Unlocking Success: An Exclusive Interview with François Mazoudier on Personal Insights and Experience

Navigating the intricate world of startups requires a unique blend of vision, expertise, and strategic acumen. François Mazoudier, a distinguished entrepreneur, stands as a beacon of guidance for budding entrepreneurs embarking on their entrepreneurial journeys.

In this exclusive interview, François opens up about his personal insights and experiences, offering invaluable perspectives on what it takes to succeed in the competitive landscape of venture capital. Join us as we delve into François's rich tapestry of wisdom, uncovering the strategies and principles that have enabled him to catalyze the growth of countless startups and shape the future of innovation.

Could you share a bit about your journey into entrepreneurship and venture capital and what motivated you to become an entrepreneur?

It was a complete coincidence that I fell into the Tech industry. After graduating from a Marketing and Business School, my first job was as a product manager which forced me to learn the very internal systems that make a computer or a computer device. I had to learn about BIOS, CMOS, bus speeds and a whole bunch of stuff which, as a marketing grad, I had no idea about! From there, I've had every job in early stage technology companies, so it's really kind of a fluke and a complete coincidence. One of the companies where I was a co-founder went public, so I made a bit of money and, having already advised loads of companies and early stage startups, I realized that maybe I should be investing as well as advising and building, so I straddled both sides of the table.

What was the company that went public?

The company was called RealNetworks and the products were real audio and real video. We had other products but we invented streaming media as you know it; for the first time you could download a free piece of software and connect to any radio station, website TV, movie, recorded or live concerts anywhere from anywhere. Possibly the biggest deal that I created was when I managed to put the Vatican online in the year 2000. If you remember, the internet speed was really crap and slow with modems and all that stuff and we managed to get 2 million concurrent live viewers for the phenomenon that's called the Jubilee, which is once every 50 years. So, for the first time in history we provided this event to millions of Catholics all around the world to watch it live and recorded. I looked for big communities or groups of people and started integrating all their content right at source and, because it was on the internet, it was not censored, so you would be able to see all of these completely uncensored events for the first time in history.

So what are some of the key lessons that you've learned from your time fundraising for different companies?

The first thing which surprised me, and that's irrespective of stage of company, is how disorganized most founders are. I'm not blaming them - they have so much to do. As a startup, you have to have the vision, mission, assemble a quality team, build a product that matches the market at the right time, not too early not too late, find enough capital to fuel the company etc. I mean, the number of stuff that CEOs have to do is incredible, but when it comes to fundraising:
Number one - they run out of time. Founders don't realize how long it's going to take to get the right investors and the right deal terms, so they always think they could do this in a couple of months.
Number two - they don't have a plan and a fixed calendar and, therefore, they don't know what needs to happen when.
Number three - they actually know nothing about venture capital, such as, how does a VC make money? And when?  If founders don't understand how their investor is qualifying them, or the top 10 questions that they are going to ask because they don't understand their business, it puts them at a complete disadvantage. So that’s what I’ve realised: founders don't know anything about the other side of the table; they have no plans; no calendar; and they're always underestimating the time it takes to complete a round.

How do you stay informed and continue learning in this evolving market? 

I do the boring stuff that most founders should, but I have the time and the inclination; I read all the quarterly, half yearly and yearly reports from Pitchbook or Deal Room and also Techcrunch, Crunchbase and then you have KPMG. I think people who come to join us have the smarts, they just don't have the raw data and, sadly, because they don’t have the data they start believing what the press, the media & investors tell them. Things like, “Oh it's crashed, there's no capital, you should accept any terms, any deal is better than nothing” and I profoundly detest that.

What's happening now is founders are listening to bullshit media, which has no hard data behind it, so we give all the hard data and they they can make their own opinion with our summary. Ultimately, it's a boring job to digest, make sense and summarise 20 of these massive reports every quarter, but the founders love it, which is why we have a webinar called the Quartely Fundraising Update where you actually learn what's happening, who has raised big but hasn't announced it, who has collapsed and died, what are the new terms that you're likely to receive from investors, what is a fair deal, what is very unfair and if you're being screwed.

All of these changes are super rapid, so you need to keep a grip of it and its difficult for founders as they’ve got other stuff to do.

How much did you raise in your career for yourself, your own companies and as an advisor of your program?

 I was advising one-on-one before we started The Bootcamp so I've done this for about 20 years now. The last formal round was for a Danish company that I took over, as it was bankrupt, and we managed to resuscitate it with a new product and a new product market fit strategy. I raised $10 million - so that was my last round where I did it for myself. For my company and before that, I have helped around 20 startups in total, which I would put to around 10 to 20 million. They were small early stage pre-seed and seed between $500K to 2 million on average, but I've done about 10 to 20 companies and as an investment banker, where I raised about 150 million, so in total we're close to 200 million fundraised; Ten million in my last company and then about 180 million for other companies in in early stage rounds. I haven't done the big ones, the 100 million rounds in a big exit, it was always early stages. As of March 2024, the Bootcamp Program is two and a half years old, having helped 261 companies which have raised over 350 million already, where I think there's another 40 million, but it's hasn't been reported yet as we're really struggling to get the information in real time. Especially in the last two years, the most impossible years for raising capital, to have raised 350 million is amazing so we're happy. But just to be clear, we have a methodology, a bunch of technology tools, a process and the very hard direct data, but the founders are the ones that have done the miracles.