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From Zero to PE Backing: The CRO Co-Founder Playbook Nobody Talks About · Rev-n-u Unplugged

• James: Rafael, great to have you on Revenue Unplugged. Thank you so much for joining us. How are doing today? Right. Before we get into it, if you're getting value from Riverview Unplugged, please, please hit subscribe and leave a review. This episode is brought to you by Indigo, the boutique go-to-market recruitment firm, placing elite sales talent for high growth tech companies looking to expand across Europe and North America. Now, what's the difference between a CRO and a CRO who has also co-founded the business? Turns out quite a lot. Raphaël BOUKRIS: Hi James, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to record this podcast with you. James: Well, we've got three really exciting topics that we're going to ⁓ about today. But before we dive into that, it'd be great if you could give our audience just a little bit of background as to who Rafael is. Raphaël BOUKRIS: Yeah, for sure. Very happy. So I'm Raphael. I'm French guy. I used to live in Paris for 35 years and recently moved to Southern France in the French River in Nice with family. I'm father of three and I'm been in the software industry for all my career. So basically the last 13 years, I started in a startup where I you know, full say cycle, know, full stack. James: Today's guest is Rafael Bucharest, co-founder and CRO of Didymi. Now they're a backed by PE firm Marlin Equity. Eight years in the seats, over 35 angel investments and in the last 12 months alone, two acquisitions closed in three months. We get into three things. What co-founder status actually gives you at board level and what that means for any CRO trying to get their voices heard. Why ⁓ &A is a revenue strategy, not just a finance play? Raphaël BOUKRIS: I can't executive doing everything like I like to say, you know, like in the movie with me, supposed to tough happiness, called coding every day, knowing about nothing, no marketing and pushing quite hard and close. I would say low to average ACV deals. ⁓ then I moved to another company in the HR tech where I became ⁓ a director. ⁓ We a big pivot. So it was kind of entrepreneurship. James: and what nobody warned Raphael about before he went through it. And the one piece of go-to-market advice he gives every single founder he backs without exception. His take on series B expansion, most companies are doing it completely wrong. The Excel looks great. Reality is very different. This is revenue unplugged. Let's get into it. Raphaël BOUKRIS: where we started again from scratch, from zero to 10 million in ARRs, which was quite good. And eight years ago, with my two co-founders, built Didomi, that is a software, B2B software, specialized in consent management. So we basically help mid and enterprise companies comply with GDPRs, all compliance laws, CCPA and so on. And ⁓ yeah. We've been VC backed for long and April, so less than a year, the time we recording, we had a ⁓ P firm Marlin, ⁓ 11 billion that now is holding majority stake in the company and we did lots of ⁓ &A, ⁓ which is quite exciting. my position is co-founder and chief revenue officer. And briefly... In parallel, I'm also an Android investor in more than 35 companies, mostly SaaS, B2B, not only, a limited partner in a few VC firms. James: ⁓ Well, of the exciting things about having you on the show, Rafael, is that you are a CRO, but you are a co-founder also. So we've got a slightly different perspective today. As I mentioned, going to be looking ⁓ at board relationships, and investing. We're going to start with the board relationship because I think it's really important for CROs. But first of all, I'd like to set the scene for our audience. because you've been hired as both a sales leader and as a co-founder. How differently do the board treat you as a co-founder as they did as a straightforward sales leader? Raphaël BOUKRIS: I think that's a good one. And that's a setup that we see, I think, more and more, or we have seen more in the last year. So first thing, I really think that boards, investors, and so on, they really like to get one of the co-founders that is a business guy. That's super important. And I think that even more now with AI, that barriers with code are lower and so on, go-to-market is even more important. VCs want to be very close. First thing, I think you get more trust by default. Either they invest in you, it can be early stage, but after they invest on the team, so like the current CEO, co-founder and so on, they give you trust. ⁓ it means that ⁓ really rely on you to understand what happens and they are not just judging you. Of course, if you're not performing, you're going to be out and so on. It will take maybe more than a few quarters like I would say a normal CRO, non-co-founder and so on. But for sure, if you don't deliver, you're going to be out. But you're really