Leadership as First-Time Founders

Alexis:

Welcome to the podcast on Emerging Leadership. I'm your host, Alexis Monville. Today, we have both Héloïse Rozès and Nikolai Fomm on the show. They are both co-founders of Corma, and they will explain a little bit what it is. Héloïse and Nikolai, it's great to have you both on the show. Let's start with some introductions. How do you typically introduce yourself to someone you just met?

Héloïse:

It's a good question. When I meet someone — if it's an informal setting — I'm going to say: hi, my name is Héloïse, I'm working in Paris as a founder. And then I'll see if the person is in a startup ecosystem or not before knowing how to introduce myself better.

Alexis:

Okay. Nikolai, how about you?

Nikolai:

Yeah, I would say I'm Nikolai, one of the founders of Corma, and then maybe say a little bit more about what I'm doing in life or at the company. Usually it gets quite quickly to what we're doing as a company. But like Héloïse, I see who I have in front of me first, so I don't give a one-minute monologue the other person doesn't really understand or want to know.

Alexis:

Let's say I'm interested and I ask: okay, what is Corma about? What would you say?

Nikolai:

To keep it short and spicy: people work with a lot of different software tools nowadays — just think of all the new AI tools coming in. It's becoming a mess for employees to understand where they have access, how to get access to a new tool. It's messy for the company who needs to make sure you don't pay for unused seats, that people are not signing up to dangerous AI tools and uploading the company's secret data to some weird AI company. It's also a mess for the IT team. At Corma, we want to solve that by bringing everything together in one place, providing a great employee experience and at the same time making the company's life easier.

Alexis:

Excellent. Héloïse, can you do it better? Just to put some competition between the two of you — can you make it shorter?

Héloïse:

I'm lucky I got a bit of time to think about the question. Corma is the co-pilot of your IT for handling licenses. That's how I put it in a sentence. People then say: okay, but what does it really mean? I tell them: you're a head of IT of 1,000 people. You have to manage computers, Wi-Fi, VPNs, the little mouse of the computer too — but also the software and what's happening in the cloud. When you look at the application park, your software stack represents a budget of three million dollars. It's a black box where you don't know what the ROI is, and you have no clue who has access to what, at what hour, and if it complies. Corma solves that problem by being the cockpit of truth of your licenses.

Alexis:

Excellent. So you're both co-founders, and if I understood well, there's a third one who is not in the room.

Nikolai:

Yeah, our CTO. You know, they don't like to talk to people too much. No — that's not true. He's called Samuel. He's also very nice and sociable, but right now he's on his well-deserved honeymoon. So we try to leave him alone as much as possible. That's why it's only the two of us.

Alexis:

I love that you're paying attention to that. Okay — you're first-time founders. How do you experience leadership? Nikolai, could you share your perspective?

Nikolai:

It was interesting because before I worked for two and a half years in another startup and saw some good growth there. I always looked at the founder — whenever I didn't know something, you ask the founder and expect him to be a bit of a wizard who knows the answer to everything. Now I'm in this position myself, and I know this is not necessarily true. I see it as a challenge that you need to figure stuff out that nobody did before you. Obviously you have advisors, and we're three co-founders, so we can ask each other — that already helps at the start. But it's still a big challenge that a lot of people rely on you. You have your vision, but you might doubt it sometimes. Becoming a founder is a process when you never did it before in your life.

Alexis:

And Héloïse, I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

Héloïse:

Being a leader as a young founder in a startup is absolutely thrilling. I've always looked at leaders as leading by example, and I hope I share a good example with what I'm doing in my day and how I act in my life. But the biggest challenge for me is communication, because we have so much information in our heads. We have to communicate it one way to our co-founders, and not communicate some things because we don't want to disturb them in deep work. You communicate differently to employees, to interns, to freelancers, but also to investors, clients, prospects, and people you just meet at a random networking cocktail. Communication is very important to me, and it's a challenge I'm not ready to have completely tackled yet.

Nikolai:

To jump in immediately — you have the extra challenge that you are the CEO, so you're also in charge of the communication with the external world. People will always look to you first. There's internal communication of different types, and then the whole external world. The employees see what you say outside, your investors have insights into the company too. Balancing those different requirements where you are in the spotlight is interesting.

Alexis:

From what I've observed, you are doing really great. There are always challenges in early-stage startups. Can you tell me what are the typical leadership challenges you face? Héloïse, do you want to take that first?

