Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 32. Why Early Hires Matter More Than You Think with Alexandra Erman

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32. Why Early Hires Matter More Than You Think with Alexandra Erman · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy What Successful, the show where I sit down with your favorite consultants and we
• 0:11
  find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or because they're a little bit scrappy.
• 0:17
  I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm and Pineapple AI Analyst, always helping small businesses become more
• 0:25
  data-driven. Fun fact of the day, this number blew me out of the water. In the US,
• 0:32
  there are over 400,000 new business applications every single month. A lot of those are solopreneurs and things like that.
• 0:40
  But still 400,000 per month. I was shocked by that. But that's neither here nor there.
• 0:46
  today I'm joined by my friend, Alexandra Erman. She's spent two decades building the operational infrastructure that allows venture-backed startups
• 0:54
  to scale without breaking. I mean, she's she's done all the different roles. She's architected people strategies,
• 1:01
  she's led finance, she's scaled companies from half a million to twelve million in ARR,
• 1:07
  seven to three hundred and fifty employees across twelve different countries. Like it's when I tell you it's all the
• 1:14
  things, she has done all of the things. I'm guessing there's some scrappiness involved in there too.
• 1:15
  But Alexandra, super excited to have you on. We know that you're successful today. The question I have for you,
• 1:16
  do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or more on the scrappy side?
• 1:15
  Hi Jack. you know, the truth is now I think a little bit of both.
• 1:21
  but I'm definitely scrappy by temperament. so it it's yeah, how I operate probably is is scrappy,
• 1:27
  definitely. But I have grown into developing a toolkit that is quite sophisticated. Yeah.
• 1:32
  Yeah. Okay. We we've seen that a couple of times on the show where scrappy beginnings result in sophisticated infrastructure,
• 1:40
  if you will. Did you have the entrepreneurial kind of spirit inside of you as a kid?
• 1:46
  Like did you have a lemonade stand or anything at growing up?
• 1:51
  Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, so I grew up in the country where at that time kids didn't really work and I
• 1:59
  I grew up in a big city you there was no possibility for the lemonade stand or and also strangely
• 2:07
  and not I'm I'm I'm I'm not competitive at all. So I'm more of a everybody be happy and let
• 2:15
  me mitigate and let me facilitate and I was more of that person. Yet. I do I've I've always I
• 2:23
  have a drive and I and I and very early on I started my own business.
• 2:29
  So I was very young when I started my first company, so
• 2:41
  Okay. Where did you grow up and and what was that first company?
• 2:45
  I grew up in France in Paris. and and I I moved to the Caribbean when I was 20.
• 2:52
  and back then I had majored in business and art history, so I actually majored in something that was called
• 3:00
  business for the art market. and I wanted to be an R dealer and I was an art dealer for
• 3:08
  nearly 10 years. and because I was single owner of my own little company, I learned to do everything.
• 3:16
  And that's where it comes from.
• 3:26
  Yeah. What what is an art dealer? Is that like if you watch like a crime show,
• 3:32
  is that like the fence? Are you is that like the legal version of fencing art products?
• 3:34
  No, an art dealer is a person who sells art on behalf of collections or artists.
• 3:40
  my thing was I had art galleries. I was never an artist. I'm not a painter,
• 3:46
  I don't know how to do any of these things, but I'm passionate about it.
• 3:52
  And my kid the other day said, But do you know how to draw? And I said,
• 3:59
  No, not at all. And he's like, that's why. So, for him it made sense that since I don't know
• 4:07
  how to draw, I was gonna sell somebody else's drawing.
• 4:08
  There we go. Okay, this is already sounding very French. Where in the Caribbean did you move?
• 4:14
  to a French island called Saint Barthelemy.
• 4:18
  Sure. Okay. Heard of it. That's awesome. okay. How are how are the grades in high school?
• 4:24
  How are the grades when you're doing all this stuff? Like were you a good student or or did you
• 4:31
  say, I'm just gonna follow this kind of entrepreneurial or bug in me?
• 4:32
  No, I was a good student until eighth grade or ninth grade 'cause I started doing somebody else's homework.
• 4:39
  the things I did for love, man, you know. you was yeah. but no, I ended up okay.
• 4:40
  I did, you know, fair studies, but but but I'm very kinesthetic. So
• 4:41
  Okay. Yeah.
• 4:59
  you know, the the the course of study that I chose. First I went to university and it was like
• 5:07
  big lecture and fascinating, but my thing is very, okay, what do we do now with it?
• 5:13
  You know, like how do I experiment? And like in practicality, what does it look like?
• 5:20
  And you know, do not give me a lecture like put let like I want to have my hands in
• 5:28
  the Petri dish and and and manipulate and try and experiment and otherwise I don't get it.
• 5:30
  So yeah. I just have to jump and do it.
• 5:31
  Very cool. Okay. So then you go into art dealing. How do you get your first clients in that?
• 5:38
  Like what's what's the story of I'm sure there's gonna be some hustle, some scrappiness involved with the first few
• 5:42
  clients.
• 5:43
  Well, I was pretty naive. I just opened a shop one day hoping that somebody would walk in.
