Lessons Learned From Startup CEOs: Cedric Maloux

Cedric Maloux is the CEO & Co-Founder, AllPeers.  AllPeers enables friends to share any file from their browser, with support for even the largest of Torrents.  AllPeers is backed by leading European VC's Index Ventures and Mangrove.

Before co-founding AllPeers, Cédric Maloux was Vice President of European Operations for PlanetOut Inc, a leading global media and entertainment company. PlanetOut's brands include Gay.com, PlanetOut.com, Kleptomaniac.com, and OUT&ABOUT Travel. In 2000, Mr. Maloux joined Gay.com after it acquired OOups.com, a leading French community website he founded in 1996. He led the implementation of Gay.com in the UK where he brought his team to profitability within 14 months. Gay.com UK was awarded the prize for Best Consumer Media at the NewMediaAge Awards in 2002. Prior to PlanetOut, Mr. Maloux was Business Development Manager for UK and France at iPlanet. During that period he dealt on a day-to-day basis with the Heads of Group Security, Heads of Group e-Payments and Heads of Groupe-Commerce of the leading financial institutions in Paris and London. Mr. Maloux received master's degrees in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Stevens Institute of Technology (USA) and EPITA (France) in 1992.

I asked Cedric to share some of his key learnings as a startup CEO.

In Cedric's own words:

1. Include a CFO in your founding team. As a CEO you need to focus on operational matters and your cash-flow management is too important not be left in the hands of a professional even if it costs you a few percentages of the capital. Especially in the early days when cash is not flowing in (nor out), it helps to have someone capable of saying "no you can't purchase this. Can you try to find another way?". It will boost your creativity to have to investigate cheaper options.
   
   
2. Bootstrap, bootstrap and bootstrap again. Yes you might need to raise VC money at some stage but try to go as far as possible before then. Even better, try to reach black without raising a single cent if that's feasible. Get your prototype out and don't waste time on a business plan until you have something to show to people. Try to lay down milestones and how much you will need to reach each milestones. Be ambitious but be realistic: unless you're a superstar very few VCs will invest so you'll waste your time. Bootstrap, get something done, find a business angel and move on to the next stage.
   
   
3. Stay stealth as long as possible (aka do not announce anything until you are sure you are ready to open it up). At AllPeers, we decided to publish a couple of screen-captures of what we were working on just to start to attract some attention. The blog post went online on the 22nd of December so we thought nobody would pay attention to it since most people were busy preparing their holiday or wrapping their presents. Within 3 days we had been Slashdotted and CNET wrote about how the blogosphere was going crazy about us. However it took us another 3 month before we were ready to start our private beta.
   
   
4. It's only a job. Yes it is your idea. Yes it is your baby. Yes you can't stop thinking about it. Yes you wished days had 48 hours but ultimately make sure you keep time for yourself and for your family. Some CEOs will tell you you should work 20 hours per day and I disagree. I believe you can be as efficient if you work 10 hours per day maximum. Your personal life is as important as your CEO life and if you are happy, rested, serene in your personal life you will be a better CEO. When I was younger I almost burnt myself out in one of my startup and had to make major personal decisions without which I might not be alive today.
   
   
5. It's not what you know it's who you know. Even though this is an extreme, make sure you go out and meet people. You are the best marketing representative of your company. Go to conferences. Meet other CEOs, become friends with them (that's easy, you have a lot of things in common). Do not hesitate to help people. Give advices, introduce people. If you grew up as a shy geek, now is the time to come out in your industry and meet people (I know this can be very scary).
   
   
6. Bonus: It's all about people. Make sure you team up with people you respect and who respect you. It's going to be a roller-coaster ahead so your team is going to be your most precious asset when the time will be difficult. Yes there will be disagreements and maybe even arguments but make sure you and your team is strong enough to deal with them in a professional way in order to always grow better out of them.