E40: Startups vs. Giants: VC Tells the BRUTAL Truth About Building a Successful Startup

Speaker A: If I see a founder that basically gives me that spiel without being absolutely obsessed about what he or she is building, I won't go, I won't invest. For the simple reason that building a startup is so fucking hard. It is excruciating. So if you're going there with the head being like a rational opportunity as like a consultant, as soon as it's going to get super, super hard and you're going to want to stop, you're going to stop. That's the thing that I don't want is to, is to, is to back people who only think that this is like a great opportunity rationally and don't understand that this is like an emotional, you know, over the next 10 years.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Polyweb. I'm your host, Saralandi Tortoli, and my guest today is Ugo Amselem, founder and general partner at Intuition vc, an early stage fund dedicated to startups in the consumer and culture space across Europe and the US. In this conversation, we cover his experience in advising hundreds of startups and why he thinks that the consumer space is finally back after years of focus on the B2B space.

Speaker A: The way you win as a founder against giants is by having a shitload of soul in the game, by caring so much that it hurts, which is not something that you can do if you are at Facebook or Google. And the second thing is.

Speaker B: So I thought we can start this podcast today with uh, a contrarian take if you want. You have a background, uh, as a startup founder and now you recently transitioned, uh, into the venture capital space. You're actually general partner at Intuition vc and uh, you've made with this venture capital the specific choice to invest in consumer product. Uh, and you kind of believe that after years of B2B dominance, the consumer space is finally back. So I wonder why this choice of really focusing on just the consumer space?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean first like a newly vc, it's something new for me. I still don't identify as a vc, but, but you know, like I, it's, it's, it's a transition that is starting to happen basically. So we invest in consumer at large. We don't invest in consumer product necessarily, but like more like the, you know, consumer tech and, and all things. What we say is consumer and culture. I think the, the point starts here is that I don't like the word consumer, right? So we say, hey, we invest in consumer, but I don't like the word consumer because it's not, it's not about consumption, it's it's about culture, you know, and, and, and culture is, is what happens when you impact people at scales, you know, when you impact millions of people. And so for me the starting point of wanting to do something around consumer was essentially the fact that empirically in my old life I've always been obsessed with people trying to change the way other people behave, right? Hopefully positively. But that's, that's generally the case with founders. And so the reason why we think that consumer is essentially going back is just a few reasons I would say that are happening right now in 2024. The first thing I would say is obviously a cultural shift, right? So we say consumer and culture, but you got to start with the culture in general. And so the culture right now is, is essentially that you have a new generation coming to age, the generation that everybody's talking about all the time, which is Gen Z. And Gen Z is obviously the first sort of digital native generation. And so they behave in ways that we've never seen before. They're entrepreneurial, they're resilient, they're non conformist, they're essentially having a whole new set of values that are the same time, are different, but also at the same time are like super, super, super, uh, dispersed. You know, you don't have like a monolithic block of cultural behavior in Gen Z. It's just like a, it's like an archipelago of a lot of different subcultures that are interacting with one another. And so this basically changes a lot of stuff because they have new behaviors, new organizational form and we think that essentially they're going to want new platform and new places uh, to hang out. And that's I think the first sort of like cultural shift that starting to happen really since a couple of years and is accelerating now. The second thing obviously we're in tech, we're building around technological shift and obviously right now the big shift is around AI. And for me I think about AI as, because everybody has thoughts about AI and not a lot of people know what they're talking about. And I don't know what I'm talking about about AI. I'm not technical. So I look at AI in a bit of a different way where I'm trying to understand what's really different this time. And so for me I think, and I have to write an article about this just because I don't know yet what I think and if I write about it I will actually understand what I know what I mean. And so for me AI is the real web3 a lot of people are talking about web3 as read, write. I think it's fine. But I think the real web3 is AI because it's not read, write, own, it's access, distribute and create. And what I mean by that is that essentially Web1 was not about reading, it was mostly about access. You know, you could access information where before you couldn't, right? So you could read blogs of super, uh, expert people that, you know, basically you didn't have access to before. You could of course, access a lot of the information around, uh, Wikipedia and all the information that was legacy information that, you know, you couldn't freely access before. So Web one was about accessing information. Web two essentially was about distribution. Not. Not right. You know, and when I say distribution is essentially when you get a lot of new information, you know, online, basically it starts to aggregate into networks. And networks are inherently democratizing in distribution. And uh, that's what happens with, you know, essentially like social media. Anyone could go viral, anyone could distribute content and distribution became commoditized. And now what we have with Web3 is that now creation is democratized. Now creation is a commodity. So what happens is that you have like access, distribution and creation. And the whole information flywheel now is getting locked and it's starting to spin faster and faster and faster and faster. And what happens is that essentially now because anyone can access, distribute and create, you basically have a consumer, sort of like a renaissance. Because not only consumers are essentially having a 10x output input, whatever, anything. But also what happens is that any individual can freely scale themselves and can become either like a small business, a big business, a creator, a freelancer, a prosumer. So what's really happening now is that when you're targeting consumers as a fund, when you're investing in companies building for consumer, those companies are also building for prosumers, for freelancers, for entrepreneurs, et cetera. So it's not just about consumer. You still essentially, as a founder, talk as a consumer founder. You build as a consumer founder. But you have a new upside which is targeting those new individual that can scale themselves. And so that makes consumer investment a new category that is a bit bigger than it used to be, right? Because it's a bit of a hybrid of a lot of things right now. But what's really fun is that even consumer being a bit more broad now, the founders building in the space still have the same sort of like crazy delusion about building for millions of people. Right? And so you have, and I think, uh, that's what we're Building. You have a great opportunity right now to build a fund for those crazy people that generally are feeling a bit lonely. Especially for all those years, you know, where it was, it was all about B2B. It was all about, you know, like that type of entrepreneurship. And now those, those, those founders, you know, they, they start to get a bit of light again, they start to get a bit of a fire again. And we just want to be the one that basically focus on them and believe in them. That's basically the whole picture of intuition making consumer founders less lonely and a bit more in the light.

