12 ordinary months of the (real) life of a startup
The original version of this post has been published in French on July 14th, 2016. Thank you so much Bartosz Jakubowski from XAnge for offering me to translate it into English.
For over a year now, I have been wondering every single week why I’m not writing posts on my blog any longer, and I until recently I had no clue about this. Yet, for two weeks now I want to blog again and I suddenly understand that I just woke up. For over a year, I wasn’t able to take a step back regarding my life as an entrepreneur, to be clear-sighted and that I had a fear of being judged by the others. On top of this, my ego prevented me from openly sharing experiences, as I did before.
So how did we come this far?
I finally regained control now, restored confidence in my startup, in my investors, in my team, in my co-founders, and today I rediscover the desire to share everything that happened during those twelve months, which were the hardest of my life as an entrepreneur.
Let me give some background for those who are not aware all the story.
I cofounded 1001menus back in 2011, right out of business school, together with Thomas and Julien. After a pivot in 2012, we raised €300k, started to grow and changed our sales model. Then in 2013, we raised additional €1.35m, grew from 0 to 25 FTEs, from 600 to 2500 customers and rebranded to Zenchef… and then in November 2015, we raised again €6m to accelerate. At that time, there were 50 Zenchef employees.
Fundraising
As of March 2015, Zenchef had a skyrocketing growth rate, our sales model enabled us to go fast and we had a business partner who was sending us tons of leads. The lights were all green, so we decided to launch a new round of financing of €4 to €6m. Back then, I was aware of the fact that this growth was fragile because we were dependent on one lead provider, but we needed this fundraising to get to the next step.
We decided to appoint a fundraiser, prepared our pitch deck and started the roadshow in May. I started to pitch numerous VCs, and just as for the previous financing rounds, we got turned down often, but also received some expressions of interest. I was spending my life pitching in Paris and in London. I completely disconnected from the reality of operations.
We finally got a term sheet in July, for a €6m investment, at a valuation and terms that were OK with us. We started the due diligence phase mid-August and had the cash on our account in October. So far so good. We officially communicated on our fundraising on November 4 and were overwhelmed with congratulatory messages. We finally got there. I just realized my dream of taking far my little startup and I was filled with pride. I was proud of my team, proud of what we built and yes, I was thinking that we made it, even though I had a strange feeling that something was wrong. It must look good, right?
I talked to a few people around me, I think I felt under pressure with the great accountability arising from such a financing round, but I realized that I haven’t spoken to a single customer for 6 months, that many people I haven’t chosen were hired, that I lost the upper hand on many issues and that we lost our company culture. I blamed my cofounders for the lack of support in this fundraising. I accumulated resentment and completely turned in on myself. I didn’t like the company I founded any longer.
2016
The mistakes kept coming. We decided to move to a new, large office, which was also exorbitantly priced. I wasn’t focused on the operations. We got into our lead-providing partner’s startup accelerator, I was spending half of my time in Berlin, I was no longer in charge. Our business partner decided to pause sending leads, and sales began to drop.
We hired a VP Sales who had experience in our industry to find some new solutions, but I neglected the human element in this recruitment and he didn’t get along with the Sales team (nor the other managers), demotivated the team and the results continued to fall subsequently.
Simultaneously, we decided to change the positioning of our product. So we had to retrain the whole team to adapt to our new sales process, but some employees resisted change. The communication between our product team and our sales team was deteriorating. I realized that many people had been hired during the fundraising process and that they neither share our company values nor our vision. We had to fire people, quickly, because HR problems were piling up.
I was spending my time coping with such issues and wasn’t able to focus on what matters: finding the best way to serve our customers, developing the best product, creating the best team spirit.
For the first time in my life, I was having job.
The board was starting to put pressure on me, we were burning way too much cash, and at that pace, we wouldn’t have enough time to get things back on track. I didn’t want to face the truth, I started to find excuses, I didn’t trust my strategy, even worse — I had no strategy, but how could I recognize it whereas I had been selling a crystal clear plan for months? How could I take my friends, my family, other entrepreneurs who were thinking we were growing exponentially?
Hopefully, our board of directors is composed of experienced and pragmatic people who made me realize the situation. These are tough times to live but they bring you down to earth, make you face the truth. And this is the beginning of finding a solution. I would like to thank them for having done their job and for having sent the right messages.
May.
We decided to part ways with our VP Sales. Thomas, one of my cofounders and myself took back the management of the Sales team. We discovered their problems, tried to solve them one after the other, recreated the cohesion within the team and our sales finally started to rise again. Meanwhile, we started to optimize our spendings, took strict management of our cash, cut off unnecessary expenses, kept only the essential people, which we never should have stopped doing, but you know, when you have €6m on your bank account… Now I realize that we completely neglected the communication about the situation of the company with the team during those long months and that nobody knows what is going on and where we are heading to. Some begin to consider leaving the company. Transparency, that I have always advocated, hasn’t been implemented, and trust is damaged.
June 1st.
I gathered the whole team for our monthly all-hands meeting. This time, no slides, no figures. It was just me in front of my team, speaking frankly about what we are going through, about what happened. I apologized for all the mistakes I have made and gave some details about them. I explained how we are going to overcome this difficult step in the life of our company and all the strengths that we have to get to this point.
Taking punches doesn’t matter, what matters is how many punches you can take and still stand up and fight.
I will never give up. No matter how inexperienced I am, I am made of stern stuff and whatever the price, we will be successful together. Some people were very moved and I was pretty emotional myself when I realized the true love the team has for this company.
I concluded my speech by offering those who wish to leave the company as early as this afternoon without any negotiation and offering them a contractual termination (« rupture conventionnelle », in French). However, I told them that for those who would still be there the next Monday, there would be blood, there would be sweat, there would be laughter and tears, but we would have to go full throttle, more than ever, to build together the success story this company deserves. No one left this afternoon.
Since then, we keep on rebuilding the startup, we are perfectly aware of the challenges that we are going to face and we are ready to take them up with a talented, motivated and ambitious team, with robust investors by our side and enough cash for the next two years.
I have the feeling that it is closes one chapter in the story of my life as an entrepreneur and that I now have the experience that enables me to take this company far while avoiding the mistakes of the past, and that I am stronger after this tough period of time. I fell in love again with my company and I am happy to wake up every morning to go and fight for it.
Now, you know that behind every big fundraising, behind each entrepreneur who is explaining to other people her so-called success, behind each press article that depicts us as rockstars, there is an entrepreneur who is struggling but who won’t dare to confess.
And in the end, it doesn’t matter.
