The $150M Founder: Why You're Failing To Grow & How To Fix It.

0:00People underestimate the value of human connection, especially with software, and especially in the early days. and your goal in the early days, it's the only goal is to get enough people, enough of the right people to give you feedback on what you're doing so you can build something meaningful.

0:21What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change? I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, But trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

0:59Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. I'm Jessica Neal, your host, and Patti McCord will be back soon. Don't worry. But I have a very exciting guest here today. I'm excited for all of you to meet him. I've been watching a lot of his videos, and I think we're going to learn a lot today. But today's guest, he understands the psychological game of building a company. And it's in a way that I think a very few founders understand. And we're going to talk about the companies he founded, but he's created so much success and basically bootstrapped it on your own. And if I think if I heard the story right, you like were living with your girlfriend or something and took like the only thousand dollars you had and like invested it in a company.

1:52But he was, this is my guest today. And I, you know, I'm going to make him say his name. I think Guillaume. Am I saying that correctly? Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. You can call me G. G. Okay. Guillaume Moupeche. Is that right? Perfect. I feel like I need a French accent to say your name. You took French lesson, I can tell. I did for like six weeks, but then I switched to Spanish. Ah, close enough. But, you know, I know neither very well at all. But anyways, welcome to the show. How are you? Thanks a lot for having me. I'm very good. Yeah. So let's go back to that day. Because I want to go back to the moment you took that thousand dollars.

2:38This was all you had. You had nothing else, if I understand correctly. But tell me about that day. What happened? So essentially, the first business I started was something that didn't work out at all. Then I tried something new, which was an agency. So I was helping companies with their sales prospecting. and out of the agency I could feel that there were like a lot of pain points that were unsolved and that could use software so since I'm an engineer I always loved software and I was like okay maybe it's it's time for me to move from the agency world and start doing software so I basically like sold the shares of the agency tried to build like a software with a remote team out of Russia that didn't work at all.

3:29And eventually I had only like a thousand dollars left and I was like, okay, like I need to do something. You know, I don't want to go work for a company. Like I want to build and create my own things. So I just decided to invest the rest of the money. But as you know, you know, when you're a young startup, you also have like a lot of help for companies like AWS, Amazon or whatever, you know, that gives you like free credits for hostings or you can always reach out. I remember reaching out to Notion and tell them that, okay, I'm a young startup. I'm happy to post about your company on whatever social network you want.

4:07I can create customer testimonial, but please give me the product for free. So I was really hustling in the early days to get as much free stuff as I could while starting to build a Limlist sales automation platform. Yeah, and so that was sort of the first successful company was Limlist, right? Yeah, exactly. In 2018. Yeah. Yeah. And OK, are you still with said girlfriend who was supporting you? No. Oh, no. Terrible. I wish I could I could have said a nice story, you know, like. But no, unfortunately, it's prior to my success. Well, probably because you were too busy trying to build a business.

4:49I was very busy indeed. Yes, especially because like, being fully transparent, like I was, I was actually in France. And when I started, I didn't have any money. So because we were building like a sales automation platform, I would use our own tool to send, you know, like cold emails or sales prospecting messages on LinkedIn. And I started, you know, like doing sales prospecting in Europe, and in France, obviously, because I'm French. but I don't know like French are really like cheap bastards so every time you know I would try to close a deal they would ask for like two more weeks of free trial etc etc and eventually I was like okay like with the agency I used to have like customers in the US also so I was like maybe I'm just gonna try to do sales prospecting in the US and see how it goes and very quickly took off in the US and it became our like primary market with more than 80 % of our customers based in the US.

5:45So actually in France, I would work much later hours. Really how, like, so you're selling into the US market, but like, what's the story of your, you being a founder in these moments? Like, how scary was it? Like, I want to know. So in the early days, you know, when you, when you get started, you have like, I think a lot of self-limiting belief. I feel like as a founder you know like everyone is happy when you start but as it gets hard it gets also like super lonely because people doubt your capacity of being able to succeed in my case I'm like I have a master in chemical engineering and I have also a master you know in marketing so people were like why don't you take like a regular job like learn how to do things before you actually start your own company.