• 5:49
  Yeah, it was an art gallery. It was it was just an art gallery in a very touristic place that
• 5:50
  had a lot of high-end visitors. St. Bart's is a very high end island where,
• 5:51
  you know, all all the wealthy New Yorkers travel once a year and they have money to spend and
• 5:50
  it was a physical shop too?
• 6:11
  Went on vacation, it's fun to buy. You know, it was not a major investment.
• 6:17
  I was selling pieces that were from two hundred and fifty dollars to maybe three grand.
• 6:23
  for those people it wasn't much. It was a little it was a little vacation souvenir,
• 6:29
  you know? So yeah, that's that's what happened. And I did pretty well for three years,
• 6:36
  I wanna say, three seasons, and then I realized, and that's where the smart like looking back i'm like i
• 6:44
  was not that naive it was pretty smart then i realized what is what is the possibility of scaling this
• 6:52
  and mind you i was 25 at that time or 24 25 and and i and i realized the the
• 7:00
  amount of tourists on this island is never gonna grow Really. It's not an island meant to host more than
• 7:08
  that many people. And it's pretty much always the same people coming back on the rotation of three,
• 7:15
  four, or five years. And then they start going elsewhere, and then new people come in.
• 7:21
  And how many paintings can you buy for your house? You know? so when I realized that.
• 7:28
  I also realized it was time for me to move on. So I closed shop and and and I left
• 7:36
  the island and I went back to Paris.
• 7:38
  Okay. Okay. So you're doing some math. You're looking at the TAM and you're saying,
• 7:44
  All right, it's pretty much it is what it is. And there's you said seasons before,
• 7:50
  so I'm assuming there's travel season when you were pretty busy and then the off season when you were doing
• 7:56
  something else. okay, so you go back to Paris. Do you start a second business?
• 7:57
  Do you work for a startup? Like what's what's next?
• 7:57
  No, I worked for other art dealers because I was no one, the booty was waiting for me.
• 7:59
  And then I realized I was cocky and pride and proud and I like, you know.
• 8:00
  I've been my own business owner, but you don't get to tell me what to do.
• 8:01
  I had to learn the hard way. but it was great working for them. It it
• 8:00
  Okay.
• 8:21
  you know, taught me the ropes of a bunch of stuff and then I I decided to open another gallery
• 8:29
  in a very touristic place. again Yeah, in Paris. And so yeah. So and I held this for two years.
• 8:30
  In Paris.
• 8:39
  And then I got the moving bug again. I said, well, I don't want to be doing this anymore.
• 8:46
  I want to try something else. I want to go to more con I was dealing with 19th century paintings,
• 8:54
  turn of the 20th century, which is a hard market. because then you're talking about pieces that are between 20
• 9:02
  and 75 grand, and that's another sell. You know, it's a different. It's like in SAS,
• 9:09
  you know, you're you're at 249 a month, or your enterprise clients at at 50 grand or 100 or 150
• 9:17
  or you know, half a million a pop, it's a different sell. and and so I moved.
• 9:23
  I bought another place in Paris to do something else in a very very touristic area like like top-notch,
• 9:31
  you know, like in the fourth in the Marais, very trendy, lots of Americans, and I put a ever all
• 9:39
  the money I had into that venture and doing more contemporary work and object and design and photography.
• 9:46
  And I opened September 1st, 2001.
• 9:47
  Whoa. Wow. Okay. So talking about the TAM again, it was big and then pretty much worldwide travel didn't stop
• 9:48
  but slowed down by whatever 80% or something. Wow. Okay. How long did you last there?
• 9:49
  Yeah. not even a year. It never picked up. It never it I I was way too much in debt
• 9:57
  by the time I tried to do other things. Like I got resourceful and then and then I crashed.
• 10:04
  I just crashed. You know, I lost everything I had and then I had to start over.
• 10:11
  Yeah, that was it. And then I went to corporate France. I was exhausted.
• 10:17
  Okay. Which makes sense. True scrappiness. I love it.
• 10:41
  and and sad and you know and and in a tremendous amount of debt and i just i just went
• 10:49
  to work for cb richard ellis in their corporate office for international clients and i had a nine to five
• 10:57
  job with a you know with a paycheck i'd never had a paycheck before you know and and yeah and
• 11:05
  i did that for a year and a half just Breathe, you know, and at five one every day I
• 11:13
  didn't have to think about work anymore.
• 11:18
  Pretty crazy.
• 11:19
  It yeah, I know, right? it's probably the only time in my life that that ever happened.
• 11:25
  but it was great. I got to figure out a bunch of stuff about me and where I want to
• 11:33
  put my efforts and how tired I was and and you know, I got my S together and And I
• 11:41
  and then I met someone in a I don't know, I think it was a like happy hour networking thingy.
• 11:49
  I knew someone who knew someone and they introduced me to this person who was doing fractional co-o c slash
• 11:57
  CEO in startups and I'm talking 2005. Yeah. So that was the the the the early the early stage of
• 12:05
  startup democratization. yeah and and we started talking together about how we thought about work and what it meant to
• 12:13
  be
• 12:16
  Wow. Okay. Okay.
