Preserve start-up spirit at scale: Techstars’ Maëlle Gavet

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0:41That's why over 3 ,000 firms trust Affinity, the CRM platform purpose-built for private capital. Affinity's relationship intelligence reveals your team's strongest paths to founders, investors, and decision makers using insights It's hidden in emails, calendars, and meetings. With powerful AI tools like Affinity NoteTaker and Deal Assist, you'll spend less time managing data and more time closing the right deals. Learn more at affinity.co slash marketplace. In France, we have a lot of holidays. I would spend most of my holidays at my grandparents' house. And every morning, my grandfather, who was always waking up early, would come and knock on the door.

1:29And I would just get up. It was still pitch dark. That was the exciting time. It's like you didn't know what was going to happen.

1:39We would have a piece of bread with a piece of cheese to start the day, and then we would go to the garage, pick up our bags. My grandfather would be leading the way, and we would bike across the countryside. And then by the time the baker would open, which is usually about 7, 7.30. We would go there, pick up a fresh baguette, and then bike back home. These bike rides were basically my childhood.

2:12He would talk to me about his past. He was born in the south of France without a father as what we call a no-land farmer, so someone who basically had only his two arms to work. I mean, from the age of 12, started working to support his mother and his siblings. And then World War II happened. And my grandfather decided when he was 16 to go into the resistance. And he lost part of his right hand when he was not even 18. He went on working three jobs to sustain a family. he had this incredible set of values that really resonated with me and that I carry to this day. He would talk to me about all the things that matter in life.

3:06He would be like, nothing worth doing is ever easy. He talked about why, saying you should always ask why. Because if you ask why five times, you're going to get to the bottom of whatever it is that you're looking for. You need to understand why someone is asking you to do something or why you're doing something. My grandfather used to say, thank you is the most important word, so merci in French. And for him, this thank you was more than just saying thank you because someone holds the door for you. It was more like, thank you for the opportunity that I have to be alive. Thank you for the fact that I have amazing grandchildren.

3:49Thank you for the fact that there was fresh bread today. And so I feel like that gratitude, that way of looking at the world in a glass half full type of way is so important to me as an entrepreneur. I see a lot of the decision making that I follow use this set of values that my grandfather drilled into my brain. That's Maelle Gavet, CEO of the global startup accelerator Techstars. The wisdom Maelle absorbed from her grandfather Pierre when she was a girl in the French countryside became the foundation for a remarkable career. She's a founder, an entrepreneur, and a longtime C-suite executive.

4:35Maelle was recently named to the list of Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance. She helped scale the Russian e-commerce giant Ozen, raising the largest ever venture round in Europe at the time. And she's held executive roles at massively scaled companies, including the real estate firm Compass and the Priceline Group. Mayel became CEO of Techstars in 2021. Techstars is a pre-seed investor and accelerator program for early stage entrepreneurs. Mayel embodies the spirit of entrepreneurship and is remarkably savvy when it comes to navigating large companies. It's that mix that makes her story so rich to explore on Masters of Scale.

5:40Well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is Masters of Scale.

5:55I'm Jeff Berman, your host. Our guest is Mael Gavey. I've heard Mael share her expertise with young entrepreneurs and with seasoned corporate leaders. That made me eager to know her full story. From France to Russia and now the U.S., Mael has shown her ability to stick to steadfast principles, demonstrating gratitude and perseverance amid great change and uncertainty. I began by asking Mael how as a young woman from the south of France, she landed her first CEO role in Russia. I was working for the Boston Consulting Group, and I had just moved to Moscow because I was preparing to become a partner.

6:38And my very last project was for Ozone, which at the time was a small e-commerce company, probably one of a dozen e-commerce companies in Russia. And so I did that project, which was a very short project, probably six weeks. and I had this aha moment where I thought, oh, here I was working for that company as a consultant and I was like, I wonder what it would be to work for such a company. And the CEO at the time approached me at the end of the project and he was like, we're looking for a sales and marketing director. I think you'd be awesome. By the way, in about a year and a half, I'm going to leave Russia.

7:21And I'm looking for my successor. And I want to be clear, there's three other candidates internally. So I'm not telling you here's the job. But if you're interested, that's something that you could try to get. And there was a moment where I was like, what do I have to lose? And so I basically went back to the office and sat down with the senior partner at the time. I was like, I think I'm going to quit. And I joined Ozone. I became the sales and marketing director. And then a year later, I was promoted to CU. That's how it happened. In that moment, minutes away from becoming a partner at BCG, which is a dream career trajectory for many people, you're presented with an opportunity where there really are no guarantees.

