of the CEO with what the business is facing at the moment.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was running ozone in Russia, and a person asked me, what does it feel to be a female leader? And I looked at her and asked her, what do you mean? And she said, but I assume that as a woman leading a company is different. And I remember not knowing what to say because I had never talked about it. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I have a company. I go to work every day and I try to do the best I can. And I came to the conclusion that I didn't know what it meant to be a female leader. I only knew what it meant to be a leader. Every man and every woman was different in the way they lead. There are definitely men and women who are much better during crisis time than others. I mean, we talk regularly about war CEO versus peace CEO. These are usually two very different type of people. I'm just not sure that gender has much.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are so many unstoppable and unbelievable founders everywhere. And to me, there is an opportunity to make a lot more investment. We've been talking about making several thousand investments a year. This year, we are going to make close to 600 investments. And I'm very, very much hoping that we'll be doing a lot more than that in the next five to ten years, yes.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a fixer. What I do for a living is fixing and scaling companies. And so every single one of these businesses that you've just mentioned, that was that when I joined Compass, we had five offices, 300 employees. And I guess about 1,000 agents. And when I left, we had 350 offices, probably even a little more than that, 15,000 agents and well over 2,000 employees. And that was like a little over two years.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, and I think that's the biggest lessons for entrepreneurs is you have to embrace the uncertainty during economic crisis like the one we're going through right now, the uncertainty becomes even bigger. And what is going to differentiate a successful entrepreneur from a less successful entrepreneur is the ability to deal with a heightened level of uncertainty.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I see a lot of parallels with the current situation, which is if not every day, every week there is something happening. The Fed is increasing, the rates, there is more layoff, there is the midterms election in the US. And so you keep adding level of complexities and you keep changing the environment that as an entrepreneur, you have to deal with on a daily basis.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. This is where I learned to deal with my first massive economic crisis. I was the Ciao zone. I was there in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. And I remember very distinctively at the time we went from 30 rubles to the dollar to 100 rubles to the dollar. And as an e-commerce, you would pay everything in dollars because a lot of the product that we would sell would be imported. And yet we would sell them to the Russian population in rubles. And so like dealing with a massive currency devaluation, obviously the sanctions that happened at the time that put a lot of pressure on any import activities were a very, very good school for me in terms of learning to deal with major economic situations.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through tech stars, we are exposed to the conflict because we have quite a few investments with Ukrainian entrepreneurs. Ukraine has a very strong technological background and a lot of really strong engineers. And unfortunately, I've heard a lot of heartbreaking story because there's so much talent and so much innovation that has been put on hold because of this senseless war.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much better position, let's start thinking about what are the one or two areas which are going to make a huge difference in your business and then be very quick at iterating. What I've learned having had to deal with this kind of crisis a few years ago is that the key is to be very focused and very agile. You have to be constantly revaluating your decisions because the environment keeps changing.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we usually talk to them about one, you need to be obsessed about your cash burn and how much run rate you have because there is nothing you can do if you're about to run out of money. So you need to focus on that first. If you find yourself in a position where you think that you're going to be fine for another 18 months, 24 months, depending on the credit line that you have and the type of shareholders that you have, then it's the time to think, okay, is there opportunities for me to leverage the crisis? And we both know there are a lot of businesses out there who did fantastically well during a crisis because they were able to invest when their competitors were not. So we just go through that process. One, let's look at your cash run rate if you are in an uncomfortable position. That's what you need to focus on. Two, if you are in a”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely the conversation is usually around this trade off. How much do you need to restrain hiring or even, unfortunately, doing some layoff? And at the same time, a lot of them are actually very excited by what's happening because they are going to be able to hire the talents that were not available. If you were a small startup a year ago and you were trying to hire a chief product officer or a chief technology officer or a strong head of digital marketing, it was so expensive that a lot of the startups we had invested in were saying to us, I don't think I can hire the right level of talent. For better and for worse, this is about to change. And it's suppositive for the small startup because I think they're going to finally be able to afford to recruit the people that they need to get to. The next level”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And more entrepreneurs tackling bigger problems than ever because of the economic downturn. They're like humanity is facing massive problems and I am going to solve it, which I find fascinating because when I started in tech 15 years ago, it felt like it was a lot about I want to make my life easier. And now it's like, I want to solve a problem which is going to change the entire world. You see that a lot in food tech and agrotech. You see that a lot in health to climate change and sustainability in Africa and the Middle East. And so there's pockets of incredible innovation and drive that gives me a lot of hope, even though I expect that 2023 and probably 2024 are going to be very difficult.