great at hiring gems. So I think you know it. But that's what I like to say. When you hire a player and so on, that's something that is great. Because when you need to draw a conclusion, if it doesn't work and the guy is super great, that's the company that has some trouble, PMF and so on. If you are a B player, you don't really know why it doesn't work. Was it the guy ⁓ was it just the market and PMF? So yeah, I think that you are more trusted and whenever there are some troubles and so on, they try to be more cooperative and say, okay, by default, you are the good guy, you get time and so on. Maybe that's the market, that's your organization, how we can support you. That's something that is great because that's a more, I would say, long-term vision or midterm long-term because one more time you're not predicted if you're not delivering good results. But I think that's a good way to work more than saying, this new VP of Say just has, or new CROs just has two quarters, is expensive and will be out. James: Amazing. looking ⁓ a lot CROs that don't have or aren't co-founder, ⁓ they talk not having a big enough voice at board level. What should they differently? What advice could you give to CROs that aren't co-founders to get their voice heard better at the level? Raphaël BOUKRIS: Yeah, that's a good one. And my first recommendation would be that they should be visible to the board. can be during board meetings just saying, OK, I'm going to share the business update, the trading update for this board. Not of course every board, but being present is important. ⁓ even in meantime, ⁓ between different boards, having interactions with the investors. ⁓ It's like deal. It's basic, you want to set and so on. ⁓ If you don't have access to the decision maker, that's a problem. You're always at risk because the ways you see things may be different to reality. And that's always the same. People, performance, okay, and the market, the product market fit and so on. So both are really important. An average guy in a company that was doing amazingly great in terms of product market fit and so on with key partners that are already there and so on will perform. And you can get an A player that will be fired because the board will say, okay, you didn't deliver in four, five months and the guy didn't have time to really prove it and so on. both exposure, investors exposure and so on, because then you need to get a plan and to explain that ⁓ sometimes it has to take time and there are other problems that they don't. But the thing that is a bit tricky is that I think that in terms ⁓ of ⁓ It's a bit tricky for an external but not co-founder CRO because of course you cannot just say all the things that are not working in the company whereas if you are a co-founder and so on I think you tend to be much more honest, less conflicted and so on, more straightforward. So that is the way it sits. So being a true partner to the investors. James: And how often do you think a CRO should be communicating with the board, particularly the board outside of the CEO? Because I imagine there'll be conversations taking place there all the time. But with the key investors, how much communication should be happening? Let's say, for instance, if there's a turnaround in particular, so let's have a situation. a turnaround, you're in, there's a job that needs to be done before growth can happen. How often should communication be happening? if we're talking emails, how often should a CRO be emailing and what information should be in the email? Raphaël BOUKRIS: So I think there are two variables in what you're describing. First, what's the composition of the founding team or of the board team on the company side and so on? How business-oriented is the CEO? Is great and interested in the business. That's the first thing. Second thing is the stage of the company. You see what I mean? Not the same expectation. But I would say in a setup where there is a product guy, a guy that is half business, half anything else, I don't know. I don't know, I would say every two months or something like that. that's more or less the frequency of ball meeting and so on. Anytime it makes sense, you see what I mean? If there are some periods where, because the guy would have to back up the founding team, there is nobody in the founding team that is really a business representation. Okay, and generally a good CEO is very happy also to get some some help some backup and so on So don't be discreet be there and propose also the CEO to to back him up and not get two instances Internal reporting and and and born level just to make sure that everything ⁓ aligned That's my recommendation James: Yeah. And in terms of the information they pass in, the one thing that I know that boards don't like surprises, they don't like good surprises and they certainly don't like bad surprises. things, when you uncover something, you know, it's, I had ⁓ JD who's a private