The Exchanges

Q that first day, and I totally think that's the best way to kind of get a freemium version. If we take that one step further to the onboarding element, onboarding, I mean, it's a really hard thing, especially for first-time founders, to get a grasp of what good onboarding is. How do you think about structuring your onboarding, and what have you found works best in terms of onboarding optimally?

A It's a super iterative process, and for us, I think it's a combination of Making the onboarding really warm. So you want people to feel really welcome in the company, and you need to really think about, like, it's very strange feeling when you are someone joining a group of people that is already big and that already knows each other. So how you make that the welcome really great. So it's a welcome breakfast. It's a lot of coffee on one-on-one. Then we have very structured onboarding in terms of documentation. So for every day in your first, like, three weeks, You have what you need to read, you have, like, training sessions that are live, and then you have three people that follow you very closely. You have what we call the role buddy, so it's someone that is going to help you understand what your job is at ALAM and how you interact with others. You have what we call a cultural buddy, so it's someone that is going to help you understand our culture and how to interact with others, and you have, like, daily or every two days check with you, and then you have a coach that you see Be Weekly and that is helping you To grow personally and to help you solve the challenges you have. So we really focus on building very strong written knowledge that you can go and dig really deep in the documentation, trainings, and people that are there to support you.

AI assessment note: “welcome breakfast... You have what we call the role buddy... cultural buddy... and then you have a coach”

Q wisdom element. I do want to ask, because, you know, culture is always difficult to build and maintain, but it's super hard when you've scaled as fast as you have done. From 20 to a 190 people in just 24 months. Can I ask, how's the culture really allowed you to scale so efficiently? And I guess, what were some of the core challenges in that really fast, changing organization?

A I would not say it was 100% painless, but it was a lot easier than I thought to scale at that pace. And I think it came with a very strong hiring process on always raising the bar, a very strong onboarding, and a very crisp definition of culture. And I think the biggest challenge is when you think you have a strong culture, but the Explanation of it is not very crisp or is not crisp enough. I love the last Ben Horowitz book, What You Do Is Who You Are, which explains that culture is not only about the values you have, but also the virtues, how those values translate into actions. What has been key for us to scale is that we documented a lot how we make decisions, how we interact with each other, how we solve problems, how we react in this kind of situation, and that is really great for People onboarding. One of the things that we did is that we have a lot of written discussion, and most of our decisions are taken, not in meetings, but in written forums and GitHub issues, and that base of knowledge helps every newcomer to see all the decisions we have made, and it's more than 4000 decisions we have made in the past in a very simple and accessible way, and that helps build the knowledge on what is the culture and how to scale it, but all that goes to trash if you don't build a hiring process and onboarding process that is It's very strong.

AI assessment note: “What has been key for us to scale is that we documented a lot”

Q Totally agree in terms of leveraging the investor base there, and I love that structure in terms of how you went about the hiring. With this structure though, it comes a lot of organization, and we've talked before about extreme self-organization, so I have to ask, how do you think about extreme self-organization today, and what do you do that works?

A I'm always surprised how much people don't consider the value of their time, and how they accept to waste 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, And at the end of the day, they felt unproductive. And for me, it was kind of a necessity to take control of my time, of my notifications as well, of my interaction with others. So for me, for example, it means no notifications on my cell phone, on my laptop, and I am the one who go check things when I need to check. But again, for self-organization, extreme self-organization, it goes back to what problem are you trying to solve for your job? And for me, if I try to solve what is my job as CEO, It's mission and vision. Be sure the mission and vision is articulated, that people understand it, and that it translates in our strategy. It's organization and culture, and it's make sure we execute on that vision, that people feel empowered to execute. So then my extreme organization try to match what is key to my role. So, for example, in my calendar, every day from eight a.m. to 11 a.m., I have a no-meeting, long thinking time, where I go to Deep into topics. So one day it can be long-term strategy. I spent three hours on long-term strategy. One day it can be explaining better our culture. So three hours on that. One other day it can be what means delighting in our project and try to define it for the company. One other part of my role is to be …

AI assessment note: “every day from eight a.m. to 11 a.m., I have a no-meeting, long thinking time”

Q I absolutely love that. It's kind of a founding inspiration story. I do have to ask, because bluntly, JC, it's the first time I've ever had someone who's innovated in the airline seat industry, and I spoke to Antoine, Zendie, and Shaq Before the show, and they asked the question, what were your takeaways from that business? And I guess, how did it impact your operating mindset with Alain today?

