Original subtitles

I have this great advice, which was: build values so that enough people hate them.

And I found that really powerful, because what they meant was,

if you're building values that are nice to haves for everyone,

how will you be unique enough?

How will you set a tone and a DNA that is so specific to your company that not only can you better target and recruit,

but that you can actually build something much more sustainable, and something that will perform better, because that will be your edge.

And so we took that on really, seriously, we were going to build values, that it would spark kind of debate,

it would spark talents, and even media that were completely relying or didn't understand,

because it had to be specific enough to who we are and what we wanted to build.

And that really, really was powerful in recruiting the right talent,

because in many ways, the Seedstars teams are better ambassadors of the values than ourselves.

And so much of the work is not needed, because they are already have integrated and believe in these values.

So the first value that I want to share with you is actually the one where I'm graded lowest,

and I still have the most work to do, which is hacking the system.

So what does hack this system mean?

Maybe what I've realized is a much easier way to share is to explain to you what hacking the system is not

because I feel like there's a lot of confusion on the word hacking.

And it's been used a word a lot in the startup world, as I mean, maybe you've heard about hackathons,

and things like that.

So hacking the system is not gaining unauthorized access to data in a system or a computer.

I mean,it's not about hacking into a computer, it comes from that definition.

But it's not about being criminal.

It's not about doing illegal activity,

it's actually really not an act, but a mindset.

And what I mean about mindset is that it's not a hard skill, it's not about hacking into,

it's about building a mindset in which you try to think differently.

And you try to find other ways around that traditional route.

And so what I mean by that is, if you're in front of a situation with a problem,

and there are indeed many ways to solve it,

the more traditional route, in this case, a maze would be, to to solve it with this kind of trajectory, that for you,

maybe this would probably take a lot of time,

it would take a lot of energy.

And you would need to use a lot of resources.

But hacking is basically going around that problem.

or figuring out another way, or looking at it in a completely different way. Where, to be honest, a lot of people or people within the industry didn't even think about,

it could be for example, breaking through it.

And actually, a lot of successful entrepreneurs have used this kind of hacking the system as the motto, the DNA of their company.

Think about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook for a long time, Facebook's motto was move fast and break things.

And I think in that he was building that mindset of try to build us as as much experiences as possible,

but also breaking the sense (hack it) think of it differently. And you could also again, when thinking of this kind of maze metaphor,

fly over, it's on bottom line,

you don't need to necessarily take that normal route, which is hard.

And even more so for you as an entrepreneur or early stage business,

you might not have the resources to do it.

So what's interesting, not only about this mindset of hacking the system is that it allows you to play the game but differently, and in many ways you can actually do it faster,

even more cheaply and with less resources,

but still you would have attained that objective.

I mean, it has become In many times the core business and essence of organizations around the world

because they had hacked the system and figured out a model, which was much more efficient, and hopefully sustainable.

So next value is get it done

and get it done is not about having this great to do list and checking all the boxes,

it's really about thinking of your tasks and categorizing them on what moves the needle.

So the needle in the sense that it measures whether you're getting closer or not to your objective,

and that's ultimately what you want to be doing,

you want to be spending your energy and your time, on tasks on actions that actually move you closer to your objective,

and in the fastest way possible. So if your objective are related to your business, your annual targets, where you want to be as a as an organization,

you really have to decompose your activities in what moves the needle or not.

Next value that I want to share with you is in experiments we trust.

I think this value is related to what I was saying earlier, where we haven't seen a better recipe for success than just failing, reiterating, failing, reiterate, until you have a level of success,

and then you'll have to fail and reiterate to the next stage.

Why is this so important is that actually there is a lot of science behind how you can scale your company

and even yourself and your skills by building in quite a robust methodology in which you experiments.

But it's a science in which you really need to understand the framework and how to do it.

If not, it can be just a lot, a lot of energy spent.

Next value is, in many ways, my favorite one because it links up so much to my personal journey, I'm really pushing myself

and getting very uncomfortable with the uncomfortable.

And so remember when I was saying that it really inspired me the quote of Eleanor Roosevelt that says Do one thing every day that scares you

will what she says after that is that because it is those things, those small things that will help you build the courage to do the things that you want to do.