equity operator ⁓ and he about, you ⁓ know, P ⁓ they'll go and sometimes It's like buying the house on the street that needs the most doing up. And then, you put a CRO in place and, they've got this timeline of when they want the house to be sold and better than the other houses on the street. And then once you get in, you realize actually ⁓ we weren't to replace the floor, but we can't get the cooker out without replacing the floor. So ⁓ when you when CRO finds a situation where it's going to delay stuff, how quickly should they be reporting that? Because there's some people that say, just don't say anything and let's just see what we can do behind it. Or do we rip the plaster off and just go, look, we've under earthed this, this is what we're doing to it, but it's gonna take time. Where do you sit ⁓ what sales leaders should do in those situations? Raphaël BOUKRIS: No, that's a great one. And it shows that you know how PE is doing. So I would make a distinction for audience between VC-backed and PA-backed, because that's a fully different approach in terms of good surprises, bad surprises. I would say first, for those who don't know PA, that in VC, you do 92 % of the plan. They assume that the plan is super optimistic and so on. So yeah, that's great. I don't know any VC that is blaming founders for just doing 92 % or 90 % of the budget you do 90 you do 95 and so on of course they expect 100 % but 92 that's great. You see what I mean? If you are overshaving that that's great doesn't happen a lot that you over perform because otherwise for the next digit they're gonna be harder So I would say that VCO of course you need to understand that in terms of portfolio depending on the stage, but they want 80 % of their company not performing 10x plus. So half of the portfolio will die. 30 % of the portfolio will have decent returns, 2, 3, 4x and so on. And two companies, 20 % of the portfolio will outperform. In the P portfolio and so on, they want to do an average over the fund cycle, so 10 years. They want to do 2 to 2.5x. It really depends on the fund and so on. So they don't want any company to die. And in a portfolio of, in a fund, you're to have more or less maybe 12 to 15 companies. They can have ⁓ failure, very big failure, but I think that's the maximum. If you get two write-offs, that's just over, which is not the case for VC. So of course, you can have that surprise with VC. You cannot have that surprise with P. ⁓ James: Hmm. ⁓ Raphaël BOUKRIS: you're right, they don't want also if you achieve 120 % the budget was not done in a good way. So I think that's something that's and we see more and more from VC to PE, okay, for companies that are not hypergross anymore and PE is really great and we're to talk about acquisitions and so on and we have choices and we decided to go to PE because that was the right move for us and we're very happy but in terms of discipline, in terms of budget, in terms of proximity also with the operating partners and so on, you will be very close. So my first recommendation for VCMP, but especially with P, fast, have a plan, don't hide anything. That's They want to know if they can trust you and they want to know if you are the guy that can make this house sale at the good price in five years, okay? Generally, that's a five-year cycle. It can be four, can be six, and so on. Now there are some evergreen funds and so on, so they can buy from fund one to fund two, but it's a five-year play. And in terms of people, and for instance, the PFA or Marlin that's invested in Idumi, they work here, do you have the ⁓ people for the next five years? So we don't want to fire anyone. You know the hours better than we do and so on, but guys, make sure that's... have the right people because of course we know that those are the same people that are doing the 0 to 5, 5 to 20 million, 20 to 100 million and 100 million plus. So you need to get the great people to act fast, have a plan, over communicate. That's really what they expect. James: You mentioned the start, revenue co-founder model becoming more attractive to investors than traditional hiring a at like Series B. In your opinion, do you think that playbook broken hiring the CRO at ⁓ Series B? ⁓ And what you get hiring somebody of your caliber ⁓ from the get go? Raphaël BOUKRIS: That's a great one. I really think that depends on the business, that depends on the co-founder, that depends on the kind of theory that you're going to bring in. I like to say that you need to bring people in, except founders, founders, they push until it's the Peter principle. They're going to push very hard, as hard as they can. And when they are not good enough for the next step and so on, they just need to move. And that's always what I've... told myself, you know, I try to push, want to push as hard as possible, but let's be realistic. You cannot be the best person at every stage. It doesn't exist and so on. And you get Salesforce guys