A Yeah, I think one of the links between aerospace, healthcare, insurance, is that they are all very heavily regulated. And one of the learnings is that regulation is not a curse. For me, it's an opportunity to innovate. Markets with high barrier to entry, they are likely to be places where you can make a huge difference because Innovation is so hard because of regulation that people don't even try. What you need to do, it's one of my biggest learning, is that you need to see regulation as part of your project, part of your core knowledge. It's really an opportunity to approach things with the jobs to be done framework, and not just as a legal constraint on, yeah, there is regulation, we are blocked. No, it should be an opportunity to be innovative. And in order to do that, you need to go really, really deep. You should not give regulation to lawyers. Yourself, you know, you need to go as deep as possible. In our case, I spent a couple of months at the beginning of Alan reading the full insurance code, and it's a lot of pages, you can trust me, and I did like a summary of it, which was like this big Google Sheet document where you could fill documents, link articles with each other, and it helped us build the knowledge. A certain thing that I learned And I think that was really key is the importance of culture. I love this quote from Redesting that you should have been thinking a…

AI assessment note: “one of the learnings is that regulation is not a curse. For me, it's an opportunity”

Q wisdom element. I do want to ask, because, you know, culture is always difficult to build and maintain, but it's super hard when you've scaled as fast as you have done. From 20 to a 190 people in just 24 months. Can I ask, how's the culture really allowed you to scale so efficiently? And I guess, what were some of the core challenges in that really fast, changing organization?

A I would not say it was 100% painless, but it was a lot easier than I thought to scale at that pace. And I think it came with a very strong hiring process on always raising the bar, a very strong onboarding, and a very crisp definition of culture. And I think the biggest challenge is when you think you have a strong culture, but the Explanation of it is not very crisp or is not crisp enough. I love the last Ben Horowitz book, What You Do Is Who You Are, which explains that culture is not only about the values you have, but also the virtues, how those values translate into actions. What has been key for us to scale is that we documented a lot how we make decisions, how we interact with each other, how we solve problems, how we react in this kind of situation, and that is really great for People onboarding. One of the things that we did is that we have a lot of written discussion, and most of our decisions are taken, not in meetings, but in written forums and GitHub issues, and that base of knowledge helps every newcomer to see all the decisions we have made, and it's more than 4000 decisions we have made in the past in a very simple and accessible way, and that helps build the knowledge on what is the culture and how to scale it, but all that goes to trash if you don't build a hiring process and onboarding process that is It's very strong.

AI assessment note: “What has been key for us to scale is that we documented a lot”

Q that first day, and I totally think that's the best way to kind of get a freemium version. If we take that one step further to the onboarding element, onboarding, I mean, it's a really hard thing, especially for first-time founders, to get a grasp of what good onboarding is. How do you think about structuring your onboarding, and what have you found works best in terms of onboarding optimally?

A It's a super iterative process, and for us, I think it's a combination of Making the onboarding really warm. So you want people to feel really welcome in the company, and you need to really think about, like, it's very strange feeling when you are someone joining a group of people that is already big and that already knows each other. So how you make that the welcome really great. So it's a welcome breakfast. It's a lot of coffee on one-on-one. Then we have very structured onboarding in terms of documentation. So for every day in your first, like, three weeks, You have what you need to read, you have, like, training sessions that are live, and then you have three people that follow you very closely. You have what we call the role buddy, so it's someone that is going to help you understand what your job is at ALAM and how you interact with others. You have what we call a cultural buddy, so it's someone that is going to help you understand our culture and how to interact with others, and you have, like, daily or every two days check with you, and then you have a coach that you see Be Weekly and that is helping you To grow personally and to help you solve the challenges you have. So we really focus on building very strong written knowledge that you can go and dig really deep in the documentation, trainings, and people that are there to support you.