Speaker B: I love the way you think about this, especially the access, distribute and create. The way I see it is that before AI, the consumer tech market was completely saturated. Uh, meaning all that could have been possibly invented with current technologies was basically already there. And the big mover captured already the entire market share and therefore it was extremely difficult for any new consumer tech to really emerge. Uh, and maybe like it can happen once every generation because there is the cultural aspect that you were talking about, I think, you know, like Gen Z or like being very different from uh, your Facebook users. Right. So, so, but that happens once in a generation, let's say. And now instead with AI, all of a sudden there are things that are technologically possible that were not possible before. And for existing companies, uh, that, you know, the, the, the companies that dominates the market in that particular space is very, very difficult to adapt, uh, because it's difficult to kill the, the cash cow, the thing that made you money until then. And it's also, you know, when you, when you're a big company and you have uh, many, many teams, many, many people working with you, it's very difficult to align everyone and bring about the change, uh, quickly.

Speaker A: It's super difficult for companies to do it, you know, and it's always like um, a question that people are asking themselves and again, we don't really know the answer yet. We just have like some hypothesis. Of course every VC will tell you, like, this is a platform shift. AI is a platform shift. You know, new platforms are going to be created and everybody's going to move from one platform to another. So we want to be funding the new platforms. I think it's possible, but I don't really know if it's going to happen. Right. If you look at Google and you look at perplexity, Perplexity should have been built by Google, right? Search with AI, new sort of like user interface, new conversational form, multimodal, blah, blah. Yeah, sure, it should have been built by Google, but it's built by perplexity. So now you think, okay, maybe it's going to happen in every category and then every new media, every new sort of like vertical is going to be aiified, uh, by a new company. But at the same time, we don't know. You could argue that most of the mobile sort of like platform shift that happened was captured by the incumbents as well, right? Like, you know, Google nailed mobile, Facebook was not a mobile first company, but they nailed mobile. You know, they acquired but at the end like they're winning. So I think it's between the two. Um, I just feel that right now, and that's why we love consumer right now. The incumbents, you know, like those big companies, etcetera, they're essentially a bit sort of like stumbling, they're struggling because they're getting a lot of the hate from the users that are a bit tired of the way things have been done since then and they're also getting a lot of hate from the, from the regulators. Right? That's always what I say. You know, defensibility is not just about like data and distribution, what we usually say, you know, it's like, oh, you know, data and distribution is everything, you know, it's, it's true. But it's also about love and trust. And you need as a company to understand how to get love trust at the beginning from like a small niche of user that then is going to obviously scale. And I think this is what happens with those new AI first experiences that are uh, yet to be built. We don't know yet how those experiences are going to be delightful, are going to be incredible. But those experiences, those new interactions are going to get a lot of love from your users. And so that's why I think building in, in consumer, in the AI age is interesting. Because even if OpenAI is a consumer first company in the sense where they're building like, you know, like the, the experience with their app, etc, I think that they are sort of like focusing on the, on the core building blocks of AI that are potentially, you know, sort of like possible to understand, to forecast, you know, always start with these and go with that. But then because it's impossible to understand what consumer wants, I think they're going to let people build the apps that are going to discover the new delightful interactions or the new delightful experiences for consumers. Right? So I think it's counterintuitive but in the AI age it's better to invest in consumer because the incumbents cannot understand what the Consumer are going to want, uh, versus actually building in sort of like the infrastructure bits, because that's what the big guys are going to go first and they're probably going to nail it.

Speaker B: Very interesting. I'm curious to know, what do you think are the biggest opportunities for emerging startups in the consumer space at this point? You were talking about the inability sort of the incumbent to really understand what users want. So how can emerging startups that are interested in this space capture and understand this type of interest?

Speaker A: Uh, there's a generic answer to that. And I can put like the VC hat right be like, you know, I've seen like, you know, like a market, blah, blah. I've seen like an opportunity here and there. Uh, but in the end, like the question is how founders will win against giants. And if you want sort of to have like a metaphor, how David is winning against Goliath, you know, that's the question that you're asking. The way you win as a founder against giants is by having a shitload of soul in the game, by caring so much that it hurts. Which is not something that you can do if you are at Facebook or Google or even OpenAI. Although, like, you can argue that they have a lot of so in the game as well. That's the first thing. And the second thing is that you have to put your energy into something so specific that it's gonna just enter a vulnerable place in the other side and that's how you're gonna win. And if you think about Goliath against David, it's exactly that. We know like Goliath has like an immense amount of power. He says giants, right? But it doesn't really care where David has amazing soul in the game. Big sort of like, you know, big love for his people, blah, blah. It's like all of those things. But also like the way wins is by basically like, you know, like, I don't know how you said it in English, by the way, but like, you know, shooting this stone, you know, with this tool, which is, you know, amazing leverage, you know, you put a lot of force and it's like a small stone, you know, and it goes into this specific place. And so I think in the end that's essentially how founders are winning. And that's basically the people we want to, we want to, we want to back all the time, um, is by being super, super focused, obsessed about something with a super, super specific direction. And so that's why we see, I can give you the answer of we're looking at a lot at the creativity tech, anything that enables creativity, anything that enables now also companionship. Because AI enables companionship experiences in any app. So they have to understand where the user want to actually interact with an AI so they feel less alone. And this AI basically enables them a multiplayer game. Blah, blah. I can give you all that spiel, but if I see a founder that basically gives me that spiel without the uh, without the obsession, without being absolutely obsessed about what he or she is building, I won't go, I won't invest. For the simple reason that building a startup is so hard, it is excruciating. So if you're going to there with the head being like a rational opportunity as like a consultant, as soon as it's going to get super, super hard and you're going to want to stop, you're going to stop, you know, so that's the thing that I don't want is to, is to back people who only think that this is like a great opportunity, uh, rationally and don't understand that this is like an emotional decision over the next 10 years. And this is really different.

