Alexandre Mars Of Blisce On Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Fotis Georgiadis
Authority Magazine
Published in
12 min readNov 30, 2022

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Failure can also happen at any time in your entrepreneurial adventure, it is not necessarily linked to the early days.

Startups have such a glamorous reputation. Companies like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Uber, and Airbnb once started as scrappy startups with huge dreams and huge obstacles. Yet we of course know that most startups don’t end up as success stories. What does a founder or a founding team need to know to create a highly successful startup? In this series, called “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup” we are talking to experienced and successful founders and business leaders who can share stories from their experiences about what it takes to create a highly successful startup. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alexandre Mars.

Alexandre Mars is a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. Mars launched and sold multiple tech companies before setting up global foundation Epic and the first B-Corp certified venture capital firm Blisce. He is the author of Mission Possible: How to Build a Business for Our Times, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing (Hachette).

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I began my career as an entrepreneur at the age of 17 organising concerts at my high school. From there, I became a tech entrepreneur, creating one of the first web agencies in France at 22 years old. Fifteen years later, after tireless work to launch and develop successful start-ups, I sold my last two companies to Publicis and Blackberry.

But creating tech companies was never my end goal, it enabled me to have enough financial security to fulfil a long-lasting social ambition: contributing to a fairer and more sustainable society. I decided to leverage my entrepreneurial skills, network, wealth, and influence to scale my impact and fulfil that mission. In 2014, I created Epic, a global foundation that helps to transform the lives of young people and protect our planet by bridging the gap between impactful nonprofits and businesses who want to advance positive change.

Confident that the private sector also has a crucial role in making our society more sustainable, I also founded Blisce, a leading B Corp investment firm committed to investing differently by reconciling economic, social, and environmental performance. Since its inception, Blisce has invested in companies such as Spotify, Pinterest, Too Good To Go and Headspace.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

I actually don’t believe in “Aha Moments” or what I call in my book — Mission Possible: How to Build a Business for Our Times- “Eureka!” moments.

The truth is that most ideas are recycled, and where they originated isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is how you implement your idea. The sooner entrepreneurs accept this, the sooner they can create the necessary conditions for success. Out of the six companies I created, only one was truly an invention: the Epic foundation, which has a unique philanthropic model.

Was there somebody in your life who inspired or helped you to start your journey with your business? Can you share a story with us?

I’ve always been surrounded by inspiring women. My mother always taught me the importance of looking out for others and giving back. When I was really young, I remember walking into the living room and there would be strangers who were struggling in our flat. She would welcome them home, give them food, or teach them French for those coming from abroad. She embodied altruism.

My wife has also been a huge inspiration in my life. She has volunteered a lot and travelled the world working in nonprofits. As parents, we are trying to pass on these values to our children as much as we can.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

I think innovation is key when launching a business. With my foundation Epic, I’ve always used innovative tools and solutions to foster greater solidarity. We’ve partnered with companies like L’Oréal who were looking for a way to meaningfully engage their employees in response to internal calls for social engagement. They launched a payroll giving initiative and offered 11,000+ employees the opportunity to round their salary to the nearest euro and give the difference to social causes.

We’ve also created the Epic Pledge. We are building a community of like-minded founders, entrepreneurs, shareholders, VCs, private equity firms, and business angels committed to tying their success to a commitment to give back and support high-impact nonprofits. Among our pledgers, we can find founders including Phil Hutcheon (DICE), Nicolas Julia (Sorare), Alex Chung (Giphy), and hundreds of others.

Our model is pure. 100% of donations go directly to our organisations on the ground and the Board covers all operations costs.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

In parallel with Epic, which has supported 48 groundbreaking nonprofits and mobilised $65 million, I created Blisce, a B Corp investment firm committed to investing differently. Blisce’s mission is to reconcile economic, social, and environmental performance.

At the fund level, Blisce will forever embed a significant commitment to giving back as a pillar of its business and culture. Staff members give back 20% of their carried interest to social organisations and give 5% of their time.