• 12:41
  helping startups and scrappiness and all that. And and he said, listen, I'm I'm doing this fractional thing where I'm
• 12:49
  intervening in two or three startups and I'm gonna need somebody on the ground working with me.
• 12:55
  And I said, try me. I got I got pretty much everything you need. And if I don't,
• 12:59
  I'll figure it out in no time. And he said, okay, let's do this.
• 13:00
  Hehehehe
• 13:08
  And we started working together in a first startup that lasted, I don't know, four months.
• 13:14
  and then he was yeah, and then we did another one, tried another thing. But
• 13:29
  Did you get paid from the four month one?
• 13:34
  I don't remember. I think I did, but yeah, I don't know. I don't rem honestly I don't remember.
• 13:35
  Okay. Okay. If you did get paid it it wasn't life changing by any means,
• 13:41
  it sounds like.
• 13:46
  No. No, no. It was barely, barely making it. but the the one that anchored me in the startup life
• 13:54
  was was an interesting one that was kind of a drawer company that had well it's like it's a French
• 14:02
  expression, something that has drawers, it's like Russian dolls. you know, it's it's the the And I can talk about
• 14:10
  it because they don't exist anymore, but it was a French person who lived in Belgium who founded a company
• 14:18
  but couldn't really found it from France. So he founded a Belgian company, but then he realized that it was
• 14:26
  better if all of this was held by an LLC in the US. And he put the IP there.
• 14:33
  so the LLC in the US was managing the inventory, owning the stock, and owning the IP.
• 14:40
  And then packaging and distribution was handled in a warehouse in Belgium and most of the products were distributed in
• 14:48
  France and none of that is weed. I know. It was a medical device that was super innovative that had
• 14:56
  never been done before. It was a form of of a hip replacement that was using double mobility and a
• 15:04
  triple ceramic mechanism, so no titanium. and it only got approval for France for the market.
• 15:10
  And and it it it it worked, but you know, doing Doing internal ops for that company was like the
• 15:18
  it was, you know, when when your worst enemy becomes your best teacher. that that's exactly what it was.
• 15:26
  It was like it was hair pulling. It was like, well, okay, hold on. So the US holds the IP
• 15:34
  and the stock, but the stock is managed in Belgium but sold in France. Okay.
• 15:52
  Yeah. Yeah, that's wild. Why did they decide to do it that way?
• 16:02
  Yeah. Tax.
• 16:06
  Or is that is that a story for another time? Not public?
• 16:10
  Yeah, it's you know, it's always about how to maximize taxation or yeah. And also the idea of having the
• 16:16
  IP in the US was not bad because ultimately you wanna be in the US market for such a thing.
• 16:17
  And for that you gotta do an FDA approval and for that you have to you know,
• 16:18
  and if you wanna sell one day, it's better that the IP is already in the goodwill of the US
• 16:19
  company. but
• 16:17
  Okay.
• 16:37
  Yeah, that's that's where I learned how to do moving goods in the in the in Europe from one country
• 16:45
  to another when half of the goods are, you know, already sold or not, distributed or not,
• 16:51
  what European VAT, my God. and how do you actually consolidate all that into US financials?
• 16:58
  and I lasted seven seven years there. Yeah. And in the meantime I moved to the US for personal reasons,
• 17:06
  but it turned out that it was a great move because then I could actually work from the US holding.
• 17:14
  So it was a better better thing. Yeah.
• 17:20
  Okay, so you make it seven years there. So this is the longest that you've been at one one role
• 17:26
  at that time.
• 17:27
  Y at that time, yes. I had done many other little things before, but you know.
• 17:28
  Yeah.
• 17:29
  Yes. Okay. So seven year and so you you said your role was internal ops,
• 17:35
  but it sounds like there's there's probably some supply chain in there. There's act like traditional internal ops of people
• 17:43
  management. And it sounds like there's some finance management in there. How big like how many people was this company?
• 17:51
  And how many roles were you really doing?
• 17:52
  Well, I was doing finance on the US side, administration and people. Yeah. It's pretty much what I was always
• 18:00
  doing. You know, it's like a and even today, you know, I got brought in into a project for strategy
• 18:03
  and OKR and now I'm looking at French employment contracts, you know, it's
• 18:04
  Okay.
• 18:16
  At at the end, it you know, when I start putting my fingers in the in the weeds and and
• 18:24
  that is actually this needs to be whacked or this needs to be changed or you know,
• 18:30
  it's a never ending story. because when people start their companies, they focus on how do I bring revenue?
• 18:36
  Right. Right. Okay. Okay. this is interesting. So you've already at this point at this point in the timeline,
• 18:43
  you've already had a few different roles. You've been an owner, you've been a bunch of different things in one
• 18:51
  company. You had what it's hilarious to me of a nine to five job in corporate world that you probably
• 18:59
  absolutely crushed it, but it was a deep breath for you because entrepreneurs, you get to clock out at five
• 19:01
  one. And so you've done all this, you're you're now in the US.
• 19:02
  Yeah. I know.