Speaker B: Yeah. And yet there are founders that build very, in very successful companies more intellectually, let's say less, less emotionally. Like I don't think anyone wakes up and is super passionate about doing, I don't know, an uh, HR payroll software. Right. Uh, and yet, and yet, and yet there are you know, like amazingly successful, successful companies and the founders maybe were not so passionate about it, but they are successful.

Speaker A: So you're right. But what happens is that, and I've seen that over and over again, founders, some founders will start anything because they just are in love with doing and they just want to do in whatever direction they will do. But most founders that are in the space where you're like, oh, it's like how can you fall in love with HR tech? They actually fall in love with the topic afterwards because they love doing. And so they will fall in love with HR and they will tell you no HR these that like I'm empowering people to win more time and build more stuff and everything. So it's true like you know, B2C founders have like a deep sort of like a uh, priori love for the topic that they're building for. And I think that's, you know, how you redefine new experiences, new uh, especially when there's like a culture shift and then you have like uh, those, those founders that are falling in love apost, you know, where they starting and then they just fall in love with what they do. But, but, but generally if, if you're, if you're, if you're building a company and it's so hard, you have at some point to reorganize your brain around the, the, the topic and, and they will fall in love with, with, with anything, right? And then you have maybe a third category of people, um, which are absolutely, you know, amazing as well, which are people. And it's also, it's always, it's always like a combination of the three, right, which are the people that are falling in love with winning. They, they just love to win. And those founders are amazing as well because they can do anything, right? They just, they, they're, they, they love winning, so they will end up winning because that's what they want.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I've seen these, you know, as well, like I've, I've seen, uh, I have friends that like, founded startup, and they were more passionate about being founders than the topic, per se. But then over time, as the startup became success, started hiring and forming the team, uh, they, they became passionate about that. They became passionate about their business, uh, per se. So, yeah, it's, it's definitely, definitely possible. Okay. But we talk about what's important, what important qualities you're looking for in startups in, in this particular space, I wonder, uh, aside from really being obsessed and caring about these, are there any other aspects or qualities that, that you think are important, like, I don't know, particular metrics, uh, that are a key indicator that there is something there, or conversely, like red flags?

Speaker A: It's a tricky question. We're, we're investing mostly at Precedent Seed, you know, mostly in consumer and culture. And so essentially, you know, when you do both, right, which is like early stage and consumer, which is like highly volatile, you got to have a lot of intuition. And that's why we named the fund Intuition. There's no way you can rationalize a precedent investment in that space. You can for sure have convictions about the market, about the need, about the direction, about what's enabling this potential huge opportunity. And we do have a lot of convictions about a lot of those topics. You know, mostly because I'm obsessed with how people behave individually, but also collectively. Like, I think about this all the time, right? So when I meet a founder that is telling me like, oh, I think that people are going to behave, you, uh, know, in the future massively in this way. And I'm starting now because this shift is starting, I can build conviction, I can talk about that a lot. Right? But overall, this Intuition, sort of like that. You build around founders, around, around, almost like a human future. Human behavior is essentially for me broken down in three categories all the time. And it's mostly about the founder and not about the market. Is one I'm looking for passion. And again, like you mentioned, you can be passionate about building companies, you can be passionate about winning, but I still want to find a passion. I want to see fire in their eyes in some way or another. That's also the way I behave myself. So I will connect with them better. It's like sometimes founder doesn't like us. They're like, you know what? I don't like you that much. And we're like, yeah, you shouldn't go with us. But usually I like founders with passion, not only because it gets me on board, but because that's usually what gets other people on board, whether they're investors, employees, journalists, whatever. Right. Like, it's just, that's, that's something that's really, that's really important. The second thing that I'm looking for is, is clarity of vision. Because you, you can, you can get like all the passion you want. You can get all. But if you're not able to convey your delusional vision in, in a clear, articulated way, then people are not going to join you. You know, like, I don't know. Yeah, it seems really like it's super passionate, but I just don't know where it's going, Right? So, like, I want to see that clarity of vision. And what, what people sometimes mistake is that when, when we talk about clarity of vision, it doesn't have to be something that is static, it's something that is dynamic. Right. What I mean by that is that when you talk to great founders, you know, they have like amazing clarity of vision. They're like, okay, we're going to do this. Like this, this, that, and 1, 2, 3, ABC. And you meet them a couple of weeks later and they're like, wow, it's totally different now. They're like, yeah, we're going to do z, y, x, 3, 4, 10. But they still have the same clarity of vision anytime you're talking to them, even if this vision changes often, you know, which is intended in the early stage of a startup. And the third thing is deep insights. That's the thing that, like, I'm dying for, you know, I have especially around consumer. And that's why we're building something around consumer and culture, because we've thought about this a lot. Michael Founder and I, we've been obsessed with these things. And so when I meet founders that have discovered something deep about something, how people behave, et cetera, um, um, I'm essentially being like, nurtured, you know, like, um, I'm always hungry for that type of insights. And generally great companies are founded on some weird but super profound insights that a lot of the people around are not agreeing with. Right. And I'm not going to give you like, super, super insightful example around that, but like, even Airbnb, you know, like at the beginning of Airbnb, you're like, you know what? People would want to sleep on people mattresses. You know, that's like one deep insight. Okay, sure, that's cool. But what was the real deep insight that was counterintuitive at the time was like, it was 2009, 10, you know, where like the financial crisis was happening. And the real deep insight was like, fuck, people need M to make money. That's it. You know, and so it's super counteractive because it's not romantic, it's a bit like almost predatory. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna take the opportunity so people actually can. But still, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's an insight that when acted upon, becomes an unstoppable machine to create the future. And that's the thing that really, really, really matters. And so, yeah, it's passion, deep insights, and then clarity of vision. And when you have that, generally when you have that, it's difficult to say no, to be frank.

