Where were we? Ah, yes. Eirik and Joe were ready, we were working on the presentations to look for the money we were missing. And even if we have all created companies, none of us had experience in raising funds. Even the typology of this "market" escaped us. What’s the difference between all these abstruse (OOPS) and Anglo-Saxons terms (no cause and effect relationship between the two)?

 

Like everyone, I’ve heard talk about these "VCs" and other "business angels", that were covered so much by the media in the years 99-2000.  But through lack of luck or will, I hadn’t met them on certain Tuesdays over the course of a few months in those years (the famous "First Tuesdays"). Maybe, also, because for them I was no one. Mind you, I hope it’s still the case for some of them when I reread some articles. Anyway, we weren’t interested in people who were only motivated by their short-term return on investment. We wanted people or companies giving us the most guarantees possible on the durability of the project as a whole...

Well, I’m telling the story this way, but at the time, we went to make a certain number of presentations. Just to learn. The selection of first meetings was easy, the number of these companies / people not put off by an Internet project was "very limited". Moreover, the nervousness in France was more tangible than elsewhere...


So, when we saw how some people met with us and analyzed our proposition, we even thought how we could go to a bank for a loan… I can just imagine the look on the face of the loan officer: hi, it’s concerning a 13 million euro loan!!! Should I leave now?

However, one thing always made us believe in it.  Everyone who said "no"  (too small, too big, too I don’t know what), and those who said "yes", but who we didn’t want (seeing their conditions), had a point in common: they all thought the project was coherent and had a great chance for success.


Especially, we had chosen this brand, this emblematic image of the French Web, supported by simple but great principles… We couldn’t give up. So, we continued. 

We saw individuals, institutions commercial banks, companies, funds, etc… in France and in England. With the hope of getting more information, to grasp the different existing models, in short, to know how to reconcile our search for funds with our quest for independence over the long term.

And, like in every happy story, we had a little bit of luck.

Destiny smiled upon us, a friend of Joe’s wife,  the founder of… "First Tuesdays", put us in touch via her company with the person who, after 12 months of negotiations, became our latest associate. One thing that we quickly understood: get advice, even if you have to pay for it, rather than run around in circles.

 

In the end, we started a project that we named "Management Buy In", which is in fact when executives from outside the company buy it. With their own means (no project without cost) and credit backed by a family foundation, with a history of stable and transparent investments.And over generations, in sectors clearly marked as "acceptable".

This "MBI" is the combination of an "LBO" (Leverage Buy Out) and an "MBO" (Management Buy Out). Clearly recognized as one of the new governance models, as opposed to quoted companies, for example, where one is naturally pushed to manage in function to the stock price, something we didn’t know existed before this.

 

There were no guarantees, only time would tell if our choice was the right one. I can only assure you of one thing: the negotiation with the shareholders of Gandi was "simple" compared to that with my associates. Simply because, at the most, I wanted to protect our chances to achieve our project, in the way that we had thought.

Sure, other solutions were possible, including models that mixed some of them: I’m certain that we could have arranged to set up the purchase in a thousand different ways. That’s not really important, in fact. The essential point is that we did it, that this project exists under the right conditions.

Oh yeah, one clarification: At the moment that I set up the dossier to purchase it, before knowing if it was going to work, I was unemployed. The few liquid assets (laid-off from Lycos) that I had, were spent on the project, at the moment of the arrival of our second child. Risks are necessary in every entrepreneurial project, just try to limit them as much as possible^^.