Héloïse:

Yes. The first challenge is people. It's the most important challenge of all, because a company is built on its team. One challenge we had to face was our first maternity leave during the life of the startup. It was a surprise for everyone, the person included. We're all very happy that it's happening and going well. However, no one tells you as a young founder how to react when your employee tells you they're going on maternity leave in the next six months — and how to find the right words in a culture that's very international with a noticeable age gap. There's a lot to put into context for that first reaction, which for me was natural because I think life is a miracle and very warm. But it's also a challenge for the whole team to make sure everything goes well for everyone professionally.

Alexis:

I have to admit, the first time it happened to me, I believe my face showed something completely different from what I wanted to say. I saw the face of the person in front of me, and I realized my face was already telling: what will we do now? What I wanted to say was, of course, congratulations — but I was already starting to compute what we would do, because that's an important person.

Nikolai:

I think this summarizes many things. You have really happy moments and still lots of concerns at the same time. We are very happy for her, but we still feel the responsibility as founders, because this person also has a leadership role — you think: who will cover that? At the same time, our CTO goes on a honeymoon, and someone else needs to travel for a visa. We always have a lot in the back of our heads. I don't think considering all that makes us less humane — we try to be very empathetic, but we also need to make sure the company survives, because in the end that's the goal. Balancing those thoughts is important.

To add: I would agree people is the challenge of challenges, because there's always so much happening at the same time and you need to prioritize. Which I find quite difficult — sometimes you have to say no. By definition, a startup has very limited resources. People will have ideas that might be great, but you need to prioritize, because if you do everything at once, you do nothing. That's quite important to set as a clear guideline for yourself, the founding team, and the employees.

Héloïse:

I completely agree. Especially in a tech startup where people are tech wizards, project geniuses — call it whatever — people are very creative. They always have a cool idea for new research or a new feature. But at the end of the day, maybe it's my CEO hat: for me, if it doesn't go on the front line and there's no impact on revenue, it's not a good idea. Not if I cannot see where it's going to bring more value to the market we're addressing.

Nikolai:

Sometimes it's a bit brutal. You don't want to be the no-person, and we don't say no most of the time, but it happens. You want people to have ideas, because maybe one is something nobody thought about and it sparks something great. The minimum we have to do is really challenge it. Sometimes we have to be a bit tough and say: yeah, okay, cool, but honestly maybe in two years if everything goes well. That's not always easy.

Héloïse:

And to channel the energy of people that joined the team, we created a new ambassador program called Cormacolindor. The name Corma comes from the name of the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings — and Cormacolindor is literally Elvish for the ring-bearer, the person who bears the ring. Like Frodo, when you're at Corma, you're a Cormacolindor. We did this program quite recently with new hires to help them step by step collaborate with each other to reach the OKRs, to do things outside of work that build team spirit, and to make sure that individually they shine because everyone is unique. Someone cannot be replaced. It's a very interesting program to leverage and make them shine as people.

Alexis:

I love it. So you put people first as a challenge, and I can see you really take care of how people contribute to the company, but also how they develop themselves and grow into their roles and with each other. Are there other challenges in managing people as young founders?

Nikolai:

An important thing is people, but as a startup you're in survival mode all the time. Technically every company is in survival mode, but it's strongest in startups because they're young, they haven't proved themselves yet, they don't have as much money as they want, they don't have product-market fit yet generating profitable revenues every month. It's tough on the commercial side too, and the founders are heavily involved because we have investors, we have funding, but we need to show revenue — to prove that our product, our idea, is needed, and at the same time pay the bills. Balancing the financial need to push commercial expansion without getting lost in it — and remembering you sell your product because you believe in it, and that more clients give you more user feedback — that's also a challenge. If a client asks you, can you do this? You obviously say yes. If it's not there at all, you say it's on the roadmap. If it's humanly or technically impossible right now, you say we'll look into it next quarter. But you cannot oversell all the time, you need to take a step back and balance.

Alexis:

When the leadership team embodies the values and principles they want to see in the organization, then I believe the organization can scale, can grow, and can become something very beautiful. Do you agree with that statement?

Héloïse:

Yeah. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. It's a basic sentence to say, but it really summarizes the whole feeling we see — not just at Corma as a company that is very strong on the values it upholds, but also within Station F, we see startups that are very united, where the people are the cement of the whole building, of the cathedral they're going to build. It beats any competition. It just shines.

Alexis:

So what are you doing to create such a culture?