Speaker B: Interesting. For deep insights, it's difficult to quantify or put a, um, number into that because most VC will tell you that they need to see traction. And this sort of drives me kind of, uh, uh, crazy in a way, because. What does traction mean exactly? Right. No, I, I ask this question every time and no one is really able to, to answer me. Okay, traction is growth. But like, is there a number? Is there a benchmark? Like, what is that?

Speaker A: It depends. If you, if like an investor is investing at like series A, is like, or is a growth investor, obviously, then you can say like, I want traction. Right? But, uh, generally when an investor says he wants to see traction, it means he turned into a vc. If I say to a founder how I need to see traction, it will mean I became a vc. And when I say became a vc, it's not a good thing. I'm an investor, but I'm not yet a vc and I'm fighting against myself all day, every day to not turn into a vc. And again, you Understand the difference, right? Like, you have good VCs and bad VCs. What, uh, I probably say is like, I'm turning into a bad vc. Why I'm saying that is because when, when you're an investor, and we're starting to see it right now, with my co founder, you get bombarded with pitches, you get bombarded with people like raising money. And so it's really, really easy to dissociate yourself from the founders approaching you and start creating like, almost like a protection, which is frankly, you know, like understandable. Um, it's really hard to build empathy all day, every day. You gotta have like a super, super, super high empathetic muscle, right? Like, you're seeing founders that are putting their whole life onto one thing. And for you, a vc, it's gonna be one deal, you know, and just the fact that you say, like, it's a deal, it's something quite relevant, like, quite sort of like a revelatory, uh, you know, it's not a deal. It's the life of people where they are putting everything on the line. And so why I'm saying that is essentially that when you say, like, hey, I need to see traction, it's because as an investor, you're trying to essentially decouple the emotional aspects with the rational aspect, and you're essentially putting a rational answer to an emotional feeling that you have. So the short answer is when an investor says, when an investor that is supposed to invest at Precede or Seed say, oh, it's too early. Oh, oh, there's not enough traction. What it really means is I didn't build enough of a conviction on you as a founder to fall in love and take an irrational bet on you and be, uh, like, you know what? Take my money. I believe in you. That's what it means. And if I say that, that's probably what it means. So what I say, and maybe it's going to change. Right now what I say to founders is again, like, precede Seed. Sort of like early stuff is like, I couldn't build enough of a conviction. That's it. And what I, what I mean by enough of a conviction, it's either about you as a founder, it's usually 90, 80% you as a founder, or maybe about the market. Sometimes it's like, you know, like, I, I like you a lot, but like, dude, I just cannot buy this direction. And to be frank, you know, it always goes back to the founder then because you have like a list of, like a guy like puts up a list of the pivots of consumer companies or like of pivots of big companies, uh, that started with something and ended up being successful with another thing. And 80% of those companies are consumer companies. And so ultimately, you know, even if a founder goes into like a crazy market that you don't believe in, if it's an amazingly good founder and you are right about that founder, it's going to change. He or she are going to change the direction of the, of the, of the company quickly. Super quickly. So never say there's no traction if you're a seed or pre investor, just say, yeah, I, sorry I, I didn't fall in love.

Speaker B: I think this is very honest. Uh, it's also kind of like harsh.

Speaker A: Uh, it's difficult to hear that, that, that it's personal, right? Because it's, you can say like, it's not personal in the way that I say it, but it's about you as a founder, right? Like oh, you didn't, I, you didn't convey enough, sort of, I don't know, like enough fire or something. You didn't, there's something you didn't convey. So then I, I'm not gonna uh, take the bet on you, right? And it's mostly about that. So yeah, I don't know. Or, and there's, there's a second. There's like another thing as well. It's like some investors, and I think it's amazing if they do that already will essentially write down all the reasons why they didn't invest and it's rational reasons, right? So, oh, I think the market, these, the market and I think it's great because you could, as an investor you meet a lot of founders and sometimes you start to get insights about like a certain market and you're, oh, if I saw that maybe I would be excited, blah, blah. Um, but ultimately if they absolutely loved the founder, they would invest and would say that as well, right? They were like, oh, I think this, that, but I still invest, but I still, you can, I think, I still think you should look at it this ah, way, etc. So I think in the ranking of how we investors should behave is one always answer. And sometimes I don't do it, right? Like sometimes I forget to answer like a LinkedIn message. But I try to like answer as much as possible. Even if it's just like hey, couldn't build a conviction. Because right now when you're a founder and you get ghosted by VCs, it's horrible. Especially when they started answering you first Right. Oh yeah, let me talk about. And then they stopped answering. It's really bad. They should really always say no. Two is potentially give a rational answer. Oh, this is what I missing from the market or the opportunity. And three, what's best? I think it's to give uh, an honest emotional answer of yeah, I just couldn't build enough conviction. Mostly on you, mostly on the team, a bit on the market as well. But like. Yeah, that's, that's my honest answer.

