Saying NO to a 30M offerIs success an illusion

two weeks ago

i said no to 30 million dollar offer

from investors

essentially 15 million could go to the

company

and 15 million dollars could go directly

in our pockets

that’s five million dollars each for me

and my co-founders today

i’m gonna tell you why my parents

grew up on a farm and never had the

chance to study

nor to get any degree they sacrificed

a lot so my brother and me could get

a good education becoming an engineer

was for them synonymous success

i could get a good job and also

a good salary so that’s what i did

i studied science became an engineer

worked for companies like procter and

gumball and lms

but when i graduated i wanted to do

something for myself

i wanted to travel the world for one

full year

i never had that chance because my

parents didn’t have enough money for

that

so i did every single job a student can

do

just to save enough money to get the

flight tickets

with my best friend we decided to travel

the words

and stay at people’s home for free just

using

social media when we wanted to stay

longer in some places we would work out

arrangements for accommodation in

exchange for work

in bolivia i became an english teacher

in colombia i worked in a coffee farm

and eventually i even took care of pigs

in costa rica

during this year i had never felt so

fulfilled

and free in my entire life

when i came back to paris and meeting

all this person

actually all around the world made me

feel

super fulfilled despite of what you

might think

people are actually outgoing and really

helpful by nature

so when i got back to paris i knew

that i wanted to recreate that feeling

of freedom

and i knew that i wanted to do that to

launch a new business

but in order to launch a business i had

to be good

at business so i came back to school

to study business and since my dad could

actually

print on fabric because he was a graphic

designer

we decided together to launch a t-shirt

brand

he would handle the production and i

would end all

the business side of things after three

months of hard work

we could finally launch our brand

barriers

during these three months of work i had

put a lot of pressure

on my dad because i was 100

sure that when we would launch the

website

we would receive thousands of orders

but the truth is that when we went live

we only had a handful of orders

which were all coming from my friends

and i think the actual numbers was

yeah six it was a real fail

and i knew that it was entirely my fault

and that i

i had let down my dad the person who i

admired the most

every time i was looking at him i

reminded me the fact that i had let him

down

and we never spoke about it for a few

months and i even

stopped visiting my family that day

i made myself a promise that i would

never let this ever happen again

i had failed because i couldn’t find

customers

and i knew that i wasn’t the only one

that’s actually when a friend of mine

asked me to join him on a new venture

the goal was simple

build an agency where we would help

customers

find their new clients we did that for

about a year

it worked out pretty well but then

i thought we could make more by actually

building

our own platform rather than using

existing tools

and that’s when i met vienna and

francois two

technical geniuses i pitched them the

idea and they loved it

three months later we were launching

lemnis together

at the beginning it was really tough

we didn’t have money for the salaries i

couldn’t get

enough money to pay the rent and my

girlfriend had to take care of that at

the time

and every time i was meeting with

friends

or family they were asking me the same

question

guillaume when are you getting paid

in order for me to avoid the

embarrassment of saying that i was still

broke

i stopped seeing my parents i stopped

visiting them

and it felt kind of lonely but then

i met with another friend i hadn’t seen

him in a long time so we decided to sit

down

and catch up for a coffee he asked me

what’s up

and i told him that we had launched our

own startup

his first question was how much money

did you get from investors

i told him that we didn’t get any and

then he said

in that case well you don’t have a

startup

that’s how it works apparently the

success of a startup

is equal to the money you get from

investors

and if we look at the media and the

society

the recipe for success is pretty simple

you need three things

one start a company two get

millions of dollars from investors and

three

get clients and eventually you can even

retire when you’re 35.