that can be put in a business at a hundred million. They're to be great. And you put them at 1 million AR and they don't have the right people to support them and so on. And they're not the no playbook and anything. doesn't work. So I think that's as a start, what I like in terms of setup, even when I invest, we'll talk later about it, but I like to get someone who is not a stretch, say, to start, know, someone who has been the VP of say, something who has done, you know, 10 million plus AR and so on, wants to get his hand dirty, wants to get less comp, but much more equity and so on. That's the good setup and so on. And then with this kind of people, yeah, maybe this person going to be ⁓ good one until a series B, until... ⁓ 10 or 20, it really depends now with AI, know, series D sometimes they are already at 100 million plus AR. But no, I think both setups still work. But my preferred setup is to get VPCs or CRRUCO founder and so on. So you're sure that the company will be OK in terms of go to market for at least the first five to six years. You see what I mean? And then let's see. ⁓ James: Yeah, 100%. Love that. Well, look, I'm going to close on topic one there. Some really great insight there. I think it's going to be fascinating to watch how the early stage businesses transform over the next few years and see if they're starting to get the leaders in earlier. Moving on to M &A from a CRO founders perspective, most CROs are focused purely on new logo and retention At what point did you realize that ⁓ &A was actually a revenue strategy and what triggered it to start with? Raphaël BOUKRIS: Yeah, so just back in 2021, where we raised our Series B that was 40 million dollars at this time. The dollar was a bit stronger than now. So I think that after Series B, we did some mistakes, we opened lots of countries and so on, but... Luckily, I think that we also drew the right conclusions and decided just before hard times for SaaS, we had lots of money in bank and decided to be more conservative, more efficient, and so on. And we made really great decisions. What happened is that in 2023, 2024, we had an efficient company. Still burning cash, but not too much. reducing massively the burn rate and so on, with lots of cash in bank being very efficient on our cost of acquisition and so on. Didomi is a high-growth retention business. We are selling compliance, which means that overall, if we are not having bugs, doing big mistakes and so on, in terms of growth retention, that's good. That's a business that has always been 90 % plus GRR, so overall strong. But then, I had... some struggles in terms of NRL, net retention, cross-selling and so on. The more you grow, more time it takes to have new products lines and so on. There are some legacy issues and so on. And had move, so we had to do more cross-selling and so on. So we decided to go for &A, looking for ⁓ targets and so The initial play... was not to have some external investor and so on who were looking for a tired company. You see what I mean? So good companies, great products, poor go-to markets, unable to raise, that you're to pay a good price, mostly in equity, you give a little money to the founders or good money plus equity and that's good. But reality was quite different because when you look for some ⁓ and so on, we talked to our customers. What are the great companies that you are seeing? What can complement well, how did we offer and so on. And yeah, we saw great ⁓ company that is called Addingwell in Northern France in Lille. The was doing really great. We heard lots of good things from customers, partners and so on. We started to get some good conversations and so on. And then we said, okay, that's great. That's a little bit stretch in terms of. price for us. So we said, okay, let's go on the market, okay, with external funding and so on. It was a bit strange to get a bridge or anything. we just decided to try, even if our part of our investors were very supportive on this acquisition, it was a bit strange scenario. So yeah, we issued the letter of intent and then we went to the markets and James: Thank Raphaël BOUKRIS: It was the obvious choice. We wanted to do more M &A, and that was a good cross-sell opportunity, and happened to be a very good cross-sell opportunity. We made the deal back in 2025 in April, and we already had in the radar. It was not done during the deal with Marlin and Addingwell, but we know and were in contact with one of our key competitors, New York-based SourcePoint. It was not, of course, across SELL opportunity was more consolidating a portfolio complementary Geos, North America, the regions of Germany and around and the UK. So yeah, that was a good move and we made these two acquisitions in three months, April and ⁓ July. of in terms of post merger integration and so on. But that's something that we could not have been able to do alone and now we get a partner with playbooks, with recommendations