6:38It doesn't really make any sense. My parents were also like really stressed out because so my grandparents immigrated like to France. They were like farmers. My parents don't have any degree. So essentially for them, it was super important for me to get a degree because it means that I could get like a really safe job. And now they were seeing me like being an entrepreneur. So every week it was always the same conversation, you know, like when are you getting paid? Do you have customers? Like, when do you think you're going to get paid? And eventually, you know, it becomes like, I mean, it puts more pressure on you.

7:14And eventually, I kind of like stopped talking to my parents just because, you know, I was like, a bit annoyed with this conversation. And I just felt, you know, I need to be kind of in a tunnel vision where I just keep working, and I will go out of this cave when I succeed. And the reality is what I was focusing on was basically like every little victory or every little win that I could have was super important, whether it was like just someone using the product or a deal that I could close. And I think this is why it's so important when you start as a founder to really focus on sales and on talking to people, because any company that ultimately really works out in the long run is a company that solves like a painful problem.

8:07But for you to understand that painful problem, you really need to spend time with customers. And what I see is that often people, especially when you like software and products, you end up kind of like staying in your bubble where you feel that the product is never ready. So you keep postponing the time where you face your customers or prospects. And I just feel like it was something where even though I would get like so many doors slammed on my face, eventually I just felt like, OK, I have no other option. You know, like I've told too many people that this was a project where I would succeed, that I had essentially like no other option.

8:46Yeah, and I mean, I get that. And it really is hard to explain to your parents this dynamic and how it works. So I get that you sort of went into your tunnel. Hopefully you're talking to them now. Yeah, I helped them retire, which is nice. Oh, that's so nice. They must be so proud of you. But let's talk about the loneliness for a minute, because I think that it's something that, because I work with a lot of founders. So I was at Netflix for a long time, working with a founder, CEO for a long time. And now I'm in VC and I'm working with founders every day. And there is enormous pressure. And there's not really a lot of people that understand all the things that you're going through.

9:41Just like your parents, they can't relate. But then there's this, I don't know, determination that you have. And you're like drooling to solve that problem, right? and you're probably a bit competitive and you want to win. But you're doing it a lot on your own. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So like, how do you work through that? And what was the moment of the most lonely you felt? It's a good question. I think, to be honest, like, especially in the first year of LEMLIST, there were times where typically at some point I decided to change entirely the interface because I felt like it was wrong. But I didn't tell our user about it.

10:37And we woke up to hundreds of messages of support of people complaining and saying that they would be churning. And a lot of people were churning. We lost half of our revenue overnight. Right. Yeah. And at that time, you know, like you realize that you're in charge of your own destiny, you know, like and if you don't make this right, no one will do it for you. But at the same time, you need to also like trust your guts. So for me, I think like we had basically like a few near death experience, as we call them, where you feel like the company is going to is just going to end up in a wall and implode.

11:21exactly so for me I would say that this were basically like the the loneliest moments because when you talk to people like they don't really understand they don't know how to help and I think the worst thing when you talk to people who don't understand like in the the type of situation you can be in and the pressure you have is usually the way they try to help is by discouraging you to continue your projects and go back to the old habits of finding like a safe job or just go to google yeah exactly yeah so so i i think like for me um that was tough and also something that that was that was quite tough you know like uh on top of the loneliness is uh when you like have the financial struggles because I mean I'm I'm half Italian so obviously for me eating pasta is very fine like I don't mind so I'm I don't need a lot of money to to eat well but you know when you with your like friends and like they tell you like okay like let's meet on Friday we're going to that restaurant and you know you don't have the money for it so you're like oh you have to start lying basically because you have to say hey I already have plans my plans were actually like me eating pasta in front of my computer.

12:45Working. Working, exactly. And then you try to meet them a bit later and you just have like enough money for maybe one drink and that's going to be like your social event for the week. So I think the loneliness is something that really builds up. And what I found like super helpful in the early days was trying to connect a lot with early stage founders. I don't think it's super relevant to go talk to people who are like five steps ahead of you because often like they forgot what it's like and we all have you know like the the survivor bias so when something you know like works out eventually when when even now you know when I think about this I'm like ah good old days but I can remember you know if I look at my journal or whatever that It wasn't good old days back then, you know, like it's super easy to look at it.

13:42It was scary. Yeah, it was super scary. And I think, you know, like this is something I've learned a lot with sales prospecting. It's there are so many times as a founder when your confidence is actually everything. And doing sales prospecting is something like that can really kill your confidence. and you tend to also like discourage yourself and forbid yourself to take on some actions. So typically you might think that, I don't know, like let's say you see a post from the VP sales at Netflix saying that, you know, they need to rebuild their sales org or their sales engine and you have a product for that.

