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