AI assessment note: “we have very structured onboarding in terms of documentation... three people that follow you”

Q Totally agree in terms of leveraging the investor base there, and I love that structure in terms of how you went about the hiring. With this structure though, it comes a lot of organization, and we've talked before about extreme self-organization, so I have to ask, how do you think about extreme self-organization today, and what do you do that works?

A I'm always surprised how much people don't consider the value of their time, and how they accept to waste 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, And at the end of the day, they felt unproductive. And for me, it was kind of a necessity to take control of my time, of my notifications as well, of my interaction with others. So for me, for example, it means no notifications on my cell phone, on my laptop, and I am the one who go check things when I need to check. But again, for self-organization, extreme self-organization, it goes back to what problem are you trying to solve for your job? And for me, if I try to solve what is my job as CEO, It's mission and vision. Be sure the mission and vision is articulated, that people understand it, and that it translates in our strategy. It's organization and culture, and it's make sure we execute on that vision, that people feel empowered to execute. So then my extreme organization try to match what is key to my role. So, for example, in my calendar, every day from eight a.m. to 11 a.m., I have a no-meeting, long thinking time, where I go to Deep into topics. So one day it can be long-term strategy. I spent three hours on long-term strategy. One day it can be explaining better our culture. So three hours on that. One other day it can be what means delighting in our project and try to define it for the company. One other part of my role is to be …

AI assessment note: “every day from eight a.m. to 11 a.m., I have a no-meeting, long thinking time”

Q the end of investor updates, which thanks part of the cap table who've helped them during that last month or last quarter, or however often they do their investment Investor updates. And I spoke to many of your investors before, and they said that your investor updates are the best they've ever seen. So what's the thinking here? How do you structure your investor updates and what do they include?

A I think they are the best because they are not investor updates. They are team updates on which I put my investors. And we do a weekly update and we have done every week since even before we created the company. So I think it's 230 weekly updates now. And we share the same thing to our whole team and to our Investors, and we do it on a weekly basis, because first, as we said, you can achieve a lot in one week, whatever your size, and if you don't ship something in one week, I think you have a problem as an organization. So it forces us every week to say what we have achieved, what equity value have we created every week. Also, we tend to think that human beings are kind of really bad at planning their time and schedule at more than one week, so we feel that it's a good horizon of time just to To do an update on the achievement on what we want to achieve next week. Last but not least, it's really an amazing way for people to get updated on what we do, on what you are up to, on what you are struggling with. And it makes, for example, your board meeting a lot more productive because you don't spend time on updating on the business. They know how you think about it. You spend time on strategic topics. And then what is, I think, really important is how you structure your weekly updates. And for us, what we try to do is to have a few very important parts. The first thing is the strat…

AI assessment note: “They are team updates on which I put my investors.”

Q do have to also JC, because Because when I listen to you, it all just seems so kind of innate and natural to you in terms of the scaling of CEO ship. But it's such a challenging thing that bluntly, 99% of CEOs struggle with being the changing role with the changing organization that they've built. What elements have you struggled with in terms of scaling yourself with the organization?

A I think where I struggled a lot at some point, and I've been working a lot on it, is to give more praise than criticism. And I have a tendency to consider that When we do something, even if that thing is excellent, we take it for granted it's what was expected from us, and then we move forward. And I think it doesn't scale very well for an organization, because you really need to spend time telling people when their job is amazing, because it creates a very good feedback loop. For me, as an entrepreneur, it has been something that has been tough, and I've been working a lot on that. It makes a tremendous difference, because you focus on what is positive, you focus on reinforcing the good behavior, reinforcing what is great, and And it gives so many great examples to your team on what is achieving super well in your company. That is transform everything. So I think it was one of my biggest challenges at some point. It's not totally solved, but I made a lot of progress on that.

AI assessment note: “is to give more praise than criticism”

Q How long do the investor updates take, and do you involve other people in the writing of them?

A Yeah, so it's like every part is written by someone from the team, so it's very distributed, and for me, I think it takes between one to two hours to put everything together, but it's not really writing it that takes time. It's the strategic thinking and the priorities for the companies and challenging the people of the company That takes time. So for us, it kind of replaced the weekly meetings that executive teams have. So everything is done in a written and asynchronous way. So it's two hours that I really spent on strategy and discussing the problems we have, and more than just writing the update, that is just a side effect. So I would not see that as like, we spend time writing the update. The update is just a consequence of the work we do as a team.