8:11Had you been a sales and marketing person before that? No, but I had been an entrepreneur. And when you're an entrepreneur, you wear every single hat on the planet. And I think you develop this capacity to make things happen. At the age of 16, she started her first business, organizing children's birthday parties in France. She then aimed to get into an elite college. To differentiate herself, she learned Russian, not exactly the easiest path one could choose. As a teen, Mayel visited Russia dozens of times to volunteer at an orphanage, and by 20, she'd founded an event planning business in Moscow.

8:51Mayel had been through the entrepreneur's zero-to-one phase, building something out of nothing. So when the opportunity to lead Ozen presented itself, she was excited, because the zero-to-one part was done, but the company still had the energy, the attitude, and the unlimited potential of a startup. I can work in an entrepreneurial company without having to go through the zero to one because I had been an entrepreneur three times before. And every time I was like, oh, my God, the zero to one is so excruciating and it feels so lonely and you have to build so many things from scratch. And so I was like, look, this CEO, which I admire, which I think is very smart and very thoughtful, strong IQ and EQ, thinks that I have a shot at it.

9:36So, yeah, sure, let's let's go and do it. But for me, the most important feeling, it was not even rational. It was like I felt fear and excitement at the same time. And that in my life has always been the signal that there is something I should be doing. Not everyone leans into fear. So what was that about for you? Not just fear, fear and excitement. It's the combination of the two, because there are also times where I'm like fearful and I'm like, OK, let's just step back and think about it. But as a former entrepreneur, it was this moment where I was like, I am excited because I see something that could be really big.

10:11I thought that this company had a real shot at becoming the largest e-commerce company in Russia and had all the basic infrastructure that leveraged properly would help them get there. and at the same time there was a little bit of fear because I was like, it looks really hard. It looks really complex. When I feel that combination of like there is something big and maybe I'm not going to get it, that I don't know, maybe my inner competitive double is like, yeah, sure, let's do it. Let's just prove to the world that this can happen. Mael was willing to work hard and that enabled her to savor the challenges.

10:51She knew that by taking them on, she would learn and grow. But the work meant growing an e-commerce company in a country where half the population wasn't online, where more than 80 percent of transactions were cash on delivery, where no one paid in advance, and where branded delivery trucks or uniforms could lead to armed robbery. Mayel says the country was eager to develop back then in 2009. Russia at the time was a very different environment than what it is right now. I worked in Russia at a time where the country was very open to the outside world. Foreign investors were coming and investing.

11:31You could feel the desire for the country to modernize. It was very cosmopolitan. There was a lot of big hope and big vision. I'm a relentless optimist. I believe that there is always a way to make things work. Thanks to my grandfather, I had a very strong compass in terms of what I'm okay to do and not okay to do. When I was talking to him about why he decided to go into the resistance, because we all know not all French people made that decision. He was like, you've got to fight for what you believe in. And so when the board of Ozone talked to me about joining them, we had a very open conversation about maybe you'll be the next CEO.

12:16I had a very direct conversation with them. Just to be clear, this business has to be squeaky clean. There's no other option. I would not be running a business if I had to pay bribes. That was a non-starter. And I would fight for what I believed in. And that included running a really, really clean business. Mael stuck to her principles and she succeeded. Whether you run a billion-dollar-a-year retailer or a small neighborhood shop, we all have difficult choices to make. But they can be made with greater clarity if you're guided by values and boundaries that you will not cross, no matter the pressure.

12:54Under her leadership, Ozen raised a venture capital round of$100 million. At the time, in 2011, that was the largest of any company in all of Europe. By 2015, Ozen had reached a valuation of$1.5 billion. And perhaps more importantly, Mael had helped build Russia's first nationwide retail delivery network. Part of the success of Ozen, by the way, came from the fact that we built the first nationwide private delivery infrastructure. And so we were able to deliver books and toys and mobile phone to places where within, whatever, less than a week, especially if you were to go all the way to Vladivostok.

13:38Vladivostok, more than 5 ,000 miles from Moscow on the far eastern coast of Russia. In a place where sometimes delivery was not even possible, or it would take like a month, two months, three months, five months. The key differentiator was that we were able to build that nationwide delivery system. And I sometimes joked, but I don't know if it was a joke. I do think that Amazon did copy some of the things that we were doing because we invented pickup points. We had 2 ,000 plus pickup points across Russia because at the time in Russia, it was all cash on delivery. And we had to figure out a way for people to get their goods and pay us at the same time.