At a portfolio level, Blisce’s term sheets includes two non-negotiable clauses: an agreement to carry out an ongoing ESG evaluation every 12–18 months and a commitment to interview at least one diverse profile for every open senior leadership position. Since its inception, Blisce has backed in companies such as Spotify, Pinterest, Too Good To Go, Headspace.

With great power comes great responsibility. I firmly believe that the private sector also has a crucial role in making our society more sustainable.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

First, hard work. I’ve never counted my hours. I’ve worked more than anyone else I knew. The 10,000 hours theory from Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson has always stayed with me. He says that greatness cannot be achieved without a great amount of hard work. It was then popularised by Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, showing that this theory can be applied to any field: sports, music, business.

Secondly, I always had a good instinct. Having a good instinct gives you the capacity to detect what I call weak signals — they are an early warning sign of a low intensity that indicates an important trend. You can also call it: being a second ahead of the pack. When I launched by first web agency, I could sense that the Internet would be the next big thing. We were in 1996. People did not believe me at the time.. But it turns out I was right! It happened again a few years after when I dived into the world of Mobile internet in 2002, I was telling people that the first thing they would do when they wake up was not to kiss their partner but look at their phones! People told me I was mad. Well, think about what you did this morning…!

Finally, being a good entrepreneur is also being a great HR manager. Someone who knows how to surround himself well. You have to know how to recruit the right people, the ones who are better than you. It’s about building a reliable team who fill in your weaknesses and enable you to focus on your strengths. I was never a good coder but I was a good salesman. I put all my energy into that.

Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. Can you share a story about advice you’ve received that you now wish you never followed?

In Europe, the common belief is that failure must be avoided by all means. I chose not to be afraid of it and I found that sometimes failures can become lucky breaks. So many people asked me: “why are you doing this?”, “careful, you are going to fail!”. If I listened to those people, I would have never have achieved success.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

People have called me lucky. I can’t deny it. But I also can’t deny that my life has been spent chasing down that luck in hopes of seizing it.

The first years were extremely hard. No one was buying what I was selling. I’ve been told “no” countless times. If you don’t go through the door, go through the window. That’s what I’ve always done. I remember writing Christmas cards with my wife to any potential client. I remember that I would force myself to have lunch with someone I did not know every single day.

That taught me resilience.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard? What strategies or techniques did you use to help overcome those challenges?

My life has always been guided by a mission. My goal was clear when I began as an entrepreneur: I needed financial security to carry out a bigger ambition: to put myself to use for the benefit of society. This is what kept me going even during challenging times. It has always been embedded in myself..

To overcome those challenges, I think that the ability to ‘pivot’ is an essential secret to success in business. The key is to always adapt to your environment, challenge yourself, surpass your own limitations, remain highly flexible and responsive, at the risk of living in a permanent state of discomfort.

The journey of an entrepreneur is never easy and is filled with challenges, failures, setbacks, as well as joys, thrills and celebrations. Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?

A great team goes a long way. An entrepreneur can never do it alone. Those who think they can are deeply mistaken. Some may have a bit of messianic complex. It’s a dangerous road.

Also, never lose sight of your mission. The term “mission” might be a bit pompous. It covers many different realities. But you will have to define it and ask yourself this question: why are you doing what you are doing? If you and your business are aligned with your core goal, you’ll be able to celebrate your successes knowing that you can always go further in your mission. In times of failures or setbacks, it will give you the strength to move forward.

Let’s imagine that a young founder comes to you and asks for your advice about whether venture capital or bootstrapping is best for them? What would you advise them? Can you kindly share a few things a founder should look at to determine if fundraising or bootstrapping is the right choice?

People are often afraid to start their company because of the financial risk. I always tell those entrepreneurs to take as little financial risk as possible. Put the risk on others, not on yourself. You have many options today: banks, business angels, VCs…

Three things to remember when you are pitching in front of an investor:

1/ Know who you’re meeting. Deep dive in their life so find some potential common hooks.