and so on, with good pockets and so on. So that was a good move and for me as a CRO that was quite strategic to get more cross-sell and So that's why ⁓ I think move was really James: like it. So you mentioned there about integrating companies. That's my next question is, what did you learn? Because one of the biggest challenges once you do an acquisition is integrating them across, particularly when you're looking at CRMs, the different platforms. What did you learn most as a CRO when integrating and what advice would you give to other CROs who haven't done a merger and acquisition before but are about to go through it? Raphaël BOUKRIS: I think that the biggest challenge is more culture, knowing people, making sure that you visit them. think that's challenge number one, because if you get people that are in the project, that are motivated by the new project and so on, you're going to create lots of frustration, okay? It's not just good news. Sometimes you need to have some people go. They're going to say, I used to get this kind of contract. I don't have any more. I get six days of paid holidays. Sometimes you have also people are winning lots of things from that. But was ⁓ the verge of being promoted and now I know you get a VP already at DidoMi. So I that's the toughest challenge because if humans are aligned, then they're to be much more cooperative. You're talking about CRM, ⁓ distribution, and so on. Of course, you get a lot of problems, a lot of problems. And in both plays, it can be for cross-sell. You just add something. So we could sell DidoMe plus adding Well in terms of cross-sell. So you can say, OK, it's not so hard and so on. You get different teams. But no, it's super easy. But teams are great, great cooperation and so on. But with all the departments, you get initial friction. ⁓ You need to create good collaboration. That's something that is important. And I think that before the deal, you need to wonder if you really want to work with the people you're going to acquire or merge with. that's the first thing. And then if is good, really, it moves forward. CRM and so on. So you tend to, of course, keep what works in the company. So I did a me. But for, say, for CRM, for instance, that was what we're using, we invested a lot and so on. Of course, there was no way we were using the other CRM. So one company had another CRM, but smaller than us, and the other company had Salesforce, which made it more easy. But I would say for all the tools, everything, you need ask yourself, what is the good setup? Because we also have taken lots of good things from the companies. All the best processes have been taken. So it's not just a top-down approach. Of course, it's using our system at first and making them implement. But for everything that was working better than that, we tried to keep the system. I think we developed lots of good things in terms of billing and so on automations. We also integrated this kind of ⁓ So, lots of different examples, but lots of headaches. For sure, that's not easy. But yeah, I would say that's a great intellectual stimulation. James: I bet, I bet. And one last question before we move on to the final topic. From your experience of doing these merchant acquisition, is there one thing that from any part of it that you found that a CRO needs to understand that nobody told you about? Raphaël BOUKRIS: That's a good one. a good one. I think that I'm not super patient, but be patient because things take time. For instance, I think I underestimated sales enablement on new As I said, we closed the deal end of April. You to train ⁓ DDoMe teams on the product. going to sell to our close to 2K customers around the world, that's going to be super fast and so on. And in reality, that's, it has taken maybe three months, you know, instead of the one, 1.5 months that I expected to get our listing being ramped up on the product and so on. So it takes time for lots of things, processes and so on. So like in your forecast, you need to be... very conservative. It will happen, it will work if you make good due diligence in terms of go-to markets, so no surprise, but if you plan that the product craziness is two months, expect three months and a half. The CRM now merges, expect more. that's important. And as you get different teams and so on, it's very complex to speed up teams, to speed up things. So get buffer, get a buffer. That's important. James: how did you manage when you got these acquisitions going on and doing the day job? Are you adding more hours to your day? Raphaël BOUKRIS: Yeah, at first that's very intense ⁓ definitely tired because you've done the deal process where you have to manage the business and the deal. My Romain, the CEO has done things impressively. He was on the front line and so on. So I was much more on the business side. But of course, you need to feel lots of Excel file, provide lots of data, cohorts and so on. we have a very great and very