Some Context Before Diving In

Having been constantly reminded by salespeople that I was starting my 10th year as a solo founder (good job on customization!) I got inspired to write this article. This is my way to take the time to look back and share, help, and inspire other solo entrepreneurs who might feel lonely or question their journey. If this helps at least one other person out there, it would have been worth it.

I’ve always been an entrepreneur, solving people’s problems with technology. I moved from France to San Francisco in 2010 and never looked back. I got into Y-Combinator in 2015 with Trackin, a last-mile delivery technology sold to restaurants as a white-label service, and then used it to launch Mobydish, the only full-service catering marketplace available in the US. 

To make it easier and more digestible, I’ve divided the 10 years into 3 articles linked below so you can read whatever seems interesting to you.

Interested in launching a new project? Read more about what I’ve learned in detail about the first mistakes I made as a solo founder, and/or listen to this podcast on how I went about the journey of growing a marketplace and acquiring supply and demand.

You’re Not Alone, Let’s Connect!

Thanks to anyone who was able to read the whole thing!
There’s so much more that I’ve learned as a solo founder, but a lot of it is greatly summarized in Sam Altman’s essay. I wish I had more time to share during the journey, but looking at my online activity, you’ll notice I didn’t get many chances to do so. This post is a redemption for not posting earlier.

If you’re feeling lonely out there, want to chat about better ways to go through the journey, or just ask more questions about what I’ve learned, please connect with me! I may not have reached the IPO level yet, but I’ve grown more as a human than I ever thought I would, and I’d love to help others, genuinely. It’s easy to get stuck and feel like we’re the only one facing challenges but life will always feel tough on us, wherever we’re from. We’re all judging a situation based on where we’re coming from, so anything that takes us out of our comfort zone will be felt as potentially painful. The beauty is the more you get out of it, the less you mind facing new challenges.

Whatever project you are working on, I wish you luck, health, resilience, growth, faith, and fun. As I’m often telling myself, at the end of the day, you just gotta learn how to enjoy the journey and lead with your heart, you’re lucky to be alive!

Applying self-awareness at every level

It felt really easy, relatively speaking, to run a company that didn’t have day-to-day fires and logistics to deal with. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t only thinking about the company and I used some free time to look at myself as a product to improve. I listed feedback I heard about myself as well as my own judgments and insecurities. I started fixing them, one by one. I finally got myself a primary doctor, a physical therapist, and a trainer. I also tracked and learned about sleep, regrew my hair, and learned more about different human personalities, their thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, and our place in the universe.
Until now, my mind and discipline pushed so hard that I ignored my body and how exhausted I’d been. Increasing my level of self-awareness to more than just my mind, allowed me to slowly start a healthier routine and endure better the amount of work I’d go through. It made it easier to listen and learn from others, with less resistance and emotional reactions.

Losing everything once again

With no recent tech updates and no sight of people coming back to the office, we decided to focus on launching a new product. However, we pivoted once again when companies started inquiring about Mobydish services a couple of months later. They were aiming for a return to the office in the summer.
By May, based on the growing demand, we decided to relaunch Mobydish and started hiring, excited about the idea of finally resuming our catering services.

By July we had a healthy pipeline and were operating again after almost a year without any deliveries. One month later, Delta, the new Covid variant put everything on hold and customers started canceling orders. It felt like March 2020 all over again.
This second instant loss in a row triggered ulcer pain again and I decided that I couldn’t keep carrying all of this on my shoulders. I wanted to find a Director of Operations to help with the day-to-day and relaunch the business with me. I told myself that I couldn’t let work take me that far off a healthy life.

Changing the nature of the company

Every industry was coming back strong, but employees weren’t looking to come back to the office. So far, individual group ordering had been the way to go due to the uncertainty of headcounts and office attendance as well as health concerns but orders were small. 

I like solving complex problems and recurring catering is one of them. The level of customer expectation and the number of variables increase greatly compared to individual orders and requires lots of discipline and processes to do it right. Unfortunately, with people getting into the habit of ordering individual meals during Covid, Uber, and Doordash, among other services, were likely to be competitors now. Going against them meant developing major software updates. We were known for doing catering right, at a good price, and making money doing it. Now we had to reinvent ourselves with group orders. 

Getting ready for a big year

As I was losing hope to find someone great who would be brave enough to join a company that had no market in sight, I found a Director of Operations by October. We still thought catering would come back and that 2022 would be a busy year for us. I was convinced that the hybrid era will be the future of work despite the press and the tech world pushing for a different narrative.

By the end of the year, I packed all my stuff in a storage unit and decided to work and travel around. I took my first 2 weeks off in the same year, during our slowest month, and decided to visit my dream country, Egypt. I’ve yet to have hired someone who’s not been shocked by how challenging it is to be part of such an operations-intensive business, including founder friends. My goal was to be the best version of myself for the upcoming year and be ready for a new fight. I knew I would need the mental space to lead with empathy and be patient, especially since the company’s new and small team hadn’t experienced our growth in the past. We impatiently waited for the new wave of inbounds and to reconnect with our past customers.

Lesson 9: It was the first time I had to scale back a company and relaunch it from scratch. The hardest part was keeping in touch with customers when so many of them have disappeared. The point of contact has changed jobs or moved out of state. If I could have predicted the future, I would have raised more money to actually open up states while everything had stopped. Trusting life will work your way, and staying optimistic when the whole world is pessimistic is where the biggest opportunities await.  

2022: Stuck In a Loop

Relaunching in an evolving market

We spent the first few months hiring and training a new core team. The market and habits had changed. The whole hospitality industry was trying to figure things out but signs were positive.

The opportunity to relaunch a startup that knew how to execute and had found product market fit is something that was appreciated by applicants. I had learn so far that employees from the tech world would thrive with processes and online tools but quickly feel overwhelmed by the day-to-day operations while people from the hospitality industry would thrive under daily fires and pressure but would have a hard time navigating all our tools and online processes. I anyway still hoped that I could help new hires break these habits within their first 3-6 months.

Founder VS employee expectations

I tried to take a step back from running the business and counted on the team to follow the documentation and processes we had built for them during Covid. My goal was to avoid rebuilding a company around me and have the team thrive. I thought that by giving them enough space, Moby would have an experienced core team that will then lead the next cycle of growth, hire new people, and become their manager.

Unfortunately, step-by-step guides and lengthy SOPs can take time to be assimilated. Experienced people have habits that can be hard to get rid of. It took more than a few months to motivate and effectively help my new employees change these habits. New habits form best with an open mind and by starting with small and repetitive tasks to allow the brain to re-wire.