• 19:07
  was that company bootstrapped or venture backed, the seven year stint? Okay. Gimme did you have some scrappy lessons of
• 19:10
  like how to make a bootstrapped company successful from that?
• 19:11
  Bootstrap. Entirely bootstrap. No, not from that. Well, you know, the the the truth is it's medical devices are a
• 19:19
  really, really, really hard market and it was really not well managed. and it it takes a lot of funding
• 19:27
  to be able to open markets because the the you know the approval is three to five euros and millions
• 19:35
  of euros, so no. But the next company I worked for, yes. so now it's two thousand eleven,
• 19:42
  I wanna say at one point,
• 19:57
  Okay. What do we got there?
• 20:07
  The person I had met in Paris whom with whom I started, he had left the medical device company.
• 20:14
  I was still there, but he'd left and he had started his own company on the side in 2008,
• 20:22
  where he was kind of part-time doing sales while his co-founder was doing all the coding.
• 20:28
  And they were building intranet and social networks I want to say before Facebook. you know how like the Federation
• 20:36
  of Accountants of France have an intranet or you know all those so they were providing that service to professional
• 20:44
  organizations and they were doing pretty well and then Facebook started and they're like my god there's something there
• 20:48
  Yeah.
• 21:02
  we need to figure out what it is and what they did is that they started developing apps for Facebook
• 21:10
  back then and and very quickly and they were very visionary so they were in France and very quickly they
• 21:11
  realized that social media management was going to be a real thing
• 21:12
  Okay.
• 21:29
  because now it's 2011 and there's Twitter and there's Facebook and there's there was something else back then that I
• 21:37
  can't remember. Pinterest. yeah. and they're already selling, they already have clients, they have good traction,
• 21:41
  they have a history, they have, you know, they have a a little team. And he calls me and he
• 21:42
  says,
• 21:42
  Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really early. Yeah.
• 21:57
  We need to open the US market and do one in. And I'm sure, like,
• 22:03
  yeah, with you, anything. Let's let's let's go back at it. Let's do another venture.
• 22:06
  And so yeah, I started the US company here in the I was here, so I started the US company,
• 22:07
  which was a subsidiary of the French company. Started hiring a few people. and the next thing you know,
• 22:08
  I'm doing internal ops for both.
• 22:07
  Okay, take two.
• 22:25
  companies and I'm you know like I'm managing like always administration and and the books and the financials and sorry
• 22:33
  and s slowly but surely the people and and we're both bootstrapped and we're selling
• 22:40
  Okay.
• 22:46
  And and within I don't know maybe less than two years we're we're making enough money that we're self-sustainable and
• 22:54
  we're using our own money to invest and you know and this company has been in the green since then.
• 23:02
  it still exists. I left in 2019. but it's a great company, it's got good revenue and it was you
• 23:10
  know it was built like a little bit it's it's really interesting because it was a very visionary product that
• 23:18
  only back then had two competitors it was Hootsuite and Buffer I think maybe Scribe Social so maybe four on
• 23:26
  the market
• 23:37
  Okay.
• 23:41
  And and it was it was well it was well run the marketing was awesome it was you know it
• 23:49
  was PLG it was self-serve subscription based cloud-based SaaS in twenty twelve.
• 23:59
  Wow, yeah, I was gonna say that's common now, but in twenty twelve absolutely not.
• 24:04
  Yeah. and and it's doing great. It's a great company. And it it yeah, no,
• 24:10
  no, it's Agora Pulse. And so if you need social media management, please choose Agora Pulse because it's a great
• 24:12
  tool and it's probably at the pricing that you can afford. And and they're developing,
• 24:13
  you know, everything AI right now that's gonna boost your social media management and engagement,
• 24:14
  and it's it's awesome.
• 24:13
  Okay. Can you say the name of it or do you want to keep that separate?
• 24:34
  you know, it's a real namesake in in the industry and and I'm you know I'm very proud to have
• 24:42
  been part of the adventure and I am still friends and you know I'm I'm still a shareholder,
• 24:49
  so it's great. we were conservative. We were conservative. we hired talent where they were.
• 24:55
  We never opened offices everywhere and and nowhere. we paid our people conservatively, I want to say.
• 25:02
  We never like threw money at people to get them. you know, the European side of how to conservatively manage
• 25:10
  a company is was very, very prevalent. It's really, you know, like we're careful, we're European,
• 25:16
  we're doing the things little bit slowly, but we're doing them. carefully. not that Americans are are crazy not careful.
• 25:24
  Most of them are are very, you know, sound in the way they manage their companies.
• 25:30
  But it was also at a time when suddenly investment went crazy for SaaS, you know,
• 25:37
  and throwing money at and and you know, I mean, you know how many startups have started and failed between
• 25:45
  2014 and 2023, two. twenty two, right? It was crazy. It's like, yeah, take five million and then and nothing.
• 25:53
  Or you know, suddenly you get a valuation of half a billion dollars for a company that's barely worth 50
• 26:01
  million. And it's like we never did that.
