Building A Silicon Valley Profitable Business In 3 years
Immigration, leaving everything behind, finding a co-founder, financing, provoking luck, getting in YC and the journey, pivoting, investors relationship, lean & profitable startup, early success.
2013: All-in From Day 1
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.