The team cared and wanted to do well, but I made the mistake of asking too much of people too early on. Bringing new hires into an environment where they can be comfortable, thrive in doing what they know well, and only then slowly help them grow is a better approach. As entrepreneurs, we often project onto others what we are capable of doing and easily forget that every person is different, with different skill sets, hunger, and motivation.

Working with the right executives

When hiring executives, I would highly recommend connecting with the CEO of the companies you’re hiring them from. The reasoning is that a good executive should most likely be on good terms with leadership and know how to leave the company in a better position than when they joined it. Another important point is to look at their past successes. I thought that hiring people with many failures in a row was ok because they’d learn from it, but it turned out, they’d often repeat the same critical mistakes despite intense coaching. You want to see success in their trajectory which shows that they’re capable of taking a business forward. If they were part of the problem, It would show they evolved as people to reach success. If the company was already great, they’d show that they identified the patterns increasing the chances for success and joined a company that had the right recipe in place.

Starting from 0 versus scaling a business

By September, I had to step back into the game because even if the demand was coming back, the revenue wasn’t growing as fast as we wanted it to be, which meant we weren’t able to fundraise and resume our 2020 plan. I had to accept that I was back running a small company that was scrappy and aiming back to being profitable. It’s fascinating how easy it is to lose discipline as a team when you fundraised and pushed for growth, instead of aiming for profitability. The personality of people who are joining you to give birth to a new project are very different than the ones interested in scaling it to the next level. For example, when you start a business, you’re selling your own product, then you teach your whole team how to sell with the mentality of “always be selling” which creates a sense of ownership in the company growth for every team member. After fundraising and scaling, you start hiring a sales team, have departments with specific targets and KPIs, and get used to running your company differently. Going back to a small startup and remembering the details that made us efficient took more time than I thought. Having expense and performance reports, early on, is probably one of the best decisions I had made for Mobydish.

Embracing the deja-vu

I had to learn how to enjoy going through the same journey again, with the same company and doing the same thing we did multiple times in the past.
My mind, as often, was turning into my own enemy and after reflecting on the amazing impact a short weekend meditation retreat in 2017 had on me, I knew what I had to do. I took a week off for a weeklong meditation retreat, to help incorporate it into my daily routine and be more in tune with my thoughts and emotions. Since then, there’s rarely more than a few days where I don’t meditate for at least an hour. The impacts of that week-long have been life-changing and I have once again, evolved. I am no longer letting my thoughts define who I am. I now believe life is working for me, and not against me despite everything we’ve been through. I could easily use all the past challenges to call myself unlucky, but I don’t. I am actually grateful, and processing it all. Would I have wished for it all to be easier and different? Sure, but that doesn’t mean it would have made me happier. It’s true what they say, happiness does come from within. It is a waste of time to be looking for external context in order to feel happy or relieved. Life will always be good some days and messy other days. The only happy constant you can create is your reaction to external events. You can make it the same, whatever happens to you, and therefore always have a happy outcome, by letting go of control on everything else but your reaction.

By the end of the year and after having spent a good month digging deeper into every aspect of the business and every member, we let go of some people, improved our execution, and have mainly been growing since.

Lesson 10: It is important to hire someone and set them up for success right away. They will build confidence and will be more likely to accept growth challenges and face failures. As a solo founder, you have to be ready to own multiple roles for a longer period of time than you might want. By lifting that weight from others, you’ll be surrounded by happier employees, embracing your vision and welcoming your feedback with fewer triggers. You’ll need to find ways to stay healthy despite the amount of work and pressure. Learn how to control your reaction when things get tough, and focus on enjoying and loving it even if it’s looking hard at first sight. It will make you able to face anything in life

Read the conclusion

Overcoming the negative emotions around fundraising

After our incapacity to fundraise from Silicon Valley VCs, there wasn't a week when I didn't doubt myself. The act of fundraising is the one that can make you doubt the most. You’re going to hear that your baby is ugly 9 times out of 10. Yet, every time you show up, you have to sell your story with the conviction that your company will win. Luckily, the situation was the same for most founders. I accepted it and realized that it was part of building myself up as a CEO. Instead of feeling bad or mad about it, I just had to take it as yet another problem to solve. It was on me to find a solution and do a better job at it.

Launching a new market

I decided to open Mobydish in NYC, an immense market for catering, where food delivery was still a thing and where companies like Blue Apron just had their IPOs.

With the help of one new hire, we went full steam into launching our NYC market. With marketplaces, you need to build supply first and manage their expectations. Then, when you have enough, you build demand while keeping up on the supply side. Our goal was to have 30 restaurants at launch. In less than 1 week, after employing every sales technique I had learned until then, I closed 13 deals daily. We reached $100k per month in revenue in less than 3 months while it took us 8-9 months in SF to reach.

Working against life

In March, I started noticing large empty holes in my beard, which had never happened before. I got worried but decided to ignore it, thinking it will get better, and used the opportunity to update my style. I started fundraising again, focusing on VCs from NYC and Europe instead of Silicon Valley, using our new market and fresh new data as a selling point.

So far, our direct competitors had raised tens of millions of dollars and were struggling to expand into new markets and turn a profit. Mobydish was already profitable, expanding into a second market, and raised less than $400k.

By summer, I had improved my fundraising game. A couple of VCs were trying to get their fair share of equity in our company. It felt like an amazing reward to have people understand what we were building and willing to bet on us. After looking at the whole data, conducting interviews, and trying really hard to find something wrong, one of them asked: “Why isn’t every VC in Silicon Valley fighting for this deal?!”.
We received a term sheet and implicated lawyers in the negotiations. From that point, I knew that it would become costly and that we had to close. Meanwhile, ironically, we had just started feeding Uber Eats and Yelp - 700 employees on 4 different floors with just one freight elevator - a fun operational delivery. Both were running their own food delivery services but were using us instead. I never missed that anecdote while pitching new investors.

Shortly after and out of nowhere, the European VC bailed without saying why. After pushing for answers, they admitted having asked VCs in Silicon Valley about the space, were told that it wasn’t a good move, and had to listen to them. The VC they contacted had a similar company and couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I confirmed that story couple of years later while having breakfast with one of the co-founders of that portfolio company in question.
After another month of back and forth, and despite having the introduction of Mobydish as a new portfolio company ready, the second VC decided to back down. What I feared became real: we wasted time, energy, and money paying lawyers for nothing in return.

Reaching your body limits

By September, the angel investors I met during fundraising were still eager to invest, which allowed us to close around $250k instead of the $2.2 million planned on the original term sheet. Meanwhile, our competitors were announcing new rounds of funding. I remember the day I read this online. My blood shoot up through my head, I started shaking, and felt ulcer pain for weeks. That’s when I discovered the magic of Pepcid.

The holes on my face were now so visible that my friends were asking me what was happening to what I would reply: “Stress”. I felt relieved that non-entrepreneurial people could finally see how hard it was on me and my body to run this company. Until then, I felt like I wasn't understood by my regular circle of friends. I still hadn't taken any vacation since 2013. I had to improvise yet another beard style to not look weird and hide them as much as possible but I still convinced myself I was the one doing things right.

Facing cancer

One day, as I was shaving, I noticed that my face was no longer symmetrical. I didn’t even know if I always looked like that or if it was something new. After waiting for a month and not seeing any improvements, I got very cheap health insurance and went to the ER, thinking a simple cream would do the job and make it go away. Unfortunately, the doctor thought otherwise and made me pass multiple exams the next day.

After a long unbearable and wordy 10-minute explanation, the doctor finally announced that I had cancer. I was shocked and got pretty emotional. I hadn’t seen it coming. I’ll always remember the cold and unnatural comforting doctor’s hand on my shoulder. I decided to walk home from the hospital and call my advisor. I told him everything, and he opened up about his own journey facing health issues. Having him open up to me showed me that it takes courage to share genuine pain. Every single time I shared something vulnerable first with anyone, the natural reaction has always been empathy and a deeper connection.
On top of that, I now owed a sum of money I was far from having because of my terrible health insurance, and my ignorance of the US healthcare system.

The entrepreneurial guilt

A feeling of guilt started taking over. The company was growing and doing great; we were hiring and expanding. How dare I be sick? How could I even stop leading this company as I had just accepted money and set new goals for us to reach?
I had announced 2017 as being "the year" for Mobydish. Instead, I came so close but failed to fundraise what we wanted, and I was now supposed to give up on my company and focus on a fight for my own survival for at least a year. That feeling is similar to when you’re not doing anything and feels like you should be working on your startup instead, the feeling that pushes you to never stop working or thinking about it.

Luckily, my investors were fully supportive and made me understand that the company couldn't exist without me. I had to prioritize myself to see make Mobydish’s vision come true. I went back to France in order to get the medical treatment I couldn't afford in the US. I finally faced the fact that I wasn't invincible and that sometimes, I had to stop.

Fighting sickness and loneliness

For a few months, I had to live with the idea that I had a 25% chance of dying within 2 years, without any treatment possible. I rethought everything I had done and what I wanted to do for the next couple of years. It felt lonely as hell, and my girlfriend had gone back to France due to her visa running out. The only thing I had in mind was that I needed to get ready for an epic battle and survive the fight. Every time I’d hear the word “cancer” I was triggered. I didn’t look forward to going back to France because I didn’t want to see my family being worried daily about me. I thought it would add more weight to my shoulders, but facing it alone didn’t sound thrilling either.

The French oncologist said the tumor needed to be removed ASAP since it was already 4 cm in diameter. He added that because the facial nerve passed through where the tumor had grown, there were risks of losing half of my face’s mobility. I told him I couldn't function in my field with half a functioning face and made sure he was the best for this surgery.

On December 7th, in the wake room, the surgeon checked on me and asked me to blink my eyes, then smile. I heard him say "OK" and leave the room. For a week after that, I felt butterflies in my stomach every time both of my cheeks could fully lift up while smiling. Walking around in the hospital, and seeing how younger I was than other patients made me question my lifestyle until now.

After the surgery, my girlfriend at the time, probably driven by the fear of facing another situation like this plus having first knowledge of my lifestyle after having shared a couple of years of my entrepreneurial journey, asked me what would I do if I had to choose between her and the company. Without any doubt, I responded I wouldn’t be able to give up on the company. She cried.
On December 29th, I was back in the US, working as if nothing had happened. That year, we ended up doubling our revenue again.

Lesson 5: We all have limits, if not mental, if not skills, our body will tell us to stop at some point. My work hours and sleep patterns were bad, and I was not even taking time to work out. I would only have social interactions if they felt they would help me be a better CEO or help my company grow and refused every wedding invitation, even from childhood friends. I was living and breathing for my company and sent the signal to my body that it didn't matter. I ignored the fact that despite our growth, I wasn’t happy. On December 26th, I was given a second chance to live life differently but just hadn’t realized it yet.

2018: Self-Awareness And Personal Values

Aligning body and mind

After spending the first three months of the year back to work, I woke up one day and couldn’t eat, or focus on work. I didn't understand what was happening, and my employees would tell me “Something in you has changed, you’re different”.

Most nights, I had incessant nightmares and couldn’t sleep past 4 am. I became sleep deprived. It felt like my body was forcing my mind to face that something had gone wrong. I was unhappy and unfulfilled despite growing a successful and profitable business. I felt like something was off with me because my entrepreneur friends, looked happy growing their businesses in their roles.
While I was still digesting the whole thing, I started to slowly find myself again and told the team were going to change. I understood that it was a marathon, not a sprint, and this shift was welcomed by exclamations like: “thank god, we never felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel”. 

Redefining self-worth and success

After refusing every wedding invitation from childhood friends or best friends, since the company was always coming first until now, I finally accepted one. it was one of our YC batchmates and yes, YC was right once again: I did want to be present for their wedding despite having spent just a few months altogether. We celebrated in Mexico, and for the first time ever, we spent more than a few hours connecting. It gave room for deeper discussions, and I finally learned that I wasn’t the only one struggling with running a startup and all the pressure endured. Some would say they were hating their role, or team and even thinking of taking a year-long break.

Thanks to that trip, I could see that my friends, even the more “successful” ones, weren’t my friends because of my company but because of who I was. I also realized that even if I were getting press articles about me or the company, receiving praises from VCs I’d meet with, wishing for their founders to be more like me, none of this was actually fulfilling. Sure, it made you proud for a day, but then you’re back to being with yourself. You either keep going with more distractions or admit that being who you truly are is what will make you happy, not the way others want you to be, even if you’re great at it. The story I bought into was not real, and I had overworked myself and put the company first for years because I thought it was the only way to go about it.

A second aha moment for me was hearing about Avicii’s suicide. I always admired him for his meaningful lyrics and innovative approach to electronic music. The first time I heard one of his songs, I was hooked. I could sense that he wanted to find a way to impact people and inspire them but also share his feelings about life, both positive and negative.
But even if he, young, famous, successful, and rich still hated his life to the point of ending it, then I knew it wasn’t just due to entrepreneurship but more due to a way of living.

The last thing that helped me was learning more about myself, through personality tests first, then literally asking old friends who knew me really well if what I had been re-learning about myself made sense to them. I asked about who I used to be and described who I thought I wanted to be moving forward, to see if that made sense to them.

During the summer, we self-financed large billboard campaigns in SF and NYC. The core team was emotional and inspired by how far we’ve come, which was awesome to witness. Mobydish was everywhere and getting noticed. I knew we’d be drawing attention, I just didn’t know what kind of attention yet.