• 26:14
  Yeah. Okay. So a couple questions on that. So there's the the stereotype of Europe that they take August off,
• 26:22
  right? Everybody just kinda takes a vacation, right? Maybe that's just corporate. Did you in the startup world,
• 26:29
  like was and you're living in the US but for the French company, did you have like did you take
• 26:37
  August off? Like was there still the nine to five mindset? Like how did how what was the culture like?
• 26:40
  Well, France doesn't really in the startup world, France doesn't have a nine to five mindset.
• 26:46
  People work a lot in France, contrarily to what one may think. They start a little later in the day,
• 26:53
  but often they're in the office until seven or eight at night. and and yeah,
• 26:54
  we do take vacations, but you know, t today in the startup world, especially in the Silicon Valley.
• 26:54
  Nice.
• 27:03
  until I wanna say until six months ago where suddenly it became, you know, the nine nine six and no
• 27:11
  vacation, like really or twenty years back. Anyway, it it was encouraged that people take their time off.
• 27:18
  You need to sharpen your axe one way or the other. It's like it's no use to drain your people
• 27:26
  crazily and then they can't you know, they can't function anymore. So yes, we did take vacation.
• 27:33
  Did I take five weeks a year? I I don't think I did. Maybe four.
• 27:39
  I think four was always, you know. but yeah, no, we took care of our people,
• 27:45
  we made sure everybody it and also the truth is it's an obligation in France.
• 27:51
  You know, you're given five weeks of vacation that are paid. If you don't take them,
• 27:57
  they're gonna be paid off to you one way or the other. So You know,
• 28:03
  might as well just you know, this is where work force planning comes in and you know,
• 28:10
  how well do you work your team so that how well do you hire your team and how well do
• 28:12
  you work your team so that when somebody's gone, nothing stops or barely. Yeah.
• 28:13
  That's a good point. Yeah, 'cause that it's actually a really good test of like the classic founder led organization,
• 28:21
  right? If the founder can take a week off or a day off and the company still runs,
• 28:27
  then okay, you're in a good spot. So it's actually a really good test of like,
• 28:28
  to your point, the the workforce management there.
• 28:28
  Yeah.
• 28:29
  Do you I I can't call you a Jack of all trades, given that I'm Jack,
• 28:35
  but are like did you did you find yourself being the Alexandra of all trades and like and that was
• 28:43
  the thing that kind of like kept you going? And I there there's such a a focus,
• 28:50
  especially in the world of AI, that you have to be a super expert in a tiny niche.
• 28:57
  You seem to be able to do a bunch of different things really well. How how do you describe like
• 28:57
  how you worked and what would you recommend for somebody who's starting a business today?
• 28:58
  Wow, that's two big questions. Can we start with the first one? What what exactly do you wanna know about
• 29:05
  that?
• 29:06
  Do you do you think being the the egg the Alexander of all trades for a startup is a necessary
• 29:14
  function? Or do you think that people should have more I don't want to say siloed roles,
• 29:19
  but more specialized roles?
• 29:20
  Both. in the sense that probably somebody like me in the beginning is what you need because you can't afford
• 29:21
  four of me. But with me you'll get
• 29:22
  Okay.
• 29:32
  You'll you'll pay me maybe a little bit more, but again, you'll get somebody who can challenge your strategy,
• 29:39
  challenge your sales deck, challenge your, you know, your OKRs, and at the same time look at your French employment
• 29:47
  contract. Or at the same time tell you, don't spend time with this ER. I've tried them.
• 29:54
  They're they're not good in that country. Try let's do this. Or no, you don't need an HRIS that's a
• 30:02
  superpower because it looks good. You right now you just need an a little ATS is fine for what you
• 30:10
  need right now, you know, and and I think that the ROI of me for early stage startup is considerable
• 30:18
  because I can touch and talk to and have experience in so many domains.
• 30:20
  Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And then you've probably got, you know, the founder's a super expert in one niche
• 30:28
  of the company or something like that. Probably touches a bunch of different things, but a super expert in one.
• 30:36
  So you're saying like the combination of somebody who can kind of do it all and a couple of people
• 30:41
  that are really good in their specific, you know, one's a developer, one's a salesperson,
• 30:42
  like whatever it is, right? That combo is kind of the winning strategy from what you've seen.
• 28:42
  Yeah, I think the combo is really s a C a CEO or two co-founders that are very strong on
• 30:50
  the vision of where they wanna go. one knows the techniques and the other knows product and product market fit
• 30:58
  and pro probably has already in their Vrolodex. I don't know how to call this,
• 31:04
  that's not a nineteen eighty term, but you know.
• 31:08
  I still say Roller Dex too.
• 31:11
  enough clientele or network that they know how to sell their, you know, their first hundred hundred,
• 31:17
  hundred thousand grand or whatever their first mark needs to be. And then for the rest,
• 31:24
  you know, hire proper develop you know, proper tech team, proper sales team, a little bit of marketing and then
• 31:32
  me for everything else or somebody like me for everything else. You know. It's really I'm always,
• 31:39
  you know, I'm always surprised when I see very early teams with a like and and no offense,
• 31:46
  I love you all finance people with you know, like Joe is the CFO. I'm like the CFO of what?
• 31:50
  You're you're not Yeah, yeah, you know, the CFO no. I think the CFO needs to come later.
