Against All Odds
I'm writing this from Sevran, the city where I grew up.
93. One of France's toughest environments.
When I tell international investors my story, they're shocked.
"You built this from there?"
They don't understand: France isn't Silicon Valley.
There's no VC ecosystem waiting to fund your dreams.
There's no celebration of entrepreneurship.
There's no second-chance culture if you fail.
What I Had to Overcome:
- Banks that laugh at 25-year-olds asking for business loans
- Family that thinks entrepreneurship = unemployment
- Social circle where "success" = stable government job
- Tax system that takes 73% if you succeed
- Cultural distrust of business and profit
Every euro I earned, I earned with 10x the resistance an American entrepreneur would face.
My €47,000 contracts in France = equivalent to €200k+ in easier markets.
But here's what they miss:
Constraints create creativity.
Scarcity creates systemization.
Resistance creates resilience.
I learned to build with nothing. To systemize because I had no choice. To create value in a system designed to extract it.
This is why French engineering is world-class.
This is why French entrepreneurs who escape France dominate.
We learned to build with less. And that's the ultimate competitive advantage.
Born in Sevran. Built global. The system tried to stop me. It made me stronger.