Speaker B: Okay. I'm sure many founders are gonna be delighted with this, but. Yeah, I don't know. That's the reality, right, that a lot of them um, experience every day, especially the ghosting part. Let's get more tactical if you want because you right now of course as a, as a VC or as an investor, but also I'm gonna have to

Speaker A: say because I am a vc, but, but still you.

Speaker B: I got, I got the distinction very, very clearly. Yeah. And, and the struggle. And the struggle. Yes. But be also before because you were co, uh, founder of the, the family, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker A: No, I'm, I'm not co founder. I was part of like the super, super early team that, that, that got equity. But no, the co founders are three people that are now, that are now fighting with each other, but it's Nicola and Usama and I cannot thank them enough for having taken a bet on me when I was super young and super crazy. I'm still am less young, still crazy.

Speaker B: That's how we like it. You basically worked with so many startups and you keep seeing uh, so many startups, uh, if you were to condense uh, all these years of learnings, uh, that you got uh, through the interactions with founders and startups, what would you advise or what would you convey to founders or even aspiring uh, founders, uh, that are, are starting a business?

Speaker A: I don't, I've probably, I probably met with thousands of founders of even teams, you know, thousands of teams. And, and the only thing that sort of like I would be able to sort of like condense, uh, uh, as learnings will not be for founders. If you're a founder, you shouldn't, you shouldn't listen to me, you know, because I was a founder before but it was like 2011 12. So like it's been a long time. It's been more than 12 years now. Right. So if you're a founder, don't listen to me, like I don't have anything relevant to say to you as to how to build your company. Right. If you're an investor, then maybe I can teach you something because I've seen so many founders on the other side of the fence, right? I was, I was on the other side. So if you're an investor, maybe, maybe I can teach you a thing or two. And again, those things are always going to come back to like if as an investor you have empathy and you're good with people, which is my case, so you can only take advice from me as a certain type of investor, then just follow your gut. That's the only thing there is to say. Because for me, you know, for like more than 15 years, having mostly talked with founders all day long, my guts are not wrong. They're generally right. And of course you can always get lucky and that's great, or you can always get unlucky and that's unfortunate. But overall you're going to get it right long term if you follow your gut. And you're going to be, more importantly, you're not going to always second guess your decisions if you stick to your gut, right? Because if you're trying to find a rational framework to assess founders early stage, at ah, some point it's going to change. At some point you're going to always challenge your framework, et cetera, et cetera. And you need a rational way to decide as well. I'm not saying it's all got everything, but in the end, if I should really, really summarize, it's like follow your gut. Just, just, you know, it's gonna pay off at some point. And what's interesting about the gut is that, and it's intuition all the time, it's that all the rational thinking that you do, trying to understand this at some point it's also going to change your gut feeling little by little, right? So like intuition is essentially all of those rules, those rational rules with experiences that are getting condensed into feelings because feelings are way faster to process than like rational thinking, right? So if you build enough empathy, if you always have this focus on people from a confident place, you're always going to learn rationally new things that are then going to be summarized by your intuition. So m. In the end, just follow your gut because it's the condensed rationalization of your experience for the past 15 years, you know, that are going to be into, into, into this. So yeah, that's, that's it. I have only, only one thing to say for, for, for investors or in, in the earlier stage.

Speaker B: Do you, do you recall an example in which like your gut told you big time, yes, this is it. And could you thinking back to that examples, you know, like uh, maybe like through, I don't know how long ago did that happen? But like uh, over time were you able to isolate the elements that made, made your gut say. Oh yes, that's, that's it.

Speaker A: It's a good question. It's a good question. I mean, you know, I've had founders where just I, I, I, I fell in love and, and, and I would have not like, I would have almost like joined them in, in their journey, you know, because it was so exciting. Um, and you know, when you meet those people, you know, uh, especially when you meet those people. And then so because you can have like those intuition in like one call of 30 minutes, you know. Sure. But then you need to, you need to actually double down and spend more time with them. Right. To actually really, really develop that deep intuition. It's difficult to post rationalize, you know. You know, one example that I have is the founder of a company called Joe J O W which is like doing like a um, grocery shopping in like a content first way. Right. So amazing new sort of like experience as to like you know, do grocery shopping and cooking at home. And I just loved it. I loved it. The guy was calm, confident, meticulous about his approach, absolutely obsessed about customer experience, about product. Right. Like with a big P with a capital P and, and was in the execution so flawless, right. Just like this sort of like natural force and that's one of the way that I fell in love. But at the same time, you know, I had another founder that I met which is the founder of a company called Beehive, which is like a company that substack and I had 30 minutes with him and the guy was essentially bombarding me with one super, super cool insights about what actually matters. Uh, but also conveyed an amazing sort of bulldozer energy. Meaning, yeah, I have a vision for this. But more than anything what I have is an amazingly brutal execution capability and I'm going to crush everything. And so those two examples are based on a different type of intuition. So if I try to sort of post rationalize it and I say, oh, a founder needs amazing calm confidence and amazing product focus, then I'm going to invest in all companies like Joe all the time. But I'm going to miss companies like Beehive. But then if I look at companies like Beehive and I'm like, yeah, you need to have like sort of like brutal fanners that are just like reckless executors. Like almost like dumb executors like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Of course it's brilliant but like it, you know, it was this force that uh, then I'm going to miss companies like Joe. So I think like, it's really, really, really like super important not to post rationalize everything because post, post rationalization of successes can actually lead to future failures. You know, so you have to, you have to stay humble and to be like, you know what, I don't know why I'm not going to try to. I feel like it.