• 31:51
  yeah. How are we doing on time? What are yeah, okay.
• 31:51
  It's managing twenty bucks. We're good. We yeah, we're good. We got some more time left.
• 31:57
  okay, so take us to I have some like scrappy versus sophisticated sort of lightning round questions for you and
• 32:05
  we'll we'll pepper those in. But take us to today. So obviously that was you exited,
• 32:11
  you said twenty nineteen. So what what does today look like? Where do you spend your time?
• 32:23
  So just I'm gonna fill you on the bridge between twenty nineteen and and now.
• 32:29
  what happened is that at the end of Agora Pulse I realized that I was really personally,
• 32:35
  personally the people function was really where I wanted to go and I wanted to get more experience with that
• 32:43
  and also prove myself. And I worked for Stream Sets, which was till today still my best job ever.
• 32:51
  I made great friends there. We had a wonderful run. We had an awesome exit.
• 32:57
  super team, super founders, you know, like I love them so much. and I had a great run.
• 33:04
  It was four years. I would have stayed my entire life there if we hadn't sold to a big public
• 33:06
  German company. and yeah, and that
• 33:07
  Yeah.
• 33:12
  That led me to 2022. We sold. I did the post-merger integration one year, super hard.
• 33:18
  Super hard when you see all the good things you've done kind of dismantled one after the other,
• 33:25
  right? but you know, it's the law of the land and that's how it's a jungle out there.
• 33:28
  So, you know, dear we were just, yeah. Anyway, great exit.
• 33:29
  Ugh, okay.
• 33:41
  We're very lucky, all of us. I t I took a a year off because you know,
• 33:47
  four years were great, but I've been working all my life and then COVID and then this and at that
• 33:55
  point I'm like, you know what? I'm not getting younger. Let's take a hiatus here.
• 34:01
  Let I need to breathe. And you know, I've been I needed to pass all the certifications of all the
• 34:09
  jobs that I was great at that I didn't never had a diploma for. So I got my SBHR and
• 34:17
  a few other certifications. And also I decided to finally get a paper that says,
• 34:23
  hey yes, you're a coach. You've been doing it for 15 years, but you actually are one.
• 34:30
  So I did that and I did my ICF, so that's International Coaching Federation, training and and cert certification.
• 34:38
  So I'm ACC. and I had a blast doing it. And then I worked for Before AI for a year
• 34:46
  and a half. This was this was a great job. the the company itself didn't didn't make it.
• 34:53
  We did this and then shrink again. But but something I've not told you is that all this time I've
• 35:01
  always had a little side gig. Yeah, I forgot to tell you. Yeah. So here I am you know,
• 35:03
  in-house for most of those companies, and and full-time employee, but it started when I was at Agora Pulse.
• 35:04
  okay. Okay, what do we got?
• 35:23
  I I started a little LLC where I was helping young, mostly female entrepreneurs, start their little business here in
• 35:31
  the Bay Area and and and I and I was their back office. So I did their books,
• 35:38
  I did their administrative work, you know, like Register in California, start an LC and all of that.
• 35:45
  especially for the expat community where you know the spouse comes for a job and they finally have a working
• 35:53
  permit, but they their whatever they were doing is not transferable here. So now they want to start a little
• 36:01
  business and you know, and so I did that as I gig for. a long time and I still help
• 36:09
  a few people. I let go of most of my clients because I got really busy with my full time
• 36:17
  jobs, but I also always wanted to stay and and be plugged in with small businesses and how they function
• 36:25
  and keep my hands also in the books because when I held only the people function,
• 36:31
  I was not doing bookkeeping, I was not doing financials and I really wanted to keep up with that.
• 36:39
  and so today I have five people that I help. One is my hair guy,
• 36:40
  you know, it's it's not a lot, but it just, you know, it keeps me close to the real businesses
• 36:41
  of the real people out there and their struggles and what's going on and all of that.
• 36:42
  and so after after the before AI story ended a year ago.
• 36:41
  Yeah.
• 37:05
  I reactivated all my network and I said, Hey, I want to do coaching only for a little bit.
• 37:12
  and somebody introduced me to a founder who's French, who's here in the Bay Area,
• 37:18
  who started this awesome company. And at first I got a coaching engagement. and I did one workshop with the
• 37:26
  leadership team, and and then another. like coaching engagement and then another workshop and as we were doing a second
• 37:34
  workshop I was just like uncovering stuff and dysfunctions and misalignments and all of that and and you know,
• 37:42
  he approached me at the end of that and he's like, Have you ever considered being fractional CEO of a
• 37:50
  startup? It's funny that you'd mention that because actu Yeah. Actually back in August I was approached by a former
• 37:58
  coworker who's started a a a startup in stealth mode, in Europe and
• 38:04
  Yeah. I was the first one to do it.
• 38:21
  You know, he presented his project, he and his co-founder, blah, blah, blah. And he said,
• 38:27
  Are you interested? And I said, Well, I'm more than interested. when the time comes,
• 38:33
  I'll probably invest and I want to be your COO. And and they said yes.