i had started my own company i didn’t

have the millions yet so i figured

why not give it a shot for one

entire month i met with investors from

everywhere around the globe but the

truth is

i kept receiving rejection messages

things like

you haven’t done anything yet or we

don’t know who you are nor your

co-founders

and the last one it’s a saturated market

you’ll never make it

that day i was feeling really down

after all this rejection message but

suddenly

i received a message from one of our

customers essentially

he was saying that he had signed a 20

000 contract

thanks to all the tips and help i had

given him once onboarding him on the

platform

i knew that i wanted to recreate that

feeling

so i wondered do we really need

investors to succeed

but then i asked myself what exactly is

success

if you ask my parents success is pretty

simple

you need a good education a good job

and having a family but if i ask a

professional athlete

he would probably tell me that success

is about

going to the olympics in essence

we put people into boxes of those who

succeed

and those who don’t at school

it’s about the grades you get and in

life it’s about the money you have

in any case we all need to always be

smarter

faster better but i think we’re missing

something

fundamental here

in the last 70 years we have explained

human motivation through maslow’s

hierarchy of needs

essentially you need to fulfill

individual needs

and each needs would lead way to the

next so

let me explain for example if you don’t

know where your next meal is coming from

you’re not going to be able to think

about how you can maintain your

relationships

and without noticing suddenly life

becomes a competition

where everyone is fighting trying to

fulfill their own needs

but if we take a step back and

look at human evolution and what has

made the success of our species

it didn’t come from individualistic

behaviors or individualism

but rather altruism altruism

the selfless concern for the well-being

of

others that’s why i think

that this pyramid of human motivation

by maslow is actually just

the tip of the iceberg and what we don’t

see

beneath the surface is altruism

the altruism on which human success was

built

from every time in the civilization

that we have built people have been

helping each other and that’s what has

made

human a success i knew

that the moment in my life when i had

felt the most fulfilled and happy

was when i was helping others succeed

so we decided to be focusing

solely on that with vienna and francois

when launching lemnists

after our first year we had thousands of

customers

all over the world after our second year

i was invited to be speaking at intel

international conferences in front of

thousands of people

i knew that we had succeeds

but it won’t change the status quo it

won’t change that the media

only talk about the startup who raise

money from investors

we had a decent income but what about

everyone else what about

altruism

if we wanted to change something and

prove the world

that the success of a startup or a

company

shouldn’t be equal to the money they get

from investors

we had to do something

unexpected

when i was a kid i was good at one thing

doing things that i shouldn’t

guillaum you shouldn’t eat too much

you’re a chubby kid

i did you shouldn’t grow a mustache it

won’t look good on you

i did that too you shouldn’t start a

business with your dad

put pressure on him and ruin the

relationship you have with the person

you admired the most

i did that too all these things

for the better or worse made me become

the person that i am today

which made me wonder what can i do

that i shouldn’t we needed to get

noticed

to be heard so we decided to announce

publicly

that we were going to raise 20 million

our plan was pretty simple we wanted to

get a lot of attention

as much as possible and then decline

publicly the offer

just to show the word that money

shouldn’t be linked to

the success of a company but there was

one thing

that we didn’t plan doing this in public

brought us a lot of attention much more

than we expected

we received hundreds of messages from

investors that we hadn’t even contacted

they were saying things like we really

want to invest in a company like lemnist

or we’re ready to spend between five to

forty million dollars

to invest in your company but eventually

something big came up to give you a bit

more context

when you get money from investors the

money usually goes

directly into the company’s bank

accounts

but in our case we receive a 30 million

dollar offer

with 50 percent in cash out

50 in cash out means that 15 million

dollars

could go directly into our pockets

that’s

5 million each such a month

is life-changing for me francois and

their family

so we decided to sit down and discuss

what was the best solution not only for

us

but also for our team with womb

we wouldn’t be where we are today

so together with janae francois and the

team

we decided to say no to 30 million

dollars

by doing this we made a statement

our message was basically featured

in press worldwide around the world as

the startup who made a big

message to all the people out there that

success

shouldn’t be linked to the money you get

i received

thousands of messages of support from

entrepreneurs

and aspiring entrepreneurs all over the

world

who resonated with our values

by saying no to such a big amount

we’re able to show the world that

our value is not defined by money

this definition of success based on the

amount of money you get and on

individualism

has pushed people to stop caring for

others

and ultimately our environment

in the last years the iceberg of human

success

has melted in the same way as the

iceberg from the north pole

but today our survival depends on

altruistic behaviors

lucky for us more and more people around

the world

are showing altruistic behaviors afrosha

created the biggest beach cleanup by

removing

4.3 million of kilos of plastic from the

mumbai’s beach

his action has inspired the movements of

people to understand

what’s being echo conscience meant

when gary matai created the greenbelt

movement bike

in 1977. since then

she has helped moms are more than 30

000 women to launch their own business

and on top of that i’ve planted more

than 51 million trees

we’re entering a new era where

altruistic behaviors will help us

save the planet but also save ourselves

it’s funny you know going back to our

roots

is actually what will take us into the

future

which made me think of something it

comes from an old quote

what you keep is lost forever

but what you give to others we live

forever

so now i have a question for you

do you want to live forever

you