strong executive team. But then when the deal is closed, champagne and then you need to integrate. that's the only thing. And Sumer was quite close to the acquisition, but you need to push. But you're really excited, you new acquisition, your sales teams are excited, new things to sell and so on. So yes, you need to work very hard during and then that's like everything, you know. And then I would not say it's a powerbomb, but it's like, you know. James: I really your knowledge and insight. think emerging acquisitions are ⁓ an absolute critical for revenue growth now in organizations. So it's great to see you being part of it ⁓ and having success it. We're going to move to talking about angel investing in early stage GTM. played quite, not only investing, but you play quite a big role in helping these businesses. ⁓ We've spoken about it on in this podcast where you believe about bringing in a revenue leader earlier can help. want to challenge, challenge is the wrong word. I want to ask your opinion on quite difficult subjects around this. Bringing in a senior leader earlier, what does that deal actually look like from a remuneration perspective? Because you are normally convincing someone to take a pay cut to come and do it. So, so what Where do they win? Where do they lose? Why do they do it? Raphaël BOUKRIS: Great. Lots of things. First, it really depends on so. I don't recommend to have someone who has 35 years of experience and so on. First, because we all know that sales jobs are super tiring. So the level of energy you get is super important. So I like to say that having someone who is around 40 being a VP of sales, sales leader and so on, that wants go into entrepreneurial project. There are two options in terms of pay cuts. Either they join they take preco founders, more or less a third of the company, zero salary until the first raising ⁓ funds and so Either they decide to get like an hybrid set up, they don't want to take the full risk and so on. And if they were, don't know, just giving an example at 300k and they say, okay, I will go for 60 plus 60 or something like that, or 50 plus 70. The company had just raised a little money just to pay that. And if expenses, would say, let's say they raised 700k or something like that just to kick up company and the equity gonna be for sure. ⁓ Yes, okay, that's going to be maybe five plus five or seven plus seven percent or something like that. So basically what I see is that you can have this kind of mix when the company is quite young with an MVP or something like that, you get a leader that is joining for 10 percent with five percent based on performance within the next 12 to 18 months and gets a package that is decent, but for sure a cut by 60 % of what they used to earn. I think that's a good setup. I think that CEOs, engineers are very likely to adopt this kind of setup because I convinced many CEOs to get this kind of setup. And even if at first they know, I will not give away if they consider this person as a true co-founder who ⁓ the playbook, who can make sure that the revenue is going to be there for years and so on. I think that's a very nice play and everybody is happy, you know. that can be a good return on investment for also ⁓ Sysco founder that can earn the lot if things turns out well. So yeah, I this setup, you know. James: makes a lot of sense. I to touch back on something you mentioned ⁓ before, I think it happens quite often where businesses get to series B, they get money in and they try to replicate what they've done locally, abroad. And ⁓ you that and you kind of found the mistake. When you look to do it, when you were doing it, what were the challenges that you faced and what advice would you give to other businesses that are receiving this series B funding and going, great, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the success here in our local geography and go and do it elsewhere. Raphaël BOUKRIS: I think that's the most recurring mistake that I see on companies raising the big Series A to low Series B, let's say the 20 to 40 million euros or dollars raised. That's the big mistake. basically what you get is that the company is doing great. Let's say, I don't know, 5 million in AR and so on. they are doing 60 % plus, 70 % plus, generally on the domestic market and so on, can be France, can be there and so on. They get some in bounds or some reselling in other countries and so on. Sometimes they just target the US, they get almost nothing. And because they are doing 200K AR in two countries, they just do the math in Excel and say, okay, we put three reps. this is the ramp up and so on, that's done. And you get some crazy VC that are just saying, agree, that's to scale, we take a buffer and everything is nice. Okay? That's not reality. That's not reality at all. the only thing that I say ⁓ to the is because that's a ⁓ bet that be but the reality is that there is zero rational desire. So they just