• 38:39
  and we're trying to raise funds right now. so I'm found founding CEO of a startup that's not launched yet,
• 38:47
  still stealth mode and still building. And I'm fractional CEO of a company called Connect nine eight one,
• 38:54
  who has a great product in the aerospace aeronautics industry. it's it's it's a connector,
• 39:00
  which is your AI layer for productivity on the on the sh on the floor.
• 39:06
  So it's industrial. And it's something had never done before. The industrial world. It's still tech,
• 39:13
  but it's for industry. Like really it's it's supply chain and and shop floor. It's like your work orders and
• 39:21
  you know for all of your machinery. And it's, you know, and I I'm discovering the world of of aeronautics
• 39:29
  and aerospace, which is like, wow, it takes eighty million pieces to build a plane and eighty thousand suppliers.
• 39:36
  And it's like, whoa, yeah. It's fascinating. probably my numbers are wrong, but it's you know,
• 39:40
  it's of that range, so
• 39:41
  Yeah. From Yeah. It's from art dealer to now aeronautical I won't say expert necessarily,
• 39:47
  but I you just you I feel like you take on a job, you're like,
• 39:53
  All right, cool, I'm gonna learn everything about this and I'm gonna love it. Like you you were the definition
• 40:01
  of a lifelong learner. This so cool. Okay. I love it. This is this is great.
• 40:07
  let me hit you with some scrappy versus sophisticated questions. If you have any stories from any of these roles,
• 40:15
  please feel free to share. So early days, maybe like maybe in the Caribbean, maybe something like that.
• 40:22
  Maybe money's tight. Did you ever have like a ramen noodle dinner that was like your staple?
• 40:29
  Like some of it was cereal for dinner, something like that, that was a common meal that you just kind
• 40:32
  of made work.
• 40:33
  Not in the Caribbean because I was partnered with somebody who was making great living,
• 40:39
  but later after I crashed the art gallery or right before it crashed, I had a few years where I
• 40:47
  had a very, very, very tight budget. And basically it was once the rent was paid and and you know,
• 40:55
  the mandatory Checks you need to write every month everything. I think I was left with a budget of ten
• 41:03
  Euros per day.
• 41:06
  Okay. And you made that work. What was what was a dinner in a time like that?
• 41:10
  Yeah. I don't know. I don't remember. Well, that's not true. I I remember I got fond of little gallets,
• 41:14
  like I don't know how you call them. It looked like burger patty, but it was made of tofu and
• 41:15
  corn and I don't know what. And it was kind of you you pan fry it,
• 41:16
  it was high in proteins.
• 41:15
  Whatever's in the house.
• 41:41
  And I would add pasta and one vegetable and I'd kind of mix it all.
• 41:46
  Like anybody would look at it and go, Excuse me. But it was very nut nutritious.
• 41:47
  and yeah.
• 41:47
  Ha ha It sounds like you could buy in bulk. It was nutritious and easy to make.
• 41:53
  Nothing wrong with that. okay. Did you ever have a story? So like this is this is a SpaceX sort
• 42:00
  of story, but I'm curious if you ever had something similar to this. So like the story goes,
• 42:01
  SpaceX had to move a rocket from one place to another. And they said, All right,
• 42:02
  shipping will take a few months to do this because we have to ship a rocket.
• 42:01
  Exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 42:21
  So Elon Musk goes, Well, can we drive it? And they go, What do you mean?
• 42:26
  Like drive the rocket? And they did. They put it on trucks and a guy stood in the front and
• 42:27
  with a stick and pushed up power lines as they went past them to not obviously hit the rocket and
• 42:28
  stuff. So they navigated routes with no overpass and stuff like that. Obviously an extreme example in your career.
• 42:29
  Do you ever have anything like that where you're like, okay, this seems like an insurmountable problem,
• 42:30
  but let's get creative for a low budget.
• 42:27
  Yeah. for a low budget all the time. Yeah, I don't know. nothing comes to my mind
• 42:53
  Okay. Give some scrappy marketing moves on a low budget or something like that.
• 43:09
  Yeah, probably. I mean It it would more be, you know, like pulling some favors from some ex coworkers and,
• 43:17
  you know, good friends and saying, Hey, can you, you know, can you build me a day?
• 43:23
  Can you can you make those graphics for me? Can you, you know, the logo that looks really crappy?
• 43:31
  Can you make it better? it was more of those things. And it still is,
• 43:37
  you know, I just I just did that. And I was very honest with, you know,
• 43:43
  I said, you know, I'm asking as a friend right now, and I'm happy to pay you really like nothing.
• 43:51
  But if you could do that, it'd be wonderful. And but also, you know, it's not a it's not a
• 43:59
  a a a promise for a better future, but that person also knows that if there's a job in that
• 44:07
  company right now, he'll probably be the first to know, right? So that's more of the things that happen.
• 44:07
  But
• 44:08
  Yeah. Using your network.
• 44:10
  Yeah, I mean, you know, it's and also I I remember Agora Pulse, the first office we had in Paris.