Proactively healing

I decided to focus on my mental health and deal with my feeling of guilt for having turned into an emotionless machine. As a solo founder, you have to build a life that will provide you with the support you need, because at work, you’re always going to be the pillar everyone else relies on.

I re-learned about who I am as a person, reconnected with friends who were not entrepreneurs, worked out at least once a week, and found an unexpected way to fix my sleep. 

By the end of summer, thanks to a magical guided experience with psychedelics, I got over the feeling of guilt that was keeping me up at night and slept better again. I knew that my company wasn’t my identity or worth, but one of many professional experiences that belong to my life’s journey. I had pushed my friends away because I thought they couldn’t understand what I was going through, and that the only way forward was to put the company above all. I went on a last-minute trip to France to apologize to my long-term friends for making them feel like they didn’t matter to me and unsuccessfully tried to re-instantiate a lost love relationship. 

Most of the companies of the 2015 batch have folded. The ones that are still standing are either very successful or still in some kind of survival mode. Whenever I’d meet with YC batchmates, we used to ask each other: “How is the company going”, but after more than a few years in, we were now wise enough to then ask: “How are you doing?”.

Running the company from a different country

After having dealt with different visas, I worked with a lawyer to build a solid case for an EB1 Green card. Despite being approved in 13 days, I was told that I had to leave the country by the end of the year because there was no official ETA on when the card will actually be processed.  My current visa would end before I’d hear from the USCIS. I left the US in November, told my employees that I had no return date and that I’ll be running it from Europe until I am authorized to come back…I didn’t have a plan yet, but I knew we’d figure something out. I was just feeling lucky to be alive and given a chance to experience something new.

By the end of the year, we doubled our numbers again, managing around $5.5m of bookings, and were a team of 8 people. I had still not hired an executive to help me, and my team did a fantastic job at growing their skillset along the journey. We had been tracking everything since 2015 and implemented better-reporting practices and processes to maintain our growth without the need to actually hire more people.

As I was about to send my investor update and summarize the year, I realized that despite everything that happened, we executed in 2018 what I announced we’d do in 2017 if we had fundraised. I could smile a bit, there was hope. 

Lesson 6: Not knowing my personal worth and driven by imposter syndrome, I could only see myself happy with success by raising millions and getting press coverage. In 2018, the company had already delivered millions of meals, had stellar reviews and huge customers. I couldn’t go out to dinner without having a guest telling me they were using Mobydish. I still felt empty and burned out.  I started resenting the company. Why not run a company your way? Staying true to yourself rather than what you think is the Silicon Valley way. I was responsible for every decision I made, and it was time to make different ones, better aligned with my values.

2019: Life is always testing you 

Surviving a class action lawsuit as a company

I took the opportunity to be stuck in Europe to meet with European competitors and investors. I ended up being offered a term sheet from existing investors who wanted to double down on Mobydish and support our growth.

In February, my immigration lawyer told me I got a new O1 visa to come back to the US while the green card was still processing. I felt immediate relief and celebrated the news. I could start projecting myself living in the USA again.
The next day, our general counsel informed me of an ongoing class action lawsuit against the company filed in California. At first glance, It seemed like the company would go down and my visa would be revoked. The class representation was a single driver…I wondered if I should even go back to America, but convinced myself of the great growth opportunity it would be. After all, how many founders have the opportunity to defend their company from class action lawsuits?

I always kept a small cushion of money in the company bank in case something like this happened, but I never expected something this bad so early on. I decided to pause the fundraising and fully focus on the case.

Back in the US in March, I worked with our team to put in place a survival plan. This legal action didn’t make sense to me though, as we were still a small company. After an internal investigation, I realized this all started right after our billboards campaign. Every other delivery company had been sued for using drivers as contractors. 

I got deeply involved with the lawyers to make sure they understood how we operated. We learned that we were the company in Silicon Valley paying drivers the most, despite having raised the least. Consequently, I reduced the team size to pay the legal fees of a yet-to-be-known amount. We were still growing and still dedicated to ensuring our customer's satisfaction as a small team, and by the end of summer, most of them were understandably burnt out. I had been looking forward to sharing a more enjoyable working culture with my employees, but we were back to hustling again. We couldn’t let our customers feel like we were stretched thin or lose revenue with the looming legal bills. 

I was proud to find some sleep still and even take a couple of days off during this lengthy lawsuit to stay healthy and grounded. My close friends told me I had changed completely, in a good way. I now embraced life fully and let myself disconnect from work as soon as I closed my computer. Doctors are probably doing the same thing as soon as they get out of their hospital. The ability to be present when not working, made a simple weekend feel as rejuvenating as a full week off.

Initiating a full reset while growing the business

By mid-July, we had settled with the plaintiff for 10x less than what was originally asked, payable in 4 years with no guarantee. The negotiation took the whole day and was so emotionally intense that I was in bed and asleep by 9 pm, a first. It felt like lawyers with no care for the well-being of drivers were just trying to squeeze as much money as they could from our company. Seeing them face to face made me feel like anger was about to take over my body and actions entirely.
Armed with experience from my past struggles and self-work, I walked into the room prepared to lose the company defending ourselves in a trial, which would have meant no money for the opposing counsel. I knew my value and that I’d be capable of starting something new. There was no way I’d start from scratch and put us all through the same journey just to pay off lawyers. They would have to accept our best and final, reasonable offer, and they did.

By August, I started hiring a whole new team. I had gotten so many different outcomes with past hires that I had to come up with ways to screen applicants even before I talked to them. I always have my candidates send me the calendar invite. Have they understood the instructions? Have they taken into consideration the timezone, and added a video link? Is the title clear? Are they going to follow up with a message/email after the invitation is sent?
Hiring the wrong people for a startup is very costly, but if you have co-founders, you can sometimes split the extra work. When you’re solo, every mistake made by you or your team is fully paid off by you and mostly you. Every missing member meant I’d take on their role.

By September, I trained all new hires in one month, let them deal with the day-to-day tasks, and resumed fundraising knowing that the only way to be successful at it was to be 100% all in, trust the team, and hope for the growth trajectory to keep going up.
The legal fees already had cost us most of our safety net, and it was time to get some cash in to not only survive but expand.

Learnig how to pitch VCs

Many VCs will tell you “no” when fundraising and offer to “keep them in the loop”. Others will offer their time to help. I decided I’d take the latter, and asked for a 1-hour genuine chat about their actual thoughts on my pitch. It was the most fruitful hour I spent with any VC yet. I listed all the points that thought were valuable and asked him to rate them from 0-5 from his point of view. I got to understand what they were looking for and only received positive responses thereafter. The general feedback went from: “I really like you and your energy, but I don’t get why you (as Mobydish) to: “It makes so much sense!”, and would lead to at least data room reviews. Thanks to that, the number of investors I had to pitch to became minimal and they either passed fearing the market and competition, or invested.