14:27So you might think this is the right moment for me to send them a message. But eventually if you lose the confidence, what you're going to say is like, oh, I'm sure they received already like hundreds of messages. It's too late. I'm not going to do it. And these are the things that I'm always looking, you know, like at like these little signals. And when I see that I'm doing this, you know, like I kind of like take a distance from that little voice in my brain. And I just say, OK, like if you're afraid of doing it now, maybe this is actually the right time to just do it and really force it, you know.

15:01So this is basically like a, Our brains are always trying to sabotage us. Exactly. You know, they're little liars. And sometimes, you know, if you listen to them too much, you know, you're never going to do anything. You're never going to do it. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I think, you know, it is if you're a founder and you're listening, I think, and this is advice I get founders all the time, is to find someone that's doing the same thing you're doing. Yeah. And like, because the night you're waking up in the middle of the night and you don't think you can pay your people or you do have investors who are going to be up your ass the next day asking questions.

15:52You know, no one else, there's not many people that have gone through that, right? And who've had that amount of pressure. And so it's good to talk to somebody that gets it. And even though I've worked with lots of founders, I have not been one. Right. So I, you know, I don't even have that shared experience. So I'm glad you did that. And I hope that the founders on this call will reach out. I want to talk to you about, okay, so you take, you know, you take this big risk and you take your last thousand dollars you put in this company and you start to see some success in the U.S. But I think, you know, you've since Limbless have had other companies that have been successful and you've, I think, bought companies as well.

16:41So what is it about like building a business that you think is critical? Like you kind of also mentioned like you have to solve a problem that's a pain problem, right? I believe in that too. But that's not always, you can't just understand the pain. You have to also do lots of other things. So what's your advice to people that are thinking about this or considering it? I think the most important is whenever you want to launch a business, no matter like what, every department obviously is super important, like hiring is key. And I'm sure you can testify about that. I can testify to that, yes. Yes.

17:28Culture is key. But the very beginning, it's always about one thing, which is sales. Like if you don't generate revenue, if you don't generate money, it's basically like having no oxygen. Like you wouldn't be able to breathe or exit. Yeah, exactly. So for me, the question about sales is always like, what is sales about? And the way I see sales, obviously, it's about solving like an important problem. But sales comes down to two things. One is trust. And the other thing is timing. so if you have a problem the reason that I'm gonna solve it is because you trust me that I'm the right person to solve that problem and so trust is either equal to zero and one if you want to make it as a formula and timing is also zero and one because it's either the right timing let's say like you're looking for a new solution or it's not and I think everyone should really engineer their company around that formula because it's quite simple.

18:34It's just like trust and timing. And in everything you do, you should ask yourself, am I building more trust or less trust? And for me, the trust is really about three things. One is the emotional connection. So whenever you're with someone, like maybe, you know, like, I don't know, like they took French lessons and eventually they connect with something, you know, and they like you, or maybe they're like, I don't know, like I really hate his French accent and I'm never going to buy from you. I don't like French people. I don't know. We never know, you know, it's emotional connection. Then you have basically like reliability.

19:12So whenever you say something, are you actually following up on it and doing it? So I know a lot of people, they are late, you know, like they make promises that they never follow up on. Don't be that person if you want to build trust. And the last thing is credibility. So are you an expert about the topic that you're trying to solve? So as a founder, I think this is why it's super important to be really aligned with what you're doing. So if you work on a project just because you find it, I don't know, like interesting, but you're not really like passionate about it, I think it will eventually like come back.

19:50Yeah, it will show. Yeah. It will show. Exactly. So for me, these are like basically like how you should engineer a business in order to start driving sales. And once you have sales and once you're making revenue, then all the rests and all the pieces that are also essential can come together. Now, I think that's really important. And I feel like on the trust side and, you know, building trust, building credibility, building reliability, those things are in your control. The timing is not. It's not really in your control, right? They either can or they can't, right? And they either have the budget or they don't.