get a few numbers, some sales navigator analysis about how deep is the market and so on, some VC that are bullish because they don't care. If you go bankrupt, maybe they're going to be 20 % that will succeed with this play. No, I really think that you really need to understand what's on the ground. You cannot also split, you know, all your amnesia in different countries, you need to make sure that you get a second country. You are in France, you want to go in D'ar, you already get the million in ARR, it's really scalable, you get one co-founder that is moving. So the only thing that I say is that don't think that because you are doing domestic market plus a few hundred thousands of ARR, you're going to scale. It just doesn't work. So do your due diligence on the markets. Don't open free countries with 20 million. That doesn't make sense. Or just the US, but you already have proof of consent there. So yeah, so that's that we see a lot and a lot. And ⁓ Raf, a look at my business plan my deck. Your deck is beautiful, but do know what is behind? Do you really? Between you and I, okay? I will not put money. I don't have enough to go and use serious B. Do you really think that you can scale it and so on? Because sometimes you just get lucky. So just where to invest, just get ⁓ just get a good pipeline, a very strong pipeline, not just lucky in bounce, I would say. ⁓ important. VC will push you in that direction. They will push you. They will adopt this plan a lot of times. James: How do you manage knowing, through it yourself now, how would you manage a pushy VC that to happen, but you know it's the wrong thing to do? What would be your advice to how you try and ⁓ push ⁓ on VC? Raphaël BOUKRIS: I think you need to have a CEO also that gets... So I think that having some entrepreneurs as mentors and so on help a lot because you're going to avoid mistakes. So try to talk with Seris B plus CEOs, CROs and so on and try to crash test your plan. Of course, you're going to take lots of risk, but don't just do... the expansion of what you've done and so on. So surround yourself with non VC, I would say, and CROs, for instance, and CEOs who have been there. I think that that's great. You're going to avoid mistakes and try to focus on one country and not seven countries where you're going to have one rep doing 500k per year and you do 3.5 million. That's magic. And yeah, it works. Look. ramp up period, I heard this guy and so on. And I think, James, that you see that as well, know, quite expansion, you create a fast expansion, you burn lots of cash, you don't understand why it doesn't work, the ramp up is not good, you cannot have marketing everywhere and so on. So, yeah, focus. James: Yeah, like it. Love that. last question before I let you get back to your day job. I'll you moment ⁓ to think this one. ⁓ What's the piece of go-to-market advice you give every founder that you invest in, regardless of what they're building or what stage they are at building? Raphaël BOUKRIS: ⁓ So just to clearly understand, what's my recommendation on the GTM approach? James: What's your one piece of advice you would give a founder, ⁓ regardless of what stage they're at? So it's the one piece every time. Raphaël BOUKRIS: Yeah. Yeah. Get it? Yeah. Stick to what is working. If you get one vertical, keep it. If you get one that is working super great, partners, for instance, you need push on it. Don't try to invest everywhere. can have a 360 strategy, but of course, you know what is working. And when you get vertical that is working, Try to duplicate and of course if the market is deep enough, fantastic. Don't try to do everything and try to copy also all other companies. That's also you're talking, you're networking and so on and you want to do everything. Even with my team, you because I love doing networking, talking to my peers and so on. Sometimes I refrain myself to pushing all of the ideas because I'm super excited. Test, but keep in mind that you need to secure 80 % of what is working. James: I ⁓ ⁓ Roeberg on the show a couple of weeks ago. ⁓ exactly that, particularly in the early stage, ⁓ that you never know you've got an ICP until the people who originally bought your platform renew. And you keep just chasing leads and opportunity, in the you're just ⁓ onboarding people will onboard off again in ⁓ 12 months because they weren't the right people. I think staying in your lane and owning your lane for as long as possible is absolutely ⁓ of the greatest advice out there. Raphael, has been ⁓ really I've really enjoyed getting to know you through this podcast planning. You've done an job ⁓ with the business it's great to have somebody on the show actually closing out series for us, ⁓ season two, should say. having someone that's both in the founder hot seat and the CRA. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing your knowledge. Awesome. Right, let me stop. Raphaël BOUKRIS: Thank you, James Bye-bye.