By December, we’d grown our revenue by 50% despite a year spent surviving. We closed our Series A round, and were ready for 2020 to be “our year”. We built our own Salesforce dashboard, objects, sales, and performance reports. The whole team was trained and ready to scale.

Comparing being in the US and Europe

I got to finally celebrate Christmas in France with my family. Going back to Europe feels the same way every time. You’re not rushing anymore, you’re not thinking about growth or success or trying to be the top company in the world. You don’t feel like you need to stand out to exist, you’re already part of something bigger. Even with most of my family members not being aware of a tenth of what these past years had been like for me and still don’t really know what is my company doing, I was grateful to see them, feel at peace, and internally excited about finally getting to take this company through a hypergrowth phase, supported by new investors I respected and trusted.

Lesson 7: Whatever you think you’ve learned from life, you’ll get tested over and over again. When you’re overcoming a negative emotion, you’ll need to overcome it many times until it becomes part of your comfort zone. It’s one thing to learn about wellness, strategy, or negotiations, it’s another to remember and apply it in your life. Mastering a theory but being unable of putting it to good use, is irrelevant.
2019 showed me I could still be happy and appreciate the skills I was acquiring along the way despite facing some big challenges. Also, getting into a fight with the mindset of having nothing to lose, will make you more than likely win.

2020: Time to (down-)scale!

Planning exponential growth

The start of 2020 was a novel and exciting year. For the first time since running Mobydish, I had the money to hire talent for all the roles I’d been doing myself. I could also start paying myself a decent salary. We started by finding reasonably priced, nicer offices, and I spent more time in Austin and NYC to open the market and manage/train the new team. By the end of February, all roles were filled and the 20 people team was ready to execute and triple our revenue. My intention was to establish the core team in NYC and move there.

The company plan was ambitious: grow from 3 to 10 markets within 15 months. We thought of everything, from processes, documentation, technology, and hires necessary to make it all happen. The only issue was that I was already exhausted, and one day, as I looked at myself in the mirror, I wondered how I would ever have time for a break to execute it right. I looked tired and had shitty sleep, lost a lot of hair, and would get injured frequently. I knew my body wasn’t doing well.
In a classical 2-second “reflection time” I concluded that only if the world hit the pause button, I’d allow myself a little break. There was no way this would ever happen, so I told myself I had to keep pushing and would find time later to pay my body back.

Facing a worldwide pandemic

Enter Covid… After hitting China, Italy was next. While most of the US was still thinking everything would be fine (including me) we started seeing San Francisco customers canceling meals and asking their employees to stay home. My own employees started sharing concerns about commuting to work. This pushed me to check in with my Italian family. What they told me was worse than anything I had read. It was now clear to me that we were all going to be impacted in a big way by this pandemic but no one had any idea how.

Within 2 weeks we’d lost about 90% of the revenue that took 4 years to build. By the end of April, we were feeding only a couple of customers. I was advised to lay off the whole team. Between the loneliness of the lockdown, losing everything instantly, and letting go of the whole new team, I felt broken inside and didn’t really know how I would get through this alone. A month in, nobody had any clue of what was next. I felt like the world was working against me, but I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. People left other jobs to join Mobydish, and all were eager to grow together. Investors had taken risks and put faith in me to build something that hadn’t been done yet in this space, and instead, I was alone in my apartment reading the news half of the day to learn about Covid, anticipating what would come next.
I decided to quarantine with friends in a house we rented together. This gave me a sense of normalcy and community in a world where you were told that being alone was safer than being around others. I spent countless hours daily studying the different evolutions of Covid in other countries, reading scientific articles, and asking friends living abroad to share what they were told. Hearing so many versions of the pandemic helped me understand the way the world works. I didn’t want to get sucked into the political game that Covid was becoming in the US and overseas.  

Prepping for the future

The board and I believed that after lockdowns, things will get back to normal, and that people will still need to eat. I kept a couple of employees and spent the next 3 months building step-by-step documentation about every role, every KPI, hiring process, values, sales, and more. I wanted to be able to instantly re-ignite the rocket and not suffer from losing too much knowledge and experience. It would have meant making the same mistakes again.

Downscaling everything

By the end of summer, I saw my European peers roaring back to life while the US stayed mostly stuck. I was disappointed and mad. I had to accept that people would not be coming back to the office this year. Instead of opening up new markets, I spent the new few months negotiating with 3rd party to end our long-term contracts. From CRM to offices and other tools, it was time to downscale and save cash. After all, we only raised enough to invest in growth, not to run the company plus grow it. Most of them were understanding due to the Covid situation, but some (the biggest ones), tried to bully us for a while.

Giving up and figuring out what’s next

Once again, supported by my great investors, I took my first full week off in 6 years, which felt amazing. Then, I moved to Austin in October to start a fresh life after 10 years spent in San Francisco. In this new city, no one was asking me “What do you do?” and I could finally be more than a YC founder who’s going through challenges, I could be a complete human being and have a social life that wasn’t revolving just around startup and entrepreneurship.
I spent so much mental energy focusing on improving Mobydish that I was afraid I wouldn’t find any new ideas to work on. For weeks, no new idea came to me. Feeling like a loss, I went through all of the stages of grief.

By December, I hired a director of IT to help me rebuild some tech aspects of Mobydish and after careful consideration, worked on a new idea. We were now a team of two. There was still hope. 

Lesson 8: To understand the world and predict what is likely to happen, it is important to see things as they really are. Remove your ego, emotions, and beliefs and interpret data with the least amount of bias possible. Then understand that worldwide decisions will still be made with bias and intentions. If you got to develop your intuition, it will become handy, as long as it’s not your ego manipulating you.
2020 made it clear to me that the media you consume and the friends you surround yourself with keep you in a bubble. It requires consistent effort and curiosity to stay aware of this. Being able to even comprehend the whole truth of one simple fact, is a massive task. I do like to go with the mantra that I know nothing for sure because there’s always an element I might not be aware of. Remember to regularly keep going outside of your bubble to make sure you’re not missing the larger picture. 

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The entrepreneurial calling

It had been 3 years well spent in Silicon Valley since I arrived. I got myself a CS degree, an H1B visa, a few valuable startup experiences, and a strong faith in the capacity of small teams to disrupt how the world works. Surprisingly, as an employee, It had been hard to find a company that gave me not only the freedom to have an impact but also a culture aligned with my values. I thought Silicon Valley was a place where companies genuinely cared for others and wanted to do good for the world, but my job opportunities didn’t match the hype.