20:29Or, you know, it's the end of the year and that's when they're going to do it, not the beginning of the year. But what's in your control is how do you stay like top of mind? So when the timing is right, the only name they have in their mind is yours. Your name. Yeah. So how do you do that? to do that i feel like uh for me content is definitely like uh the best way to stay top of mind so to give you like a very specific example if for example like our biggest competitors are in the us they have raised like hundreds of millions it's sales loft and outreach so if i would be on a call with a sales of customer uh and i understand that they're under let's say like a one-year contract, so they're not going to be available until, let's say, six months.

21:17What I'm going to say at the end of the call is like, okay, I understand that is not the right timing, but do you mind if from time to time I share like relevant content that can help you become better at sales prospecting? And what I would do is just share things that they can already apply using like a sales loft or whatever tool they are using. And sometimes I would add things that we are much better at than competition and that they can only use with us. Yeah, of course. And because the reality, yeah, I mean, you know, so the idea is just to bring so much value that it becomes obvious for them that the solution that will really take them to the next level is yours.

21:56And that's why content is so powerful, because content, I think, gives essentially like a little window inside your brain, inside how you think, how you talk. And I also feel that as a founder, creating content is really a great way to become a master on a certain topic. Because if you want to master a topic, you should teach it. And the best way to teach is to actually create content. Because, you know, like if I tell you like, hey, Jessica, like, could you make, for example, like a presentation about whatever topics for a week from now? if you start making the presentation you're going to learn a lot about that topic and if you present eventually in a month or two months you will still be able to talk about that topic That's such a good point and you, I think very early on as being a founder started documenting everything you were doing, right?

22:55Yeah Do you know the Marco Polo story? No So, Marco Polo Who Marco Polo is, yes Yeah, you know Marco Polo. But I thought you had your own Marco Polo story. So Marco Polo, essentially, like everyone knows him because he's the one who discovered the Silk Road. So like the unique road, basically, to go from Europe to basically Asia and trade a lot of things. The reality is like everyone believes it, but it's not the case. he wasn't the one who discovered that road, but he was the first one to write about it. Right. And I think this is the most important part. Like even like 500 years after he ultimately not discovered that road, everyone still believe it.

23:47And this is the power of documenting. If you document your own story first, it gives you like an incredible asset because the thing that your competitors will never be able to copy is who you are and what's your story. And your story really puts you, it's a huge differentiator and it's also like the easiest way to create like a strong brand. I think like associating your person with your company in the early days, it's the easiest way. And I have like so many very simple examples, like where I live, there is like all this, let's say equivalent to Walmart. So you go to Walmart, you know that it's a huge chain, et cetera, et cetera.

24:35But you also have like this local store where you actually know the owner. The guy might go, you know, even to Walmart to buy the things and make a markup on the things he buys at Walmart, but you know him. You know that you're going to pay more, but at least, you know, like you have this special connection and therefore you still go to that local shop. And I think people underestimate the value of human connection, especially with software and especially in the early days. And your goal in the early days, it's the only goal is to get enough people, enough of the right people to give you feedback on what you're doing so you can build something meaningful.

25:13And for that, sharing your story and documenting the ups and downs, in my opinion, is the easiest way to do it at scale. Yeah. So it's it seemed to me just in researching you and your story that it came pretty natural to you. This like social sharing, documenting. But for a lot of people, it it's pretty scary. Right. it was extremely scary it wasn't scary I have the podcast and whatever it's out there I've been an executive and had to be on stage but that's I don't know it's different than me I don't know seeing them feeling like me getting a bad customer call or like a call from an employee where they're going to quit whatever it is So it was scary for you, was it?

26:12It was scary. And to be honest, like, it doesn't get better over time. It doesn't? No, the thing is, like, I think you learn how to be better at facing your fears. But the reality is, when I started, I was in a startup incubator where I wasn't paying the rent. So I had found like a way to really kind of like negotiate in some sort and get like free desk. but because I was in the place was actually nice and I just had bought like a$15 I don't know stand like phone stand on Amazon just to hold my phone and I would record the video in that place and I would record the video in English so I had like a super super strong French accent everyone was basically saying like why is he doing like videos in English everyone would mock me they would say like we don't understand with your like shitty french accent like and and the first comments i had that they were like really really terrible on videos and it was the same on my linkedin post like no one would like like it was really really like you talked about loneliness like those were really really lonely moments and and the reality is like at some point you know people start looking at the story they they start caring a little bit more they want to follow your journey they enjoy reading your articles etc but eventually you know you come to a stage where everything worked out so well and the story is so like you know like to the right and up that eventually if you start plateauing which is something that happened to us like a few years back like a couple of years and you know we took about 18 months to break from that plateau documenting that time is is extremely hard because you're at like a much larger scale you don't want to scare your customer you don't want to scare like a potential investor potential buyers but so so it's really hard to navigate it and talking about your mistakes publicly when you have a much larger audience it's also really hard because if if you start you know documenting as a first-time founder even though it was hard i i could see people you know they were like really it's fine you're young you know you're just learning etc you're just learning oh hang in there yeah yeah and now you know it's like uh our company's worth like hundreds of millions so if i'm saying stuff that aren't you know like that the mistake we've done then people are like i don't understand how someone so stupid managed to create like that kind of company so So you don't get the same type of hate and it's never really like a pleasant emotion to document.

