Jean-Charles Samoulian
Co-Founder & CEO, Alan. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
He is the co-founder and CEO of Alan, a health insurance company. He has raised over $85M in funding for the company from investors such as Index Ventures and DST.
1shows
1appearances
23statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Jean-Charles Samoulian said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Companies should operate as collections of enlightened despots, not democracies
“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 complaining with the point of vie…”
Health insurance is the optimal entry point for building healthcare platforms
“Health insurance was the best way to start building a health insurance company, because in fact, with health insurance company, you are in contact with every stakeholders, the users, the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmacists. You have a revenue model, a busi…”
Founders should master industry regulations themselves rather than outsourcing to lawyers
“You should not give regulation to lawyers. Yourself, you know, you need to go as deep as possible.”
Any tech organization failing to ship weekly has an underlying problem
“If you don't ship something in one week, I think you have a problem as an organization.”
Alan aims to become the single app for all consumer healthcare
“The long-term goal would be to be the only app that people use to access healthcare, which means accessing the best prevention, accessing the best information, the best care, all without friction.”
High regulatory barriers create prime opportunities for startup innovation
“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.”
Startup teams should make decisions with only 70% of required data
“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.”
Alan documented over 4,000 company decisions in written GitHub issues
“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…”
Alan intentionally stayed under 20 employees to strengthen foundational culture
“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.”
Alan maintains a fully public and transparent salary and equity grid
“Building a salary on equity grid that is public and transparent.”
Chief People Officers should empower decentralized decision-making rather than centralizing HR
“We really believe in distributed ownership, and we think the role of the chief people officer is to empower everybody in the company to make people decisions.”
Jean-Charles Samoulian disables all phone and laptop notifications for focus
“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.”
Jean-Charles Samoulian blocks 8 to 11 AM daily for deep work
“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.”
Strict calendar structure enables productive unstructured thinking for leaders
“So it's very organized, but that organization is made to have long period of time where I can be unstructured. So it's structuration to be able to have unstructured thinking that is really productive. And that's a combination of both that I think makes a real …”
Frame company celebrations as opportunities to connect to long-term ambition
“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.”
Alan replaced executive team meetings with asynchronous written updates
“So for us, it kind of replaced the weekly meetings that executive teams have. So everything is done in a written and asynchronous way.”
B2B marketing is Alan's hardest role to hire for in Europe
“I think for us right now, one of the hardest roles is B to B marketing, because we are both on SMBs and larger companies, and there are not that many companies that have really scaled very quickly on B to B for SMBs, for HRs in Europe, and we want people that …”
Expliseat developed the lightest economy aircraft seat, cutting weight by 50%
“We developed the lightest aircraft chair for economic class, dividing by more than two the weight of a seat, which generates massive fuel savings and massive CO₂ savings.”
Jean-Charles Samoulian personally read and summarized the entire French insurance code
“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 arti…”
Alan assigns a role buddy, cultural buddy, and coach to new hires
“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 th…”
Alan hired its first talent employee at just 14 employees
“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.”
Alan has published 230 consecutive weekly updates to employees and 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.”
Alan raised its seed funding round using only a four-page document
“We were pretty lucky to raise the seed run when we had only a four-pager document. So it was really people we have built a relationship in the past, and it was a few business angels like Brent Obermann, Guillaume Sarkozy, who was the former CEO of one of the l…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jean-Charles's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Alan | 1 | 23 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |