Post by André Pitié

Yesterday at STATION F, Philipp Scholz organised an EWOR evening with amazing speakers and guests (like Hubertus Bessau, the co-founder of mymuesli or Petter Made the co-founder of SumUp), with the help of START Paris and EuroTech Federation. Among the speakers : Mathieu Nebra , the founder of OpenClassrooms, one amazing example of France startups and scale-ups - La French Tech. A few quotes from the interview with Mathieu Nebra: On building in Paris: “Paris is a gravitational hub. There’s talent, funding, and support — Jeune Entreprise Innovante, grants, loans… But culturally, we still punish failure. Rebounding after a failure is harder here than in the U.S.” On startup reality: “In a startup, 98 % of the time it feels like you’re failing. It’s constant chaos — HR issues, product issues, everything. Once you accept that this is normal, you stop suffering from it and just keep building.” On resilience: “I see a psychologist every week — even when things go well. Founders need someone to talk to. Mental energy is part of execution.” On scaling: “At €10 M ARR, communication becomes the hardest problem. Suddenly, you need structure, squads, HR, finance, and career paths. Internal alignment doesn’t happen by accident.” On growth mindset: “Block time every week to automate or remove small tasks. I call it my ‘win-time moment.’ And always ask yourself: What am I not good at — and how do I fix that?” For the full transcript :