29:02What do your customers and, you know, employees and investors and everyone think about you sharing so publicly these failures? So I think like our investors, like they, so we sold like 20 % of the company for$30 million. So we never actually like took cash in. It was only like secondary deal. But the investor at our board, like they really enjoyed the fact that we were documenting everything. But I could also see like eventually we started creating. I wanted to create a bit more content with them. But I also see that, you know, like they didn't really like it. They were a little uncomfortable.

29:48Yeah. Yeah, exactly. to really talk freely about the topics that everyone wants to talk about, but everyone's scared about it. So I think there is a limit. I think they obviously allow us to do whatever we want, and that was clear from the terms that we negotiated. But for our customers, I think usually they love the transparency because the truth and what I realized pretty early is you kind of have like two type of companies you know you have the kind of companies that whenever they screw up they just wait for 48 hours and they don't say anything and you know they wait for things to be back to normal and then yeah they are kind of like fine and if this is people complaining too much they're just gonna you know like i don't know give them a free month of whatever or discount and that's fine but for us i think like from the early days every time we did a mistake we actually like shared it publicly and we we say okay like here's a mistake we did here's why it happened and here is how we fixed it and why it will never happen again and i think by doing this you actually show people that uh you can really like uh get their back if something is going wrong and i think this is also quite powerful i feel like in And in tough situations, when really like shit hit the fan, you always have ways to turn that situation into your advantage.

31:20And some of the haters of the early days, because, you know, like when they were complaining a lot, instead of just, because at the time, you know, when we had like really like haters coming to like, I don't know, like posting online about the bad experience they had, et cetera, et cetera, they were saying like, hey, customer support said, no, no, no, no, no, it's the worst customer support ever. I was the customer support, you know, like I was the entire customer support department. So instead of, you know, like hiding and say, oh, sorry, you know, like my team, you know, trying to just be, try to be bigger than you are, you know, I would just go answer and say, okay, like I'm the founder, let's open a call.

32:03I want to understand like better your problem. Maybe, you know, like I didn't understand properly, like let's try to solve this together, you know and then right after that like after me spending time like them being like so frustrated that they had to write these things online eventually like you understand their problem you solve them or find a solution and then you know like it totally switched like the same message that they wrote they delete it and then they write like hey i had an issue but i talked to the founder it was so busy yeah and he needs to fire that customer support person but these are the thing I think like people are are afraid to do when they run a business but for me it's like it's the same like if you take um Alex Boisy's you know like a deal CEO uh deal that was a valued I think like 17 billion when you write to him on LinkedIn about like a specific topic regarding deal he's gonna answer he's not hiding you know like it's the number But one priority, even when the company is worth 17 billion, is the customer.

33:09And I still see so many people like missing on that opportunity. And it's crazy because those little things, they really have like a huge ripple effect. Because for someone to have like the CEO jumping on call or the founder talking to you, it's like a story that they will tell to many more people. And eventually, you know, it would create like this strong brand effect. Yeah, no, it's so true. And I think consumers, whether it's you're selling SaaS software or a Netflix subscription, they know that mistakes happen. Definitely. But I think what's frustrating to anyone you've sold to is how you handle those things.

33:58And if you try to hide it and don't admit it or you're making it seem like they're more the problem than you. This is the worst. Yeah. Then that creates just so much resentment versus like really caring and trying to understand the problem. And we've all been on the phone with organizations that have great customer support and really, like, treat the customer with the ultimate amount of respect and care and understanding. And those folks walk out of those conversations, like, loyal. Definitely. Versus the conversations you have where it's like, oh, I don't think, you know, that's not our problem.