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I speak to our entrepreneurs every day. Most of them are first-time founders. It's not like they've done that for 10 years. So most of them have never seen a crisis, let alone seen a crisis who are managing a business. And I am constantly amazed by the level of maturity how they approach to cash preservation, to how this is a great opportunity for hiring because suddenly they are going to get access to talent that beforehand were completely pulled out of the market by the Facebook Google of this world. It is very clear right now that B2B businesses seem to feel the pain a lot more than B2C businesses, a lot of big corporations have already started taking measures to reduce cost in Q2 of this year. I would expect that in the B2C market it's going to come. And then the other thing, I see more.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I joined Texas mostly focused on being a really great x-rayer. X-rayers are great, but they are mean to an end. What we are first and foremost is we are the largest precedor in the world, and we need to own that. We need to grow that.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Provide the same opportunities for everyone. And I wanted to change that and for the last three years we had over 25% of the companies we invested in were led by women. When you look at successful black and Latino founders in the US over the last four years, Texas has backed more of them than any other investor. We're not a DNI or ESG investor. We think of ourselves as a universal investor. We want our portfolio to represent the world as it is because we believe that the best investment opportunities are in this untapped potential.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were really three things that got me beyond excited about TechSars. The first one was I love working with entrepreneurs. We have now 3,300 encounting companies we have invested in. The second one is I'm a capitalist that believes deeply that entrepreneurship is a force of good, a force of progress, and a key driver of value creation for humanity. And I like to make money. I like to make money for myself. I like to make money for the people around me. I like to see successful entrepreneurs who create generational wealth for themselves and for their family and for their employees. And then the last one, which was very, very personal, was this desire to disrupt the gatekeepers of tech. I've been working in tech now for well over 15 years. And it is very clear that the tech ecosystem does not”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They all have to go through the program. When we look at their trajectory, our program makes a huge difference. You are five times more likely to get to around six of fundraising if you went through textures than if you were on your own”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The number of venture capitalists who after the invested in my company actually provided support and really, really make a difference in my company, tech stars. Not only we provide capital, but then we have programs. Think about it as three months intense entrepreneurship boot camp. And then after the three months, we have a lot of services for you starting from helping you to fundraise to helping you hire new talents for your team, connecting you with potential corporate clients, et cetera, et cetera. We have this massive network of 7,000 alumni, 7,000 mentors, 20,000 investors who have made an investment in Texas company. And so because of all of that, we provide a very different investment strategy far, far, far away from all the hype that I can sometimes. See in the media.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To start with, we invest extremely early. So we invest at a time where it can literally be like two people and a dog and an idea that seems really exciting. The second thing is we make a lot of investment this year. We're going to do close to 600 preseed investments. And because of that, we're highly diversified. Like we don't follow a specific trend. We don't really have the fear of missing out because we invest across all countries and all type of industries. And then the last thing is we also have a very different model because we provide a lot more than just capital. I'm an entrepreneur myself. And I remember being in so many rooms with venture capitalists promising me the moon, the stars, and everything in between, besides obviously the check that they were generously going to give us. And I can count on half a hand.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the world of business, being a dragon means that you need to be able to resist any challenges, any economic downturn. They tend to have really good unique economics. They tend to be very loyal, again, back to Game of Thrones. If you watched it, you know that the dragons were extremely loyal when you think about dragons in a business sense. I see entrepreneurs who are very loyal to a problem, very loyal to a customer needs. They go through battles to solve these problems.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't need to be a unicorn. What you really want to be is you want to be a dragon. Dragons are tough, they're almost invincible. They're independent. They're tenacious. And they may not be as pretty as unicorns, but I think for an entrepreneur that feels like a much better animal to try to emulate.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, just for the record, I'm actually a big fan of Game of Thrones, but that was not the reason why. It all started a few weeks ago. We had our LP annual general meetings, and I was having a conversation with Bradfeld, one of the three co-founders of Techstars about whether or not we should talk about the number of unicorns that Techstars has invested in and supported. By the way, it's 22. And that got me thinking the number of unicorns that any investors makes is like one of these really key numbers that people focus on. And it's completely artificial because most of them are paper valuation. And as we've seen last year, this is a valuation that is not supported. And it also has negative consequences because as an entrepreneur to get big fast, to grow at all costs, it makes you make a lot of bad decisions. I was talking to our entrepreneurs and telling them, don't be a one-trick post.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really don't like that people are so obsessed with unicorns. It makes you make a lot of bad decisions. You don't need to be a unicorn. What you really want to be is you want to be a dragon. Dragons are tough, they are independent, they're tenacious. I always wanted to disrupt the gatekeepers of tech, the tech ecosystem does not provide the same opportunities for everyone. Believe that the best investment opportunities are in this untapped potential. This year, we're gonna do close to 600 precedments. Have this massive network of 7,000 alumni, 7,000 mentors, 20,000 investors. Are five times more likely to get to around six of fundraising if you went through tech stars than if you were on your own.”
2022-11-17 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Don’t be a unicorn, be a dragon, w/Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT