2017 - 2020 - Embracing Challenges
Scaling, health issues, failed term sheet and FOMO, founder’s pride, finding happiness as a CEO, relationship with your company, PTSD, life priorities, class action lawsuit, employee burnout, COVID
2017: Every superhero has a weakness
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.