Not feeling fulfilled, I was called to quit my job to start my own company, but it meant losing my visa and leaving my life and people behind. After a few months of back and forth, my grandparents died. I couldn’t stand the idea that I couldn’t take time off to support my family, just to make money doing something I didn’t enjoy. I decided to leave everything behind and move back to France. Relying on my little savings, this move would give me a full year to commit and work on my next entrepreneurial idea.

Leaving everything for good

I still relive this situation once in a while: sitting on my couch, in my San Mateo 1 bedroom apartment, waiting for my cab to the airport, I was heartbroken. I remember looking at my two suitcases as totems of my last 3 years next to me, accepting that my American journey was coming to an end. It was a mixed feeling of sadness and satisfaction to leave after that long as an immigrant in such a competitive city.
Luckily, my cab driver was the perfect messenger, explaining that we can only worry about things under our control, which is minimal, stressing about anything else would be madness. We have no other choice but to let go and trust the process. I let it sink in for a while and decided to feel at peace with the idea of moving back and would embrace whatever happened next…Little did I know of the journey I was about to embark on. It was also a great reminder that true wisdom is to learn from others and that cheap therapy sessions are available even when we don’t expect them, as long as we’re willing to learn from others, whoever they are.

Starting a new life

There are countless stories of expats having a hard time going back to their country, mine wasn’t different. I knew deep down I’d find a way to go back to the US and get the chance to start my own thing in the land of all startups and innovation. Launching from Europe was just part one of the plan.

My last job was for a catering company that didn’t leverage technology like it should. Not putting efficiency and people first was getting me frustrated. Seeing Doordash, Postmates, Caviar, etc. building automation to disrupt the last mile industry while taking control of the customer relationship from restaurants, inspired me to join the fight. I wanted to create similar technology but in favor of restaurants. I had no doubt about how big the food delivery market was but I didn’t want to create a low margins business like food delivery companies feeding individuals.

As soon as I returned to France, I quickly found a co-founder in my circle of friends. We spent the rest of the year working on creating a logo, a name, a website, and product specs.

Lesson 1: To build a massive company, you have to take risks, be comfortable with not having money, and be willing to work full-time on your idea without potential return. Nothing should stop you because you know better than most why your idea will work. There should be a fire fueling you and ideally, you have someone around you to fight with you or support you during the journey.

2014: Going with the flow of opportunities

Talking to customers

My co-founder worked on the backend but kept his full-time job. I focused on the front end, product, and mobile app, and we built an MVP in 3 months to showcase our idea to our customers. I spent countless hours with restaurateurs. During night shifts, I would watch delivery drivers and ops managers experience the pain of running a delivery service without technology firsthand and brainstorm new features with their team. I got the chance to get close with a few amazing general managers during the early days, understood their lifestyle and pain points, and got their feedback on our new product: Trackin. The pain felt real and it got me excited about how big the problem was. Talking to your early potential user is easier than it sounds. People love to be heard and give their opinions.

Having skin in the game

To finance the project, we unlocked grants and personal + company loans, plus rewards from winning some startup contests. We had accumulated about $100k total over the course of 1.5 years and I had been living on my savings since day 1. Not paying myself and relying on interns, there were few times when I had to sleep in a car, or rent hotels that would be qualified as very unsafe, in order to extend our runway. I didn’t mind, as I thought it was the way to start a big business (it doesn’t have to), and it didn’t stop me from working 12-14h+ daily. Being comfortable with the uncomfortable is still something that serves me today when facing experiences that are felt as “challenging” for most, but normal to me.

When luck is on your side

As I was pitching Trackin in front of a group of entrepreneurs who weren’t tech-savvy, I had little hope of getting a $40k loan from them. Far from perfect, our product was already live at some small restaurants and a couple of members of that same committee had actually used it and ordered food with it. As the committee was debating and grilling me, they started speaking highly of it and explained how it made their experience very enjoyable. I don’t believe more than 100 people had used it, in a town of about one million, and luckily, two of them were in the room. This felt like an amazing validation. Even without receiving a loan, that day would have felt like a first victory since improving the customer experience was my main motivation.
If we hadn’t taken the risk of launching early, I thought, none of this could have happened. I was already hungry for more growth. People around me would ask me to “slow down”, and that I needed to take my time. I thought to myself they just didn’t get what the startup life was like.

From co-founder to solo-founder

6 months after we started, my co-founder surprised me with an email stating he was done working on this idea. He felt like it wasn’t going fast enough and didn’t think that last-mile delivery was something people cared about. It made me rethink everything for a minute. Did I actually want to do this alone? I was already working crazy hours and now had to face even more responsibilities but the initial traction was there and the money already in the bank pushed me to give it a chance anyway, just “for a year or so”… I imagined I’d probably find someone else along the journey and began a passive co-founder search. Meanwhile, I was discussing and scheduling Trackin pilots with some French chains. The thought of solving a worldwide pain, quite frustrating customer experience (the whole food delivery experience), and leveraging technology in a way that hadn’t been done before kept me excited.

Taking risks to change your life

During a trip to the UK to show Trackin to restaurants, a potential co-founder who became a friend, helped me score a dinner with Michael Seibel, partner at YC at that time, who was visiting my hometown: Lyon. I was excited and scared at the same time. I am not impressed by famous people, but I was worried about my English level after not having practiced it for a while and if my idea would feel relevant to someone like him. Changing all my plans to come back to France before they left after talking my way in the UK and France without any ID, I painfully accepted the cost of all the infamous travel change fees incurred on my little savings. At that time, the thought of having to spend 200 euros without a guaranteed return was haunting me.

I made it to the restaurant 15 minutes late (a bad French habit) and witnessed the oddest scene where a waitress closed the restaurant door in customers’ faces, and refused them access while apologizing to me about it…In my head, the world instantly collapsed and all my chances vanished. I had done all this for nothing. They explained that they were refused because they wanted to drink the bottles of wine they bought from the wine country with our dinner. Sensing an opportunity to use my newly acquired social skills spending time with restauranteurs, I got in, asked for the manager, and made her realize how valuable the customers outside would be for her restaurant. What I didn’t know was that Michael’s wife and her sister would also be joining us. It almost felt like a double date. By the end of the night, after some good food, wine, and discussions, the whole party was supporting Trackin, the execution, and its huge potential. Michael told me that I should apply to YC and that I would likely get in. He said he’d help me with the application if I needed it.

At that precise moment, I felt fireworks within me and invited friends out to celebrate and release the insane amount of positive energy I just accumulated from this dinner. I’ll never forget that a simple moment with someone else in a different country would change the whole course of my life. There were so many reasons for me not to go or let my fears convince me to wait for another time. Life-changing events are at every corner we just have to go with the flow and seize the opportunity when they show up.