14:17And so we created this pickup point. And then a couple of years later, Amazon launches their own pickup point. At the core, Mayel and Ozen were simply responding to a logistics problem. Ozen didn't become the largest retailer in Russia by simply deploying technology that was already available in other countries. Their solutions were specific to Russia's population and its vast geography. I think technology is an amazing opportunity. But the challenge is to find the right balance. I think in Silicon Valley, there is this tendency to look at everything through the lens of technology and forget the human.

14:53And then in other companies, there's a tendency to look at everything through the eyes of the human and forget that technology is actually a great way to complement and enhance human. And so it's constantly finding this balance between high tech and high touch. Difficult, but when you hit that right balance, like that's where magic happened. But larger forces came to bear on Mayel's success with Ozan. In 2014, Russia attacked its sovereign neighbor Ukraine and it annexed Crimea. The world responded with widespread sanctions. And the Russian government placed even more restrictions on online services.

15:32Mayel decided that her time in Russia was over. I have not been back there since I left. Was it hard to leave? Um, a little bit. What was hard about it?

15:49It felt that there were so much more that could have been done. And so it was just a little sad because I wanted to do even more. Well, you built so much. And if there was so much more to do, how incredibly difficult to then walk away. Yeah, a little bit. As my grandfather was saying, nothing worth doing is ever easy. You got to fight for what you believe in, which means that if the right decision is option A, even if there's a cause for option A, go with option A. After the break, Mael embarks on her next chapter in the United States, where she continues to deploy her grandfather's life lessons to extraordinary results.

16:44Real leaders don't back down when the stakes are high. They innovate, they push forward, and then they take the stage at the Masters of Scale Summit. Join us in San Francisco, October 7th to 9th, to hear from the CEO of the New York Times, scientists using cutting-edge technology to find cures, the leader of crypto powerhouse Coinbase, a retired four-star general, and many, many more. apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply25. That's mastersofscale.com slash apply25. If you're ready to take your startup from idea to impact, then AWS is your launchpad. From data storage to machine learning to secure app hosting, AWS gives you the tech trusted by the world's fastest scaling startups.

17:34And here's the best part. Join AWS Activate today and you could score up to$100 ,000 in AWS credits tailored to your stage and network. Go to aws.amazon.com slash activate and start building. Expanding your business in the U.S. can feel like a maze. Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth. That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500-level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one.

18:18So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free. we're back with myel gavay ceo of tech stars and longtime friend of masters of scale you can watch our full conversation and more on our youtube channel before the break myel was telling us about the difficult decision to leave her post as ceo of the largest online retailer in russia she had several options for her next move and she wound up in the united states when you left how did you decide what to go do next? I wanted to see a very big company and I wanted to see a public company because I believed that at some point in my career I would be taking a company, whether it would be my company from the ground up or a company that I would be hired to manage, to that unprecedented scale.

19:23And I wanted to experience it from the inside. And I was approached by the Priceline Group, which is now called Booking Holding, which owns booking.com, Priceline.com, obviously, thanks to William Shepner. Everybody knows Priceline. Open Table, Kayak, Rental Cars, Agoda, and I can't remember a few others. At the time, they were already, I think, a$70 billion market cap company. I had a ton of respect for the chairman of the board, Jeff Boyd. I've never seen someone run a public company board as efficiently as Jeff. He had this uncanny ability to have this great relationship with the CEO, but also with every board member, while at the same time being very, very directive in the way the board was supposed to function.

20:13And he seems to intuitively always understand that balance of being friendly and being demanding, being open and being directive, encouraging people to participate into an open debate and yet close the debate when we've been around the block a few times. We're good. Let's move on. And so I think this incredible EQ around how to manage the dynamic of a board to make it really effective. And I saw Jeff Boyd do that regularly and seamlessly. And like to this day, it remains the benchmark for me in terms of what an outstanding chairman looks like. Knowing when to continue debate and when to stop and make a decision.

20:56That's a critical skill for anyone in business. Maia rightly admired the chairman, Jeff Boyd, for his balanced leadership. She also admired the Priceline Group's nimble culture, allowing the brands it acquired to maintain their unique pre-acquisition qualities. They were big, and yet they had kept this entrepreneurial spirit. Most of the brand were still being run by the founders slash the original team. So Steve Afner was still at Kayak, and he was still going around and, you know, making his interesting jokes on stage, but also running the business from the inside. And the group had figured out a way to create commonality and a camaraderie spirit and yet keep them independent so the founder would still feel like that was their business and they were still running it.