AI assessment note: “every part is written by someone from the team... takes between one to two hours”

Q I absolutely love that. It's kind of a founding inspiration story. I do have to ask, because bluntly, JC, it's the first time I've ever had someone who's innovated in the airline seat industry, and I spoke to Antoine, Zendie, and Shaq Before the show, and they asked the question, what were your takeaways from that business? And I guess, how did it impact your operating mindset with Alain today?

A Yeah, I think one of the links between aerospace, healthcare, insurance, is that they are all very heavily regulated. And one of the learnings is that regulation is not a curse. For me, it's an opportunity to innovate. Markets with high barrier to entry, they are likely to be places where you can make a huge difference because Innovation is so hard because of regulation that people don't even try. What you need to do, it's one of my biggest learning, is that you need to see regulation as part of your project, part of your core knowledge. It's really an opportunity to approach things with the jobs to be done framework, and not just as a legal constraint on, yeah, there is regulation, we are blocked. No, it should be an opportunity to be innovative. And in order to do that, you need to go really, really deep. You should not give regulation to lawyers. Yourself, you know, you need to go as deep as possible. In our case, I spent a couple of months at the beginning of Alan reading the full insurance code, and it's a lot of pages, you can trust me, and I did like a summary of it, which was like this big Google Sheet document where you could fill documents, link articles with each other, and it helped us build the knowledge. A certain thing that I learned And I think that was really key is the importance of culture. I love this quote from Redesting that you should have been thinking a…

AI assessment note: “one of the learnings is that regulation is not a curse.”

Q team. So that's awesome, dear, is for the wider team as well. I guess the person coordinating all of this in a lot of cases is the chief people officer. And I know that you've spent a considerable amount of I'm looking for a chief people officer. How do you know when's the right time to hire one? And how was the process for you in terms of the hiring?

A I think the answer is that it should be sooner than later. I think for us, we have been pretty lucky to do our first people or talent hire when we were only 14 or 15, and it has been really instrumental for us. And then later in the journey, we just now hire the chief people officer, but like hiring for people very early in the journey It's really important. Again, I think the way to process it and to think about it for a company is to go back to the problems you are trying to solve. And that's the framework I use all the time. What is the problem we are trying to solve? And is the problem like you are not sure of the culture of your company, you are not sure of the onboarding, you are not sure on your hiring process, you are not sure on I need to provide a career path to my team. So what are the problems you are trying to solve? And when you have defined those problems, do you feel that your current team Is capable of solving them all. And for us, we felt that with the founders and some people that have been there for a very long time, we have been pretty good at building the culture, building a great hiring process, documenting a lot of things, building a salary on equity grid that is public and transparent. But we felt that we needed at one point to have someone that was a lot better than us in scaling people organization. And for us, what was really challenging is that We d…

AI assessment note: “I think the answer is that it should be sooner than later.”

Q just have that moment of gratitude and appreciation and not always be looking for the next Sing in the bigger thing. How do you think about that? What would you advise me? And do you ever sit back and appreciate, oh my God, we've built an incredible organization of a 190 amazing people, or is it always the next thing, the next contract, the next hire? How do you balance?

A I think it should be both. So it's not a really great answer, but every week I think we all try to celebrate what we have achieved and really spend time to thank the people who have done that and also try to To thank yourself. But human beings, we become very used to what we do. What is interesting is that when you do something that seemed so huge one year ago, once you have done it, you say, ah, it's kind of normal, and you need to fight against that. Like, you should still celebrate it, and it's really important because it makes the company move forward. But you should not forget ambition on the other end. So the way we try to do it is to make the celebration as opportunity for ambition. So it's more, really, what we have done is amazing, and thank the team for doing that, and connect it to the long-term vision. And when you just do that connection, how it fits with what we are trying to do, it just connects the dots, and I find it super powerful.

AI assessment note: “I think it should be both.”

Q I mean, you're keying me up so well here, JC, but if we take this kind of one by one, in terms of the hiring process, how do you think about really retaining such a high quality of candidate with scale? And I guess, what does truly hiring for excellence mean to you?

