Female Founders: Eliane Lugassy of Witco On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Kristin Marquet
Educate boys and girls the same way. Promote a wider variety of success stories and role models. Encourage the emergence of more female decision makers for a more balanced way to look at ideas and concepts that are created by female founders and encourage networking.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eliane Lugassy.
Eliane Lugassy is CEO and co-founder of Witco, an all-in-one app for more serviced and collaborative spaces. After graduating as a lawyer and joining ESSEC Business School, she began her career at Rothschild & Co in Paris in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) where she worked on several transactions among which were major real estate projects. In 2016, she left finance to create her own tech start-up, Witco.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I always had ambition. My parents did not encourage me to be this way, but that’s how I am. They were afraid my dreams would be too big, but I did not listen, and followed my gut. I hope this ambition continues to lead me in the right direction, and things are going well.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Nothing is impossible but starting a business means overcoming many obstacles. I met the CEO of a well-known company who told me that selling is a real job, but I was not very good at it. Potential customers told me they didn’t want my product because, incredibly, they did not intend to provide a better service to their clients. It took me years to get meetings with decision makers. I started out alone, I had bumps in the road but if you trust yourself and don’t give up, it can work out. You will also find nice people along the way who will help you.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
At the beginning I needed to develop the product to go faster to the market and we needed more engineers to join the company.
As my husband is an engineer and having learned to code at school, I bought him “Javascript for dummies” and asked him to refresh his memories so he could help. He never opened the book, and when I brought it to the office, they told me it was already outdated, and I should take it back.
I learned you can’t force people to do what you want them to do even if they can do it.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
On the team front, I am grateful to Kevin Longer, CTO and co-founder, and Rodrigo Carlos, VP engineering, who built the product with me.
On the finance front, I could count on the support of Eric Aveillan who is the CEO of Naxicap Partners (€4bn under management), who believed in me even during the toughest times.
And, on the business front, Philippe Depoux who was one of the first people to really help me and he opened up his professional network to me.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Self-doubt and insecurities, a fear of failure can be common in female founders. It is a cultural phenomenon, as is more prevalent male self-confidence and assertiveness.
The lack of women founders has accentuated this phenomenon. For a long time, there were no female role models and women were worried about being too tough or too weak to fund a company and raise money.
To this can be added the fear of immersing oneself in a man’s world where it is hard to be heard and understood: unfortunately, the tech world is still predominantly male. Coming from the world of finance, I know the biases and shortcomings of these worlds, which can be due to traditional societal stereotypes.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Educate boys and girls the same way. Promote a wider variety of success stories and role models. Encourage the emergence of more female decision makers for a more balanced way to look at ideas and concepts that are created by female founders and encourage networking.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Innovation can’t be driven only by men — we don’t always see things the same way as them, so by having female founders, we’ll all enjoy a broader perspective.
Women can be swayed by a display of overconfidence in men, but women are just as smart, so female founders should always back themselves.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
It looks easy from the outside, but it is not.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I don’t think anyone can be a founder as it is extremely demanding and requires you to take risks and make sacrifices, financially and personally — having a good idea is not enough, you need perseverance to go with it.
As opposed to an employee, a founder needs to behave like an athlete: wake up early, be careful of your health and physical condition, focus 100% of your mind on how to win over the market. Entrepreneurship is like running a marathon.
A founder also needs to be prepared to take reasonable risks and be patient, resourceful, salesy, eager to learn every day, and strive to improve.
You must also remain charismatic to convince people to follow you and execute your vision.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, What are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Ambition
- A team of A-players
- Emotional Intelligence
- Being able to trust your guts/instinct
- Being very focused on your goals only
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
We are trying to make people happier at work where they spend at least eight hours a day. We are convinced their workplace should be hassle free and where they can share, meet, brainstorm and explore.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I believe in meritocracy. We need a society where you can progress by your own merit. It saddens me when the system seems broken due to gender or social discrimination.
We are very 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 with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to meet Rafael Nadal. He impresses me with his win “whatever it takes” mentality, his tenacity is legendary. I’m also impressed by his focus and his commitment to continuously improve. Most people are not willing to sacrifice so much to become a champion, and he gives back, notably with his foundation.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