21:50It was still a company made of entrepreneurs who were figuring out new stuff every day on big thing and small things. Why aren't more leadership teams at big companies who are doing the acquiring looking at the Priceline booking model and saying, that works, we should be doing a version of that? I've seen countless times big company buying a small company and not using these words, but basically having that attitude of like, I own you, you're mine. And so when that happened, like, inevitably, things are shifting step by step. It's like, oh, you decided to spend how much on what? Why? I would never have done it like that.

22:32And it's one thing when you're just looking at it from the outside. But when you own that business and they just announce to you that they're going to spend a few million dollars on something that you personally believe is completely silly, it becomes really hard to be like, let me look the other way and let them go. And I think the strength of what the Priceline Group booking holding were doing at the time, and as far as I can tell, are still doing, was it's okay. Yeah, I would have done it differently, but I trust the founder. From the Priceline Group, Mayel was hired to be the chief operating officer at Compass, the largest residential real estate company by volume in the U.S.

23:09Leading operations at an American real estate company may seem as far as can be from delivering books to Vladivostok. But Mael found parallels in accountability. They're a public company. It's a business where ultimately you have to show people houses and apartments. It's a people-first business. It's a lot on the relationship. And so finding this balance between we want to have a platform, we want to leverage data, we want to be a tech company. And yet we also are a people-first business. And they had to figure out this interesting hybrid model where you both, a tech company and Robert Refkin, the founder of Compass, was very adamant about this business is for real estate agents.

23:57Everything I do is to help them be better and make more money. And they are my customer. And I saw Robert making dozens of phone calls every day to the agents in the network to wish them a happy birthday, a happy anniversary. Hey, I heard one of your kid is sick. Is everything OK? And so that personal relationship was absolutely critical to the business. And a lot of agents just came for Robert. And this is why the Compass experience, which itself came from the Ozone experience where I had to run an e-commerce business, but also 2000 physical pick-up point. And so that hybrid approach was always really critical.

24:36With leadership jobs at household name companies, Myel's latest move was not perhaps an obvious one. In 2021, she became the CEO of Techstars. It's an accelerator that puts early stage founders through a course of mentoring and fundraising preparation. Again, she considered her options before taking the role. But her motivation to say yes came from a very deep and very personal place. I come from a family where we never used the word entrepreneur at the dinner table. No one explained to me that venture capital exists. No one walked me through a P &L and a balance sheet. And so I didn't have the connection.

25:13Like, I didn't know how to raise money. I didn't know where to find my customers. and when I finally understood what Techstars was providing to entrepreneurs because I did my homework after two calls with the founder I was like I wish I had that when I was an entrepreneur like I wish I had people who deeply cared about my business and had this unbelievable network and would be a safe space for me to talk about all the crazy stuff that I have to deal with Because let's face it, being an entrepreneur is basically a marathon full of crazy stuff happening one after the other. Mael's first task was to ask a lot of questions.

25:53She wanted to know why Techstars did what it did. Techstars was at the time very focused on developing local communities. But the company didn't really think of itself as an investment business, which was very interesting. So we had at the time 280 employees. And I talked to every single employee one-on-one with the same set of questions, including one which was, what is Techstars? What is our business? And not one told me Techstars is an investment business. And I heard everything. I heard we're a marketplace. I heard we're a SaaS business. Then I remember going back to some of the senior leader and be like, so we raise money and we deploy money into early stage startup.

26:43Like we're basically a pre-seed investor, right? It's like, yeah, but that's not how we see ourself. And so the biggest change internally, and that informed a lot of the strategy decision that we took after I joined, was to look at ourself as an investment business who is there to help founders be successful. The founder is still absolutely critical. Like we live and die for the founder. We take common shares in the company. Like we are with you in the trenches no matter what. But what we're optimizing for is for you as a founder to be the most successful that you can be. And sometimes it's going to be painful.

27:28But like, remember, nothing worth doing is ever easy. Techstars expects the founders they work with to put in the effort, especially during the initial three-month program when they work with mentors, develop networks, and begin connecting with investors. Over 70 % of Techstars' companies raise capital within three years after the accelerator program, more than any other global accelerator. Successful Techstars grads include Zipline, the drone delivery service. Also, ClassPass, which delivers access to the world's largest network of fitness courses. From Birmingham to Minneapolis, from Lagos to Tel Aviv, Techstars operates more than 40 programs around the world.