• 44:18
  I I lived in the US so I wasn't there, but it's you know, if you were there and and
• 44:26
  working from Paris for a little bit, you you took the trash out yourself and you you know,
• 44:33
  you you cleaned the floor on Friday afternoon or everybody did their dishes and and Yeah,
• 44:39
  you went to the post office and you and you and you went down to buy or a pack of
• 44:47
  paper to feed the the printer that you brought from your house 'cause you had one,
• 44:53
  right? more stories like that. yeah.
• 44:54
  I love it. It's it's so fun just to like, all right, this is hey,
• 45:00
  anybody have a printer at home? Bring it in. We gotta print some stuff. Like,
• 45:00
  I love that part. all right, take me take me inside inside the office a little bit.
• 45:01
  How many monitors do you use on your desk?
• 45:01
  Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I tried to and then I realized I'm old. I I can't.
• 45:07
  I you know, I have my user manual ready. So when I work in companies,
• 45:13
  I send them my user manual. This is me, this is how I operate, this is how you you know,
• 45:17
  I want to work and this is how you work with me. And one of the things that I say
• 45:18
  is like I'm easily distracted by sound and movement because I I come from
• 45:18
  Ha ha ha.
• 45:40
  I did a lot of therapy, but I come from you know being hyper vigilant and and I'm one of
• 45:48
  those people I think in systems I see things globally and I need to be like my environment needs to
• 45:56
  look like a certain thing for me to be able to operate. And so you know,
• 46:00
  there's something I'm easily distracted. So I realize that the second screen is actually a distraction.
• 46:01
  so yeah, I have one. I have I have a desktop computer.
• 46:01
  Ha ha ha. wow. Wow. Okay, that's a first scrappy but successful first.
• 46:11
  Yeah, I know. Yeah, I have a I have an iMac.
• 46:20
  That's awesome. Okay, cool. all right, as we're sort of landing the plane here in the last couple of minutes,
• 46:28
  staying inside the office. actually let's do this. Any really unique pieces of art back to your back to your
• 46:36
  first company. Any really unique art in the office?
• 46:37
  yeah, I do. Like
• 46:40
  There we go. Are these ones that you've had forever or ones that you've bought recently?
• 46:46
  I've had them forever, like literally forever. This this here was in one of my art galleries.
• 46:52
  actually I bought it from myself from an artist directly, and then I try to sell it and nobody would
• 47:00
  buy it from me. So I just kept it because I love it. And now yeah.
• 47:01
  And this is one of my favorite artists, and I used to sell his thing in my gallery in St.
• 47:02
  Bart's.
• 47:02
  Yeah.
• 47:14
  But he he's very successful and I can't purchase from him now because his prices are too high for me,
• 47:22
  but this is what I kept from back then. And the little weird person there is also from my first
• 47:28
  gallery. And then they're like, yeah, and I have more in my living room, but in the office,
• 47:29
  yeah, I have what you saw, and I have one more there.
• 47:29
  Uh-huh.
• 47:44
  that is a gift from a friend she gave me that a few years ago and it's it's I love
• 47:52
  it and it's really weird it's a self-portrait of an artist painting something and they're looking at what they're painting
• 48:00
  and they're looking at me but but what is special is that it's a gift from a friend but also
• 48:01
  I you know it I I like very
• 48:02
  Okay.
• 48:12
  abstract or very constructed things and no human fig figures like all my art there n there's no one on
• 48:20
  my art except for that self portrait yeah so yeah
• 48:29
  Very nice. I love that you still have paintings from from St. Bart's too. That's really cool.
• 48:32
  All right, we gotta we gotta wrap it up, but I will ask one more question.
• 48:33
  how many emails unread is too many for you.
• 48:33
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. twenty.
• 48:45
  Okay, that's pretty good. I got this is a tough rendering, but scrappiness from bootstrapping successfully and bootstrapping unsuccessfully sometimes,
• 48:53
  but I gotta say it's pretty sophisticated these days. Even with a desktop computer, it sounds like that's there's probably
• 49:01
  a good work life balance that comes with that. So I'm gonna agree with your initial assessment.
• 49:07
  A foot in both worlds, scrappy and successful, or scrappy and sophisticated rather.
• 49:08
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 49:11
  Alexandra, thank you so much for coming on. anything you want to promote, anything you want the folks out there
• 49:16
  to know.
• 49:17
  yeah, don't hire your key people too late. I do I do so much cleaning up,
• 49:21
  you know, at one point it's just like the RO sorry, the ROI is bigger than you think it is.
• 49:22
  yeah. Yeah. I mean it's you know it's it's always the conundrum of the the the CEO who wants to
• 49:23
  do everything. When is it that they they you know they can let go and it's often sooner than they
• 49:24
  think. So they need to focus on one thing. Let us do the work.
• 49:22
  Okay. There you go. There you go. That makes sense. That makes sense. I'm actually going through that right now.
• 49:30
  awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Alexandra, thank you again so much for coming on. Scrappy and sophisticated,
• 49:36
  but definitely successful.
• 49:58
  Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was wonderful, Jack. I'll talk to you soon.
• 50:02
  Excellent. Sounds good. Stay data driven, everybody.
• 50:04
  Bye.