A Hiring for excellence needs, again, to define what is excellent for you. And, you know, with scaling, you say you should hire very, very fast. I think we had a contrarian approach at the beginning, at least at the beginning of the company, where we remain less than 20 for a very long time just to consolidate the foundation. And I think what you need to do is define, so, what is excellence, and how people would fit with who you are? How will you love working with them? Will they love working with us? And then you need to build a process to test that. That's the first thing, but before entering into the process, you need also to go where excellence is, and what is most likely that the best candidates have already a job, and they are already excellent at it. So, most of our Hiring comes through outbound and referral. So it's our job to identify who are the best in the industry. Then you need to have a process that removes bias. So it's how you script your different interviews, what questions you ask, but also you need to coach people on how to analyze the answers to questions to remove bias. And it's really hard. And the best way we have seen to help people to become great interviewers is It's a principle that comes from lean manufacturing, which is shadowing. So if you want to become an interviewer at Alain, you need first to shadow people that interview. So you need to just sit …

AI assessment note: “Hiring for excellence needs, again, to define what is excellent for you.”

Q team. So that's awesome, dear, is for the wider team as well. I guess the person coordinating all of this in a lot of cases is the chief people officer. And I know that you've spent a considerable amount of I'm looking for a chief people officer. How do you know when's the right time to hire one? And how was the process for you in terms of the hiring?

A I think the answer is that it should be sooner than later. I think for us, we have been pretty lucky to do our first people or talent hire when we were only 14 or 15, and it has been really instrumental for us. And then later in the journey, we just now hire the chief people officer, but like hiring for people very early in the journey It's really important. Again, I think the way to process it and to think about it for a company is to go back to the problems you are trying to solve. And that's the framework I use all the time. What is the problem we are trying to solve? And is the problem like you are not sure of the culture of your company, you are not sure of the onboarding, you are not sure on your hiring process, you are not sure on I need to provide a career path to my team. So what are the problems you are trying to solve? And when you have defined those problems, do you feel that your current team Is capable of solving them all. And for us, we felt that with the founders and some people that have been there for a very long time, we have been pretty good at building the culture, building a great hiring process, documenting a lot of things, building a salary on equity grid that is public and transparent. But we felt that we needed at one point to have someone that was a lot better than us in scaling people organization. And for us, what was really challenging is that We d…

AI assessment note: “I think the answer is that it should be sooner than later.”

Q I mean, in terms of that culture, I'm so glad you said about that culture, because while we're on it, I do have to ask, when it comes to your culture at Alan today, you have this kind of combination of distributed ownership with Combined kind of radical transparency. Can I ask, what are the key elements to achieving this kind of perfect combination, and how have you done it?

A I think first, what you need to start with is, what do you want to achieve as a company? And us, for example, we knew that we had a very big ambition. The playing field is huge, and healthcare systems are broken all over the world. In order to reach that ambition, we knew that we needed to attract the smartest people on earth. And if you want to do that, you want to give them the power to make decisions. So, it's where distributed ownership comes. It was just natural, like, you want everyone in your organization to be capable of making the right choices. And for distributed ownership to work, we thought that you need a few principles. First, you need to define what means excellence in your company. For us, it's how you think rigorously, how you make decisions, how you really dig deep. Also, it's important for distributed ownership is to tell people they should not fear being contrarians. And that they should try to be right. I think you discussed that a lot with Mark Howard on the show, but like building the right thing is non-consensual, and that's something you need to train and coach people. You need to push people for courage to make decisions. And I like to see a company, not as a democracy, and I think we should not be a democracy, but the sum of a lot of small, very enlightening despots who make bold decisions after taking the point of view of their peers, but not compla…

AI assessment note: “for distributed ownership to work, we thought that you need a few principles.”

Q Well, listen, I'm stoked to have you. As I said, I've been a big fan for a long time, but I do want to start with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups first? And then what was that aha moment for you, really reinventing the insurance industry with Alain?