Getting into Y-Combinator

A few months later, I flew back to Silicon Valley for a face-to-face interview and it felt amazing to be back. Arriving in the city, I was ready to take over the world all over again. I felt ready. I had been trained many times by an amazing friend and met with many YC founders to learn how to rock YC. On the day of the interview, I sat alone and focused on making sure Trackin was working (heard about the demo effect?) and that I had my answers all ready to go. As I looked around and saw a bunch of team training together, I envied them for having another person to share the stress and excitement with. When I entered the interview room, I was greeted by four different people I realized had no idea who they were. I had been so focused on the company and product that I actually didn’t know much about YC and I felt pretty dumb to not know more about the best incubator in the world. It probably made the interview less stressful than it should have been. Everything happened so fast that I had to prioritize where to set my attention. After a few challenging questions that I answered with determination and confidence, a silence that felt like an eternity took over the room. I told myself I might have screwed it up. More questions came, and then they all stood up together and thanked me for my time. As I came out of the room, I will never forget the face of the person in charge to time each interview of exactly 10 minutes. It was screaming something of this magnitude: “Why on earth are you already out of this room?!”, my large-opened eyes answered: “I’ve no clue what just happened!”

I spent the whole afternoon stressed and not able to focus on work, waiting for the rejection email to come in so I could be done with it. At 7 pm sharp that day, an unknown number called me. Jessica Livingston who was one of the members in my interview room, was asking me! if I wanted to join YC. I was thrilled and pumped.

By December, I gave everything I owned to my sister, said goodbye to my friends and a newly found fling, got a new visa, and left France for the 3rd time.

Lesson 2: Build something people want with co-founder(s) (and life partners) who are aligned with the risks and have the same mindset. Talk to your customers as early as possible. Aim for something that can have a big impact, a huge market, and trust your gut. There are not many entrepreneurs who actually care about their users. Create an edge by being in a direct relationship with them and you’ll find out about needs others won’t. Then start building. Launch quickly, fail, and iterate.

2015: Listen, Learn Fast, and Pivot Faster

The Y-Combinator journey

I struggled during YC. I felt a massive imposter syndrome, surrounded by so many talented people from top US schools. I was impressed by the scale of our batch of 180 founders and was able to build a group of amazing friends.
Michael made it clear during his intro speech: “To solo founders in this room, you’ll have to be superheroes. VCs and everyone out there will have the same expectations from your companies”. Hearing this made me say goodbye to my social life, and commit to work at least 12-16 hours every day for the entirety of the program. It wasn’t until the end of the program that we were told we should be ok with not working on Sundays. We were so behind that it took me another few months until I’d take time off on weekends. 

YC explained that we needed to be ready for a 7 years+ journey, and I told myself that I’d make it to the top in 3 years. They also mentioned that we’ll be at our batchmates’ weddings and vice versa. I didn’t believe it and thought that they were romanticizing the experience. I didn’t think you could build such close relationships in just 3 months. If you’re wondering, I was very wrong about both. 

Learning from your industry

I had brought a team of 3 engineers and 2 interns to help me with sales. We knocked at the doors of every small restaurant in the SF Bay Area and quickly realized they didn’t want to deal with deliveries anymore. Doordash, Postmates, and others were changing habits. Although restaurant chains were interested, the sales cycle was too long for our runway. I connected with founders who were selling to chains, and all told me to focus on SMBs instead. After all, companies like Google were building their success stories offering services to SMBs first.
Startups wanted our tech to launch their delivery services and compete with the big names, but I ended up spending more time advising on how to run and grow their businesses than I wanted. Things weren’t going the way I hoped.

After 2.5 months in YC, we found that the main reason for restaurants to use us was to get more catering orders. We were growing our number of customers, but not the number of deliveries. Even if restaurants were getting online technology to get more orders, their website traffic was being jeopardized by ghost websites created by food delivery companies.

Building relationships and learning from others

I tried saving face during demo day, and will forever cherish how much closer I got with my batchmates during the couple of pitch training weeks, where intensity, stress, and confidence were at an all-time high. By the end of it and due to so much training, we would have fun pitching each other’s companies by heart.

Trackin raised a bit of money post-demo day but not enough to hire talent, which is what I wanted the most. I wanted to follow the “ideal” startup model. Raise $3m seed, then $8-$10m series A 9-12 months later, and so on… I was assimilating press articles and fundraising with success even though we were told these were just steps to build something greater.

Another thing I liked about YC was the feeling of having access to the backstage of some of the companies that have shaped the world the way it is now. We heard personal stories about Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg on key moments of their journey. We also heard the truth from active founders explaining that every company is a mess from within, which felt reassuring. The press would often write about what companies want them to know, whereas, in reality, most companies have been close to disappearing many times, but no one knows about it.

Reaching “success”

On the day of our official Techcrunch article, we got countless emails from other founders around the world asking how it felt to have “made it”. I wished they could have seen us. We were a 5 people team working tirelessly from our couches until 10:30 pm that day, feeling very far from being successful. It was just the beginning and we barely had any revenue then.

Facing loneliness

I was still hoping to find another co-founder, but none matched my energy, and after a chat with Jessica Livingston, I had to face the fact that I was too far ahead to focus on that. I accepted my fate as a solo founder on this journey. Paul Graham was himself very surprised I made it through the process in the very crowded food delivery space.

To prevent the potential loneliness outside of YC, I got a C-level executive advisor of a disruptive Silicon Valley company. It helped me save time on paperwork and lawyer fees and gave me someone I could tell everything. Just sharing a complex situation with someone outside of the business pushed me to frame it in a simplified way, which would often help me find the solution as I was explaining the problem. I cannot quantify how much I’ve learned pursuing this adventure, and I’ve no regrets doing it alone, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this to anyone.

Accepting reality and pivoting

If I didn’t want this to be a total failure and run out of money, I needed to find a better business model. By May, I had discussed my new plan with my team and investors and decided to update our technology and launch Mobydish, a full-service catering marketplace, powered by Trackin. What Doordash was to Grubhub, we were going to be to EZcater. At least that was the plan.

Choosing investors for their human values

Since day one, I have been choosing my investors for who they are as people, and how much they can contribute to my personal growth and the company’s growth, not for their name or my ego. I had spent enough time in Silicon Valley and was warned early on by my advisor about the risk of going with VCs who only invest in trends and how they’ll abandon ship the day you’re not cool anymore.

As a solo founder, having close relationships with caring investors was life-changing.
During our pivot, one of them offered to let me stay at his house for months. I got to use his car and had an awesome environment to focus on building Mobydish. I didn’t worry about paying San Francisco rent, living in a shitty apartment, and being stressed about our burn, as I was barely paying myself anything. It had a positive impact on how fast we were able to release Mobydish.

