My way to Eutopia
“Tell me, how are you doing with work? You don’t want to join us and work as a VC?”.
It is approximately 2pm on November 21, 2017 and this question from Antoine Fine, now my co-founder at Eutopia, is as unexpected as the path I’ve taken since that day in SoHo, New York. Despite a meeting in Brooklyn in less than an hour, I don’t want to stop after almost two hours of sharing on a variety of topics: our work experiences, our ideas on consumer trends, the challenge of launching brands in the US… and the best speakeasy in the city.
Antoine and I have known each other since business school at HEC in Paris and have always kept in touch since then. He contacted me from time to time after his Mediterranean tour by Vespa, to test some investment ideas in his new role as a VC. People who know me well, know that I love to give advice!
I had spent six years at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) just after graduation and at the time it had ticked all my boxes: exciting business cases, international teams and the advantage of learning on each project from the inside, every time with a different angle. BCG gave me great opportunities to discover a variety of industries and business contexts. I spent two months in Nashville, nine in Cairo, and even three hours trying to stay credible for a meeting in Japanese where I was the only person not able to speak the language. It was a business and personal experience which I highly recommend to all young graduates who ask for career advice.
Essentially though, I’m a doer. I value acts more than words: the initiatives, concrete milestones and even twists and turns of life. My parents, independent lawyers throughout their careers, have always pushed me to gain independence and never fall into a routine. As great as life at BCG was, I could not see myself blossoming any longer without switching from a ‘thinking’ to a ‘doing’ job and this was the beginning of my second life spent launching and growing specialty beverage brand Palais des Thés in the U.S.
I had arrived at JFK airport in March 2011 armed only with a desire to build something from nothing. What do you know, launching a consumer brand is no walk in the park. Especially in a country which I thought I must know well having spent so much time watching American TV soaps! The first few days gave me time to find a new apartment and nanny to suit my five-month-old son (the only one of three not born in the Big Apple) and build the full toolbox you’d expect of an ex-BCG consultant: business plan with 80+ tabs which was too large to send via email, a three-year strategic plan with five possible scenarios, a monthly cash plan and a brand platform articulated with the required complexity of pyramid schemas, value-chains and the one-and-only BCG matrix. I quickly realized that the BCG way prepared me for many things, but not the issues of the startup entrepreneur: how to gain distribution in department stores, assemble and dismantle stands at trade shows, launch a direct-to-consumer website, brief my logistics teams (in Spanish) or how to explain to a 5-Star hotel chain why we were dealing with ‘minor’ stock issues this week.
Those seven years had been among the most valuable and challenging of my life. You cannot succeed in this type of venture without giving 200% every day, without thinking that the sky’s the limit and without believing in yourself. Even when your cash plan looks quite red for the coming weeks, when your best employee gives you their 2-weeks notice, when your warehouse is flooded because of a hurricane or when your e-commerce site crashes for three days in a row. And yes… all of these actually happened! These seven years were spent building a large audience among US tea drinkers of all ages, but also amazing hotel partners such as The Plaza NYC, The Saint Regis and Peninsula Hotels, department stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Saks and Bloomingdales, luxury brands such as Chanel and Dior, and food specialists Williams Sonoma, Food52 and Dean & Deluca.
From a business point of view, I gained an endless list of lessons. That you can build a brand without investing much in paid marketing by leveraging cross-channel synergies and experiential activations, like the flagship apartment we designed in the heart of SoHo. That thinking of your customers is more effective than thinking of sales channels. That behind all Excel files there is talent to recruit, train, develop and retain. That a fundamental difference between tech products and consumer products… are tangible products. Which also means operational issues such as product development and quality as well as optimizing logistics.
From a personal point of view, I realized (sometimes to my own detriment) that talent can make a brand, and therefore a company, successful. That customers are so difficult to win over that loyalty should always remain the epicentre of brand priorities.
“You don’t want to join us and work as a VC?” Here we are again, back in SoHo, Antoine’s question ringing in my ears. The answer I wanted to give, before the check arrived, was that everything was fine with me. My business and the organization which I had put so much effort into, made me proud and happy every single day and I didn’t see myself doing anything else. But even if I’m really late for my meeting in Brooklyn, I let Antoine explain some more. That my role at Eutopia would involve both thinking -through investing- and doing by supporting our startups operationally. That I could continue working in the US while making a bridge for Eutopia with Europe where the majority of investments would be made. That beyond the food & beverage sector which I knew so well, I could discover other industries such as beauty, health and leisure. That the team I would join was not made up of pure financiers who didn’t get their hands dirty, but of operational and entrepreneurial experts. In addition to all of this, I realized that Eutopia’s purpose was to invest in a new generation of consumer brands aiming to revolutionize the way we live through socially and environmentally conscious thinking. Being a father of three and a business owner, I have felt a growing responsibility to actively contribute to build a better world. This investment philosophy resonated very positively when Antoine shared his vision. Our subsequent discussions, on the challenges facing Eutopia companies with US launches on the horizon, as well as the consumer trends in which we could invest convinced me that joining Eutopia would be my perfect choice.
It is now just over a year since I joined Eutopia, and the experience is well beyond my initial expectations. As Operating Partner I prepare and conduct sales meetings with potential customers or distributors, tour (many) shopping malls to find the best retail spots, conduct (even more) hiring interviews for our startups, coach sales team, and much more. Eutopia represents what I think VC’s should aim for: a team that is always looking to be one step ahead of sector trends, a willingness to actively source our next deals, a hands-on approach in support of founders and their teams and a desire to bridge the gap between Europe and the US. For me personally, it is a perfect balance between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’, as part of an extraordinary team all in pursuit of the same goal… pioneering a new way of living.