A I think I've always been a big I'm a fan of technology. Like a lot of people on the show, I started building websites when I was 12. I sold the first one when I was 13. It was like a very small website, but it was kind of magic to know that you can build whatever you want from your room as a teenager in South East of France. And being from a family of doctors, both my parents are doctors, I spent a lot of time wondering why the user experience was so poor for them. Also so poor for the end user. That means us, the people. I'm like, It's really weird, the system where you have people that really want to make it work, but the experience at the end of the day has no technology, no user experience. It drove me crazy. So I knew all along that I would try at some point to create something meaningful for the healthcare system, and when I was in my engineering university at 21, 22, I was working already on a few healthcare-related projects, but bumping also the ideas with friends, and one of those ideas was that aircraft seats So the chair in aircraft were really stuck in the eighties in terms of technology. And very quickly, we managed to convince people from the industry, like the former CEO of Airbus, that it was a good idea to try to transform aircraft seating. And we got like one million of financing, even before our graduation, even before knowing we were going to build a company…

AI assessment note: “I started building websites when I was 12. I sold the first one”

Q do have to also JC, because Because when I listen to you, it all just seems so kind of innate and natural to you in terms of the scaling of CEO ship. But it's such a challenging thing that bluntly, 99% of CEOs struggle with being the changing role with the changing organization that they've built. What elements have you struggled with in terms of scaling yourself with the organization?

A I think where I struggled a lot at some point, and I've been working a lot on it, is to give more praise than criticism. And I have a tendency to consider that When we do something, even if that thing is excellent, we take it for granted it's what was expected from us, and then we move forward. And I think it doesn't scale very well for an organization, because you really need to spend time telling people when their job is amazing, because it creates a very good feedback loop. For me, as an entrepreneur, it has been something that has been tough, and I've been working a lot on that. It makes a tremendous difference, because you focus on what is positive, you focus on reinforcing the good behavior, reinforcing what is great, and And it gives so many great examples to your team on what is achieving super well in your company. That is transform everything. So I think it was one of my biggest challenges at some point. It's not totally solved, but I made a lot of progress on that.

AI assessment note: “where I struggled a lot at some point... is to give more praise than criticism.”

Q I mean, in terms of that culture, I'm so glad you said about that culture, because while we're on it, I do have to ask, when it comes to your culture at Alan today, you have this kind of combination of distributed ownership with Combined kind of radical transparency. Can I ask, what are the key elements to achieving this kind of perfect combination, and how have you done it?

A I think first, what you need to start with is, what do you want to achieve as a company? And us, for example, we knew that we had a very big ambition. The playing field is huge, and healthcare systems are broken all over the world. In order to reach that ambition, we knew that we needed to attract the smartest people on earth. And if you want to do that, you want to give them the power to make decisions. So, it's where distributed ownership comes. It was just natural, like, you want everyone in your organization to be capable of making the right choices. And for distributed ownership to work, we thought that you need a few principles. First, you need to define what means excellence in your company. For us, it's how you think rigorously, how you make decisions, how you really dig deep. Also, it's important for distributed ownership is to tell people they should not fear being contrarians. And that they should try to be right. I think you discussed that a lot with Mark Howard on the show, but like building the right thing is non-consensual, and that's something you need to train and coach people. You need to push people for courage to make decisions. And I like to see a company, not as a democracy, and I think we should not be a democracy, but the sum of a lot of small, very enlightening despots who make bold decisions after taking the point of view of their peers, but not compla…

AI assessment note: “for distributed ownership to work, we thought that you need a few principles”

Q Can I ask again, and going off schedule, you said about kind of the vigorous, deep thinking there, but also the execution being central. How do you think about the balance between vigorous, deep thinking, but also speed of decision-making being optimal? It's more within startups and balancing quality with speed of decision making.

A It's a really tough one, and you always need to fight for it. And the way we see it is we try to use that framework where we tell people you should make decisions with 70% of the data. So it's okay to make decisions when you don't know everything. You should move forward quickly. What we try to push people is to ask really the right questions. So you need to differentiate by making a quick decision just because it's quick. Oh, asking the right questions, and just challenging what are the best things to be challenged, and what are the best things to be challenged? Very often, they are the things that people think are very common knowledge, so the industry is working like that. You should always do that. That's the kind of sentences where you know there is a problem, because people have switched their brain off, and I've just said it should work like that. That's Especially where we push people to dig deeper, because it's where you find contrient thinking, and where you find innovation, and where you are going to have significantly better returns.