And that's really what it's all about, in getting yourself outside your comfort zone,

not only will you live quite magical experiences,

I mean, it's really where the magic happens, and like it showed here, but also it's really about building that resilience muscle.

It's really about being comfortable with the unknown, and being comfortable also, to a certain extent, to that fear that comes up

and it's physical, mental, spiritual, and, and kind of stepping back in and being willing to, to to live that pain, if I may say so.

Because if I look at my entrepreneurial journey, if I look at all the opportunities that I have built over time, thankfully, I was willing and I had the right team to surround me that pushed me to take them on

because I was so uncomfortable for me to take on speaking opportunities,

it was so uncomfortable for me to quit my job and jump into an entrepreneurial journey where I had zero clarity on the on the near future,

it was so uncomfortable for me to to build up a business and a team but taking on all these challenges,

surpassing them and making them part of who I am, is really some of the best decisions that I have ever taken.

The next value at Seedstars is follow the money,

which can be seen quite aggressively.

And I remember we've had a lot of debate with different talents around this value.

Why I think it's so important in the entrepreneurial mindset

and for whoever wants to launch their business is that you really have to be comfortable with money

and have that financial acumen to kind of play with it so that it can help you achieve your mission.

What I mean by that is then Okay, so ultimately, I think we aligned with the fact that money

is akey indicator and fuel so that the machine the organization can grow.

And it's quite a simple equation, okay, it's revenue minus cost which equals profit and Then when we think of revenue, it's generated by sales.

And that is really the backbone of any company.

So if you don't sell in a company, you actually don't generate the cash so that you can potentially be profitable and continue to scale.

So the company ultimately dives, and sales.

So when you kind of go back from revenue to sales, sales is the sign that your product is actually needed.

So it's always a very good indicator to understand if you actually have that product market fit,

if not, you should consider it differently and not invest too many resources in it initially.

And the last value, no excuse.

No excuse is actually the value that we added last,

I think it was four or five years into Seedstars, where we were starting to feel the pains of a growing organization with more and more people part of it.

And one of this, we kind of came into the the excuse plague, suddenly, people were we were no longer this very small team where everyone was doing everything,

And everyone was very close and interacting with one another.

and everyone felt part of it.

And we'd started to be larger with more defined jobs descriptions with more defined kind of activities within the organization

and suddenly started to that, we started to, like, get more and more excuses.

Like, I can do this because it was their job, or I can't do this on time, and there was just this constant.

So it was not about I can do this on time, it was coming up to the meeting and saying, I did not have the time.

And that was kind of a no go for us.

Because no excuses meant. Having these, that level of excuses meant you don't have accountability for the work that you're doing.

You don't have the accountability and understanding that your work or the fact that you are not doing your this part of the work

is actually has a ripple effect, actually has consequences on other teams. So people were kind of working Sunday in silos,

which was crazy for us to think because we never thought we would become that type of organization,

we had built ourselves in our DNA in a way that we wouldn't be that in many ways everyone was a founder and everyone was building up the company,

but it's a reality you come to. And for us, it came to a point where we were like, Okay, this has to be part of the DNA,

this has to be a real debate, this has to be part of the conversation that you are accountable, you are empowered by these responsibilities.

You can come in and say, Okay, this deadline that has just been presented to me is not feasible. Let me propose this,

or I can't do this. But I know it's to be delivered today. How about hack the system, and think of it differently?

It's really about coming back with solutions.

And I think that was that's been the big shift.

It's constantly asking everyone in the team to rather than come in with excuses come in with solutions,

because problems will always have them bigger and more complex problems, they're coming their way.

And so we need you to be proactive, and that's what we expect in the performance talent.

And so that has been a game changer as we grow in still also big bottleneck for different talents,

but it's really something we believe in.

And it goes back to those entrepreneurial mindset skills that I presented in the first section, which is it's really about this proactiveness and understanding of your capabilities,

your your your capability, also to act out and understanding kind of the bigger ecosystem

and having that 360 overview of why this tax really has outputs and outcomes on the rest of the organization.

So yeah, no excuse