2/ You have 2 minutes to convince. In the first 30 seconds, an investor can make up his mind. It’s not a Netflix series, the cliffhanger does happen at the end, but at the beginning.

3/ Put forward three things: Team, Experience, Storytelling: it’s less what you sell but how you sell it.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Many startups are not successful, and some are very successful. From your experience or perspective, what are the main factors that distinguish successful startups from unsuccessful ones? What are your “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup”?

  1. Do not think you need THE big idea to start. You need to find the RIGHT idea. You’ll need three ingredients: find interest in what you do, identify where your skills and strengths are, and ensure the feasibility of your project. Don’t aim too high. For example, when I launched my first web agency, I was selling internal sites to SMEs and not to the fortune500. I adapted to the market reality.
  2. Study your market well. Doing a market study is like being a sponge: you will have to understand the buy-side and the sell-side, meet people, ask questions, ask how they succeed in their field, identify the problem you are going to solve, and define your potential market size. When I launched Epic, I did a year of market research and met with philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and policy makers. I’ve identified 3 reasons why people did not give more: lack of time, lack of knowledge, lack of trust. With Epic, I removed those three barriers.
  3. Work more than anyone else. Let’s take the Beatles for instance: they had surpassed 12,000 hours of rehearsals and concerts by the time they achieved stardom in 1964. As for Bill Gates, he spent most of his university years holed up in the computer room, days and nights. There is no secret. To succeed, you will need to work much, much harder than everyone else.
  4. Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is the reason why you’ll succeed. Remember the stories of JK Rowling, Spielberg, and Walt Disney. Two important things about failure:

- Failing doesn’t necessarily mean closing down your business. I’ve failed many times in my companies but I’ve always managed to pivot. In 2005, I believed I could offer mobile videos to my clients with my company PhoneValley. It didn’t work and I could see the wall coming towards us. So we went back to the basic SMS with 160 characters because we knew it was safer. It was not what I wanted, but it was what made me survive.

- Failure can also happen at any time in your entrepreneurial adventure, it is not necessarily linked to the early days.

5. Define what success means to you. You need to write that definition yourself. Is it to have a small business that allows you to live and work from the countryside? Is it to be the next Airbnb? There are as many forms of entrepreneurship as there are entrepreneurs. Whatever you choose, don’t lose sight of your mission. Put purpose at the core of your business. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to recruit, to retain talents, to attract clients, to seduce investors…You need to align your actions with your values.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?

In my experience, if you don’t do market research, you may be putting yourself at risk from the start. This is one of the more common mistakes I have seen among CEOs and founders. I would advise future entrepreneurs to not skip this step and study their market carefully. Entrepreneurs are sponges, they need to meet people, ask questions, and understand what their potential clients may need. How do you know when your market research is over? When you’ve identified the problem, the thing that is missing. Your company is the solution to that problem.

Startup founders often work extremely long hours and it’s easy to burn the candle at both ends. What would you recommend to founders about how to best take care of their physical and mental wellness when starting a company?

We all know that being an entrepreneur is about working harder than everyone else and making sacrifices. But when I am asked the question of “How much work is too much work?”, I always answer that if you find something you are passionate about, then it will be easier to work that much. That’s how you can avoid burning out.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Actually, something new is in the works… As a serial entrepreneur, it’s hard to stop creating! This new project will empower young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds to access university through a virtuous model. It’s called Infinite… Stay tuned!

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Well, I would love to meet the Pope or any other representative of different religions. Or I would be thrilled to spend time with Warren Buffet or Michael Jordan.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Everything can be found at https://alexandremars.com/

They can also follow me on social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!

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Authority Magazine
Authority Magazine

Published in Authority Magazine

In-depth Interviews with Authorities in Business, Pop Culture, Wellness, Social Impact, and Tech. We use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable.

Fotis Georgiadis
Fotis Georgiadis

Written by Fotis Georgiadis

Passionate about bringing emerging technologies to the market

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