Early signs of product market fit

We were live by July, and after going through my network of friends I got introduced to several companies with office food programs. We got customers the first-month Mobydish was live. For a while, I would go on deliveries myself and sit down with the users. Sometimes I’d watch them place another order so I could learn about ways to improve our UX and discuss new ideas with them.

Surprisingly, as a driver, the people who treated me the nicest were the ones in the loading dock or freight elevator and not always the ones in the office.

We celebrated our first $500 order with champagne in our coworking space, which we also converted as a customer. Some of our first drivers have been working for us until the end of the journey. The first victories are always hard to forget.

Fighting to stay in the US

After 4 different types of visas since arriving in the US, I ran into yet another roadblock. Company owners can’t give themselves H1B visas and because you can’t get an investor or entrepreneur visa without money coming in from outside the country, I had to prove I was an “outstanding alien”. I learned the importance of reviewing people’s work when mistakes can’t be part of the equation. No matter the amount someone charged per hour, human errors happen all the time. I caught my lawyers misspelling my last name in the O1 application right before submitting it and saved me a lot of trouble that day.

Luckily Trackin was still used by customers across different countries, and what we initially created in France and the US got us some great press articles. Added to solid recommendations from top entrepreneurs and customers, my visa application was approved the night before leaving the country. This time, the doubt of never coming back didn’t even affect my sleep. I was allowed to continue my entrepreneurial journey in Silicon Valley for a little longer.

Lesson 3: You are often told to follow your gut, and that you know your business and market better. Meanwhile, you will find great advice online or in books on how to run a startup effectively. The key is to find the fine line between going with your gut/intuition and applying common knowledge, even if you haven’t experienced it yet.
We think things won’t happen to us and that we’re different, but we’re making mistakes others have already made. Wisdom comes from learning from others’ journeys. The faster you get that, the faster you’ll grow and reach goals set for yourself.

2016: Profitable and Growing…But Not Trendy

The multi-personality disorder

Having to combine all the skills necessary to run a startup as a solo founder is like having a multiple personality disorder. One minute you’re a salesperson, then a manager, designer, engineer, lawyer, and accountant, all within the scope of a day of work, for years. You’re constantly interacting with many stakeholders who have different expectations. Your brain is always running and thinking of the things you owe each of them and if it’s going to move the needle. It takes a lot of mental space, stress, and can prevent you from being the boss you want to be for your team. On the other hand, you are involved in so many things that you’re learning a lot more than you would in any other company position. The faster you can transfer the skills to your team, the better for yourself and your company.

Building a lean and profitable business

For all these years, I made sure my whole team understood that the company’s money was limited, and coming from happy customers. Therefore, we were all committed to providing amazing customer service, growing the business, and staying lean. Craigslist and hacky solutions were our way to go, without sacrificing the need to build solid foundations. We would often find ourselves bragging about how we just saved some dollars with a free tool or cheap furniture we’d find online. Each employee owned their department as if it were their own and would identify ways to save time building automation. Our goal was not to grow our headcount but to free up time to spend on growth and customer experience. There were times when engineering couldn’t keep up with automation requests from the team. I love it when an employee randomly comes up with a new feature idea that will save them or the whole company time and money.

Fundraising against the trend

Early in 2016, Mobydish turned profitable and we had our destiny in our hands. Despite feeding the offices of almost every VC in Silicon Valley, and having stellar metrics, food delivery wasn’t trendy anymore and we failed at fundraising (or even scoring a meeting). Most of the food delivery companies were either folding or bleeding money and investors would reply that despite using us, and loving our service and our metrics, they weren’t investing in this space anymore. At that moment, it felt like the timing was wrong and that we were paying for everyone else’s mistakes. I wanted to be given a chance, and I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to present the company in ways where I’d get someone to listen to what we were doing. It was our first big blow and disappointment to overcome. I wanted us to grow fast and take over, but we couldn’t get the money for it.

Letting go of previous products

We doubled down on a new website, and I finally decided to stop selling Trackin to other customers. It is always hard emotionally to stop working on your original product. We tend to delay decisions that should be taken much faster because of their emotional charge. It honestly took me another year to fully execute this and mentally give it up. Every time a new lead would come in I’d question myself and was tempted to say yes. I still ended up going to Yum! Brands’ HQ (Pizza Hut and co) and it felt like a closure: I had always pitched Trackin to restaurants saying: “Even Pizza Hut doesn’t know when their driver arrived at the customer and how the experience went!”. Now even Pizza Hut knew about us. The CTO in charge left quickly after and they never ended up rolling anything out. 

Confirmation from the industry

Meanwhile, Mobydish was showing great promise. I still recall the days when customers would ask me (when acting as their driver) to tell our “design department” that they had done an amazing job with our logo and website. We’d also often hear that we had a much better online experience than other delivery services, despite being a small five-people team managing a million-dollar business. Our customers were seeing us like every other delivery company so we had to act like them. At Mobydish, the more we grew, the more we were making money. When interviewing applicants from the competition, we always got the same reactions. They would get excited to finally find a company that was using technology and drivers to solve the pain points they were facing daily and knew how to make money doing it.

Difficulty hiring top talents

This was the year I learned that firing fast was very important, and the year I was told that employees would be “grateful to have a job” because layoffs were happening. Unfortunately, by year's end, we were still competing with FAANG and the like, paying Silicon Valley salaries for a small company and being profitable were rarely compatible especially with net contribution margins at 19%, unless you were finding people who truly cared about equity.

No time for a break

I tried taking a day off that year as I was visiting Washington DC. I was against the idea. The story in my head was the company had no way to survive without me, which made my life very stressful for nothing. That day, as we were visiting the Supreme Court, my Slack notifications blew up. My team was asking for help as we were receiving threatening messages from our biggest customer and needed help on how to address the situation. It was the only proof my ego needed to get mad at myself for taking a break and prevent me from doing this again for years.

This was also the year I embodied the feeling of always being in a rush, with too many things to do all the time. You’re constantly running, walking fast, or checking the time. You’re never really able to slow down or stop. You want to make sure you’ll have more time for another task to take care of. It is still present some days. The best solution had been to plan the day prior or morning of, all the tasks you want to get done that day, the ones that will have an impact, and then use the rest to assist whoever needs you that day.

Lesson 4: Even when top VCs are backing your company, you never know what tomorrow will bring. Most investors, in their own words, “don’t really know what they’re doing”, and have a tendency to follow trends and FOMO. Very few will actually be contrarian and take risks, which is understandable. Their performance is scrutinized by their own LPs. As an entrepreneur, taking trend shifts and economic downturns into consideration while establishing your long-term strategy is crucial to survival as VC money won’t be available all the time.

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