Speaker B: Okay, interesting answer. One of the, I think biggest struggles of consumer tech products is getting, getting adoptions. Right. Uh, even at ah, the very early stage, like finding your first users and then having like a number that is meaningful enough. I'm not gonna use the worst traction but, but that is meaningful enough to at least have some, some relevance. Right? To showcase, hey, this deep insight that, that you were talking about, you don't get the deep insights unless you have some numbers behind it. You, you can just get it like by talking with five people. It's very difficult.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So how in your experience, maybe if you have any advice, how would you approach this type of problem? Because I've built consumer products before and, and this is the m. Always kind of the most difficult part. Even if beforehand you do a lot of due diligence, meaning a lot of customer discovery. But then when you actually go and try to launch something, uh, even like an mvp, I'm not talking like the final version of the product, um, I'm talking like a testing thing. It's very difficult to isolate the.

Speaker A: Who.

Speaker B: Getting those people on board and then getting those deep insights.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. You know, like and, and again you have to be humble all the time. But like specifically when there's a really good reason to be humble. And so for me to start saying, you know, as a founder you should A, B, C. Yeah, but what did I build? Like big company. No I didn't. A successful consumer product. No, I didn't. So what I can do instead is redirecting founders to people who gave advices from an actual place of building and successful building. Right. So now it's becoming memes and it's great, you know, that startup stuff are producing memes. And it's two things, you know, it's do things that don't scale. Read the Paul Graham article. That's it. Don't spend more time listening to anything that I say about that. Just go read that article. And two, the other YC sort of mantra which is build products, talk to Your users, that's it. That's the only thing you should do. And having again, having built companies but failed at it, but also having, you know, followed successful journeys from, you know, like the sidelines, but like super close to founders, every time that founders are not doing enough or one or the other, they regret it. You know, even in like a matter of weeks, they're like, you know, I should have talked to more users. You know, that's like a go to pitch competition. Should I have talked to more users, start working on a PR campaign? Fuck, I should have talked to more users, start sort of fundraising and talking to VCs before it's actually needed. Fuck. Should I have built more product? Should have been building instead. So it's always this sort of test where you should do either or uh, at any given time. And that's pretty much it. So go read Paul Graham's article. Go look at what Y Combinator actually puts out as knowledge, because it's 10x more interesting than any other thing you can be reading right now as a founder. Because now content, we see that creation of content is a commodity now. So people are going to spin content all the time. So just find those places where content is great and that's generally like the places that I just mentioned. So I won't talk much more about, about, uh, founder advice again. I can give advice to investors. That's what I.

Speaker B: Okay, maybe we can.

Speaker A: No, but I think the last thing probably, and that's something I can do is when you're a founder and you're building in consumer, you know, it's so much more easy to build for yourself. And that's why I'm in consumer and I like consumer is because I'm a human and consumer products are for humans. So because I have a huge amount of empathy and also I think so much about how people behave, you know, anthropology, sociology, all of those things. Yes. If you're a founder and you're building for yourself, it's so much more easy because you don't need to study other people, you just need to study you. So of course it's like a cheat code. And of course, you know, when you have people on board as a startup founder like, like me, like as, as investors. And I dare you to find someone that is as obsessed as I am in tech with how people behave. I dare you. You know, I'm obsessed with this thing. I just talk about this all the time. I think about this all the time, you know, like I'm observing all the time, reading all the time. So, yeah, surround yourself with people that are as obsessed as understanding, you know, like, a human behavior as you are as a founder, because it's your users, you know.

Speaker B: I have a question for you because in your analysis early on, you mentioned that this is the real world three, right? Uh, the Web three phase in this case is the creation phase, more than the own phase. And in this phase, the. Is the creation itself that gets commoditized. So if the creation gets commoditized, by definition, it becomes wildly accessible, uh, to everyone. But then if that's true, where does the value accrue? Meaning, uh, even if you manage to build something, uh, that is successful, but creation is so easy. What's stopping others to replicate, like, effortlessly, basically, what you're doing, especially as AI advance and, like, creating software becomes, uh, ever easier.

Speaker A: I get it, to be frank. So what happened when Web one arrived? Like, anyone could learn anything because you could access to information. That just raised the bar, right? So now you cannot just be successful because you have access to information. It's like, oh, yeah, I know things. Yeah, everybody can learn. So the bar is raised. But also, um, it becomes like a level playing field, right? We're like, just like, anyone can learn now. So, like, if you're. If you're. If you're a kid in, I don't know, in South America, or you're like a kid at Harvard, you can have access to the same amount of information. Of course, success is not just about accessing information, but at least you can have access to the same information. With Web2, what happened is about distribution. So anyone could distribute, right? So then you saw, uh, stars, meaning like celebrities coming from anywhere. You know, before a celebrity was part of a process of, like, a hyper selection where someone could say, you become a star, right? I'm gonna sign you at Universal Music. I'm gonna give you access to the general public. I'm gonna make you, like, a TV star. Like, it's like a movie star, you know, you can now, you know, like the. One of the most recognizable faces are just creators, right? You know, Kaby Lame. Like the guy that does like this on TikTok. It's like an African. Like, uh, this. How do you say, like, African decent guide like that is born in Italy, and that becomes like the, you know, like the. The World War Star that we know. So now with creation, what's going to happen is the same, you know, so it's creation of information. It's creating, creation of content. So, of course, code is content. So you could argue that consequently creation of code is going to get commoditized, which is true, but it's going to raise the bar, right? So now like, anyone is going to be able to build, anyone's going to be able to create content, and anyone is going to be able to create content that is engaging, right? So when distribution was commoditized and you have like, and you're like a hot girl or hot guy on Instagram and you do videos, of course you're going to get more distribution or at least like you have a bigger chance of getting this distribution. But now, because creation of video is soon going to get commoditized, then like a fat guy in Arkansas is going to be able to create content that is as appealing as the hot girl in Los Angeles. And that's just again, a level playing field. But in the end what's going to happen is just like always, competition is going to go up and specialization is also going to go up. You're going to find niches of content, of code, of anything that are going to be so focused that it's going to be weird. And that's what happened with content as well, right? So that's essentially what happens with porn at, uh, the beginning of porn, like in the 80s or whatever was just porn, right? It's just like, whatever, like ah, people. Then the Internet happens and people are going from I watch porn to I watch whatever, like super specific BDSM stuff, you know. And then people are getting into the niches and it's like, oh, wow, uh, I've discovered kink, you know, but now like kinks are happening for everything, not just porn, right? Think about a content like ASMR or like miniature cooking. You know, people are like basically cooking super small eggs into super small dishes with super small things. This content happened because distribution was a commodity and that you could basically find your audience for that. So now it's going to be this at scale, super niches that are going to potentially become also empires, right? Like a great new content empire can come from any niches with people that are creating from anywhere because, you know, they just have access to the global market with the same tools, with the same, uh, leverage. And basically, you know, like, as consumers, as individuals, we're benefiting from that because we're getting bombarded with a supply of super specific content made for us and super specific products made for us and super specific software made for us that is also enabling us to produce more, et cetera, et cetera. So it's this thing where I was talking about this flywheel, you know, access, distribution, creation. Now it's spinning. Now it's like the whole thing has been locked together. Now it's spinning and God knows where it's going to lead us. You know, like this sort of like Pandora, like the Pandora box of the Internet has entered its final opening up stage, you know, in a way. And some people think it's scary, some people think it's exciting. I think it's a bit of both.

