In the beginning I thought persuasion was a skill. For me, it’s not just some skill you see in a movie and you wish you had it. I have it. And I am grateful for the last decade of experience and for what it thought me: persuasion is not

When I first created a startup, I would come to work at 9 am in the morning, and would head home at midnight. I also worked on week-ends because during the week I would have a lot of meetings and then I used the weekends to sort out paperwork and

In my first startup, at the beginning we were offering software you could run on your own premisses, paying us a licence. It took quite an effort to integrate, and despite admiration from experts  in our field, we didn’t have much commercial success. Major clients were interested but they

I’ve always thought of myself as a very confident person. I see confidence as a part of who I am. It goes very far, to the point that when in doubt, I don’t recognise myself in my actions and I get into all sorts of out-of-character behaviours. For

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”  ―     Joseph Campbell I am a total planning freak. I once caught myself saying to a friend “spontaneity is much better when we plan for it — you know,

My co-founder and I were at the offices of one of the largest Parisian VC funds, pitching our company in front of two fund partners. At the middle of the pitch, the more senior one stood up from his chair and started yelling at us. He said that our company

I’m never totally sure whether I hate negotiation tactics because I am insecure about myself as a negotiator, or I think of negotiation as of my weak spot because I hate negotiation tactics. Anyhow, knowing how much of my view of the world is shaped by my years in

A few summers ago, in Corfu on a hot August afternoon, in front of what once was Gianni Agnelli’s villa, I was observing two people in the sea. A man and a woman, having a lazy conversation, slowly floating in the water. He was telling her about a friend

I remember vividly a day in preschool, I was three years old but placed in a group with older children. In the morning, we were given a task of making a drawing presenting a sun, a tree and a house. We were supposed to hand over our drawings by mid-afternoon