AI assessment note: “we tell people you should make decisions with 70% of the data”

Q In terms of the bold decisions there, I love that. How do you ensure that they take bold decisions, but also aren't fearful that if the bold decisions don't pay off, that they may lose their job, or they may get in trouble, or see some form of ramifications from it?

A Yeah, that's a really good tension to find, and it's really differentiating, like, what is luck, and what is execution. And I think it's really important to push people to do bold things, and if they fail, try to understand if they fail because they Took bold assumptions, and those assumptions didn't work out, or if it was because of poor execution, and what is not acceptable is like repeated poor execution. It means you don't learn how to execute, and what you should favor, and what we push a lot, is how you make assumptions, and you try to test them, and as in every scientific process, you make assumptions. They can be successful. They can be wrong. It's fine as long as you learn from it, and I think it was Alex Karp I mean, I love that in terms of the productive and non-productive.

AI assessment note: “try to understand if they fail because they Took bold assumptions, or... poor execution”

Q Can I ask again, and going off schedule, you said about kind of the vigorous, deep thinking there, but also the execution being central. How do you think about the balance between vigorous, deep thinking, but also speed of decision-making being optimal? It's more within startups and balancing quality with speed of decision making.

A It's a really tough one, and you always need to fight for it. And the way we see it is we try to use that framework where we tell people you should make decisions with 70% of the data. So it's okay to make decisions when you don't know everything. You should move forward quickly. What we try to push people is to ask really the right questions. So you need to differentiate by making a quick decision just because it's quick. Oh, asking the right questions, and just challenging what are the best things to be challenged, and what are the best things to be challenged? Very often, they are the things that people think are very common knowledge, so the industry is working like that. You should always do that. That's the kind of sentences where you know there is a problem, because people have switched their brain off, and I've just said it should work like that. That's Especially where we push people to dig deeper, because it's where you find contrient thinking, and where you find innovation, and where you are going to have significantly better returns.

AI assessment note: “we try to use that framework where we tell people you should make decisions with 70%”

Q In terms of the bold decisions there, I love that. How do you ensure that they take bold decisions, but also aren't fearful that if the bold decisions don't pay off, that they may lose their job, or they may get in trouble, or see some form of ramifications from it?

A Yeah, that's a really good tension to find, and it's really differentiating, like, what is luck, and what is execution. And I think it's really important to push people to do bold things, and if they fail, try to understand if they fail because they Took bold assumptions, and those assumptions didn't work out, or if it was because of poor execution, and what is not acceptable is like repeated poor execution. It means you don't learn how to execute, and what you should favor, and what we push a lot, is how you make assumptions, and you try to test them, and as in every scientific process, you make assumptions. They can be successful. They can be wrong. It's fine as long as you learn from it, and I think it was Alex Karp I mean, I love that in terms of the productive and non-productive.

AI assessment note: “It's fine as long as you learn from it”

Q Well, listen, I'm stoked to have you. As I said, I've been a big fan for a long time, but I do want to start with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups first? And then what was that aha moment for you, really reinventing the insurance industry with Alain?

A I think I've always been a big I'm a fan of technology. Like a lot of people on the show, I started building websites when I was 12. I sold the first one when I was 13. It was like a very small website, but it was kind of magic to know that you can build whatever you want from your room as a teenager in South East of France. And being from a family of doctors, both my parents are doctors, I spent a lot of time wondering why the user experience was so poor for them. Also so poor for the end user. That means us, the people. I'm like, It's really weird, the system where you have people that really want to make it work, but the experience at the end of the day has no technology, no user experience. It drove me crazy. So I knew all along that I would try at some point to create something meaningful for the healthcare system, and when I was in my engineering university at 21, 22, I was working already on a few healthcare-related projects, but bumping also the ideas with friends, and one of those ideas was that aircraft seats So the chair in aircraft were really stuck in the eighties in terms of technology. And very quickly, we managed to convince people from the industry, like the former CEO of Airbus, that it was a good idea to try to transform aircraft seating. And we got like one million of financing, even before our graduation, even before knowing we were going to build a company…

AI assessment note: “I started building websites when I was 12. I sold the first one when”