Speaker B: But you know, isn't that, isn't that kind of overwhelming as a VC also? Because if all of these create abundance of creation is all of a sudden unlocked like the Pandora box, you open it and then all sorts of things comes out, then it becomes very, very difficult also to evaluate opportunities and distinguish noise from, how do you say, news? From signal.

Speaker A: Signal. No, but you're right. So I think for investors, yes, and that's what you have to fight against, right? It's called FOMO generally. And FOMO manifests in a lot of different ways. But as an investor, it manifests itself in a very, very, very specific way, which is a message from another investor saying, have you seen this deal? Right? And so that's the message like, you know, and so you uh, have to fight against that, right? Like, you have to fight against like, okay, you know, like chasing all of those things. So for sure, for investors, more people are creating in more ways ever thought possible. And so you have to always like. But in the end if you again continue to only focus, mostly focus on the people, people don't change, right? So you know, you still back the same type of amazing people. So it's not that complicated. I would say as a, as a vc, it's not that overwhelming. As a founder though, especially as a consumer founder. Every time you open Twitter and you see like the next company that you never heard of that just gets millions of likes and millions of dollars from VCs and you're like, you know, it's, this is difficult. This is much more difficult than like, you know, doing suffering from FOMO as a vc. And so that's why I think, you know, consumer founders or founders building from millions, you know, which basically can happen to anyone now, right? So, oh fuck, this guy gets like the millions of downloads on this app. And I didn't blah, blah all those things. As a consumer founder, you need to, you need to at the same time surround yourself with other consumer founders because they understand the struggle. But also don't spend too much time comparing yourself to other founders, especially the other consumer founders that got successful for one day or for the whole life, whatever. But this is much more tough, this fomo, this overwhelming aspect of missed opportunity, of opportunity cost. It's much more tough on founders because they have an infinite sort of like choice of building in infinite directions. Where we, as investors, we have a finite number of startups, even if it's growing to look at and to choose from. Right.

Speaker B: I have uh, one last question for you. And this is a bookmark that I made from the very first answer, actually that you gave. So we are going a little bit back. That's how my brain work. Like I put like asterisks, uh, and bookmarks. And then I go back when you were talking about consumer and culture and the relationship between the two. You say that it's about culture because it's about changing, uh, the behavior of the people, hopefully in a positive way. And in your, in your newsletter you wrote this post about loneliness economy and how technology can help fix that. And that article had really a huge impact, uh, uh, on me. I found it extremely useful. So I wonder if for listeners you could maybe briefly summarize what was that about and maybe specify more how really we can perhaps bring behavioral change for the good through technology.

Speaker A: So it all boils down to, and I'm going to make it hopefully like, like, like a short answer. And I'm not really good at short answers, but like, as you understand, but for me. So culture meets m. Technology. For me it means two things and it's the two obsessions that I've had for 15 years. And it's sort of like two counteracting forces or like two forces like yin and yang. Of the Internet meets technology essentially, uh, of the technology, uh, meets culture, or Internet meets culture. On one side, technology enables any individual to have infinite leverage and basically gives almost like total independence to individuals. Right. So anything about like a creator, as always, the. It's the most leveraged individual in history, the creator. Right. So like you give a creator a phone and he or she builds uh, a media empire, that same media empires doing billions of views, millions of revenues, et cetera. That same media empires before required hundreds of people, hundreds of people that were codependent from each other. You know, one broadcast, one creation, one these, one that, blah, blah, blah. Now you have one person and then this person creates this media empire by itself. What happens is that as someone who benefited from that, as a creator myself, I have a newsletter, I celebrate this and I find this fascinating. And that's called the creator Economy. And I got obsessed with this. I built a crowdfunding platform for musicians so they can do everything by themselves without the labels. I helped video creators basically build their own media empires without the permission from the old traditional gatekeepers and et cetera. So I'm celebrating this. But at the same time, on the other end, when individuals, creators, but also us, anyone, don't need anyone else but themselves, then they're lonely. And so Internet enables individuality at scale, but at the same time makes us a little bit lonely. And so for me, the argument that I have is that technology follows ideology. And again, you could argue that it's not really true. But I want to take this sort of counterintuitive point to develop my thinking. If technology follows ideology, then when the ideology is about making us sovereign individuals, making us independent individuals, the American dream, I can do it by myself, blah, blah, uh, me against the world. Then we got the technology that we got right. And it's amazing. It's great. Like, I'm so happy to. I push a button, there is an Uber coming, or there is like food coming, I'm super happy. But now what's happening is that the ideology is shifting a little bit. And because we've pushed this a bit too far or we've reached the limit, or we've unbalanced it a little bit, now the ideology changes and you're like, oh, wow, actually being independent doesn't mean happiness. And we collectively are starting to realize that we need to be part of something greater than ourselves. We need to forget about ourselves as well again. And so I believe that naturally, if ideology changes, if vibe changes, if culture changes, then technology will follow and will give us the tools to actually connect with one another using technology itself. And so that's why I was writing about mostly two things. And I'm mostly thinking about two things. And that's why I'm saying I'm obsessed with how people behave as individuals, uh, but also as a collective. And the relationship between the two is that I'm obsessed about the creator stuff. I'm obsessed about individuals scaling themselves, but I'm also obsessed with people being part of something greater than themselves, which is almost like two counteracting forces that I think when they stop fighting with one another, it becomes like a more like harmonious relationship. And I think that's what we're here for, you know, that we're here to build this harmonious future in between the individual and the collective so he can live, you know, as, ah, as, uh, two things in peace and indeed like,

Speaker B: things are changing, right? Like, the ideology, I think, shifting. Uh, I think we can see that already with the. This abundance of open source, uh, even in AI, that's, uh, something that, like, even 10 years ago, would never, ever have happened. Uh, and. And I think that this is because of a change in the way people think and what we think is acceptable and not acceptable anymore.

Speaker A: I. I think. I think 100. I think also, like, Covid was the peak of independence because we were stuck at home, and we realized, like, dude, like, we're stuck at home, but it's fine. Like, we don't need anyone, right? Like, we just watch Netflix to entertain ourselves. We order food, you know, we order Amazon, stuff like that. Like, I'm at home. I can work from home, I can do from home. I can do whatever the fuck I want by myself. And because it was the peak of that, then we realized also, like, you know, like. But it doesn't make me happy. Quite the contrary. So then you had, like, a whole generation. I mean, like, a whole generation, just like a whole cohort, which is the whole world. Why it's like a quite big cohort, but, like, with, like, a whole cohort of people who experienced that feeling at the same time and then came back to the world and be like, oh, now I'm gonna connect with people again, because I can. Because I can go out. I can meet people. And they were like, but I have no one to meet. Like, I'm fucking lonely. You know, I'm not lonely because I cannot meet people during the lockdown, right? Like, I'm lonely because I don't have anyone to meet. And that sort of, like, realization, that was like a massive collective realization in a synchronous way, you know, enabled that sort of, like, cultural shift that we're now looking, right? Like, I've been talking about loneliness for, like, more than 15 years. I tried building an app, trying to help people be less lonely by connecting, you know, like, in real life, et cetera. In 2013, I realized that at that time, it was absolutely not the right moment, right? Like, people just wanted to fuck, and they were like, okay, is it a dating app? No, I'm out now. The amount of articles of tweets, of videos, of companies building around the world. The word loneliness is incredible, right? And, um, it just happens because, you know, it's the right moment. So now, like, we're building this stuff, you know, we're building the tools. And so, you know, for me, it's super exciting because I think it's of Course, an amazing economical opportunity because, you know, people are just, they need that. But I also think like, wow, like just going to make us more happy, you know, it's going to make us more balanced, you know, because it's not just about happiness, it's just about balance or imbalance. But still, you know, you're going to be able to like, be a creator and be like, fuck, I don't need anyone, you know, I'm doing my stuff all by myself and I, you know, I don't need anyone's permission. You know, it's amazing, you know, I'm rebel. Like I don't need to comply, status quo it. But at the same time I'm like, oh, now, like, who do I connect with? And boom, you know, I'm going to be able to connect with my crowd, like, you know, automatic dinners created so then I can join and belong, all of those things. It's a great balance, I think.

Speaker B: Ugo, we are at the end of this interview. I know that you are going on tour. In fact, you were just in Berlin recently for this tour. So maybe you can give listeners a bit of background and where, where they can find you.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. You go on Intuition VC. Yes, it's VC. I am a VC. Intuition VC. You'll find the tour, you'll find the dates. It's basically super simple. If you're a founder building in consumer with high ambitions, we select 50, 60 of you. Just a few VCs, not too many, just VCs that are obsessed with consumer. And we're going to make it like a 9010 ratio. And it's happening in seven cities around Europe. Uh, and us. Paris, Berlin, London, Stockholm in Europe, M, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles in the US and yeah, it's gonna be fun.

Speaker B: We will leave all the links as well as the tour dates in the description, in the and in the show notes. Hugo, thank you so much for, for being here. It was a, a super insightful and fun conversation.

Speaker A: That was fun. That was fun indeed. Thank you.

Speaker B: And for listeners, see you on the next episode. Bye. That's all from today's episode. Uh, thank you so much for watching or listening. Uh, if you find this episode valuable, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or to the Polyweb podcast on, um, Spotify, Apple or your favorite podcast app. It will be fantastic if you could leave us a rating, a review or a comment as this really helps other listeners fly in the show. All the resources mentioned in this episode will be linked in the description and in the show notes. See you on the next episode. Uh, and if you cannot wait until. Until next week, you can watch this episode right here that relates to some of the things that we talk about in this episode. Bye.