Nikolai:

As you mentioned, it's a lot of leadership by example. You need to live the company values, and it's something we learned: you need to actively nurture it. People probably have the tendency to copy behavior, but you need to encourage it. It wasn't always super easy, because sometimes people feel the founder has their unique role and only they share direction. But it's part of our DNA that we want people to lead the way as well. Sometimes you need to actively fine-tune programs — like the ambassador program we mentioned — but it can also be small stuff: how you give praise, how you give feedback. We try to follow the Radical Candor methodology in how we do feedback and personal career development. It's an active process. Even if we try to live as the best example, we still need to be active about it.

Héloïse:

Some examples: being on time, or even early — being on time is being late. Being present for others. If someone wants to talk about something, they can pick a lunch with you very easily — that's something a founder does. Sometimes it's career coaching, sometimes we talk about other things than work, like what's next in five years and how we can get you there. It's about creating an alumni group that inspires the current people at Corma. It's about giving people the voice to be heard so they embody the leadership position Nikolai was just describing.

It's not just the ambassador program. It's a mix of how you celebrate the little wins, how you close a deal — okay, how can I help you close your deal today? Collaboration on different topics, putting everyone on the same team. There's not a tech team and a sales team — that's just one team. It's just not possible not to talk to each other, even if at some point you don't understand what JavaScript is.

Alexis:

I love what you're saying. You mentioned Radical Candor. For the audience: the idea, if I summarize it, is that if you care personally about people, then you can challenge them directly. That's the important part. If people feel you care about them, you can challenge them and give feedback. If you don't show you care, it's like trying to put a big truck on a rope bridge — your feedback won't go through, it's basically useless. Is that a good summary?

Nikolai:

I think the other thing is even more dangerous: because you care — and we all care deeply about the team, the humans behind it — you might not challenge directly. In the concept it's called ruinous empathy, and I think it's a big risk that you're trying to be too nice, too cushy. It's like the example after lunch when you have some food stuck on your face. You don't want to tell the person because you don't want to embarrass them — but imagine they go off and spend the whole day with food on their face. They would have been so much more grateful for that uncomfortable moment when you say: sorry, maybe clean your mouth a little bit. You created a small uncomfortable moment, but because you care personally, you gave constructive feedback. Just being toxic and not caring about people while giving feedback — obviously there are toxic people, I don't think we are at risk of that. So for me, it's more about avoiding ruinous empathy and challenging directly because we have the best intention behind it.

Alexis:

I love it. Thank you for the example — that will make it very clear to people. They will all try to look if they don't have anything left on their face. So lastly, what advice would you like to share with our audience, especially those who are aspiring leaders or early-stage founders?

Nikolai:

There are some basic things. You throw yourself into the cold water. I know some people who hesitated to take leadership positions because they were scared to manage others — because they're still a bit young, a bit shy. You have to do it to learn it. It's not something you learn in textbooks. So first, bring yourself into the position to lead. Then you'll see that you don't need to figure everything out on your own. Find yourself some mentors, find yourself some friends. We have us three co-founders, and I would say we are really tightly linked. Try to exchange with people that lived in the past in the same situation and learn from what worked for them. Follow your intuition: if something doesn't feel right, reflect on it; if you have a good feeling about something, have the courage to act. Don't be too scared. That's the uncomfortable part of leadership — sometimes you need to do things that are not super pleasant, but you have to do it because nobody else will.

Héloïse:

I can only second what Nikolai just said. One thing in addition: when you're young as a founder, there are a lot of topics you're going to realize exist for the first time in life — managing new employees, having a specific type of client to manage. They are zones of hurtful ignorance — not difficult to observe, because they come quite fast, but very difficult to overcome on your own. If you isolate yourself, it's going to be harsh on you, on your life, on your mental health, because you have like 15 ignorance bits to master at the same time and life gets in the way. What I would really recommend to a young founder: get your phone, build a list of the top 50 people — five or ten in every category — that you most admire in the world, in your region, in your industry. Get them on the phone, book a meeting with them. It might take you a year, but at the end of the day, you're going to make it happen.

Nikolai:

Actually, I would disagree — it won't take you a year. One thing that surprised me is how happy many leaders are to share their knowledge. We're not out of school for that long, and the amount of senior people we speak to just because we reach out — okay, they get spammed by salespeople, but for founder-to-founder advice they are usually really happy to share. So really, go out there and try to get some advice and mentorship. It's easier than you think. I don't think you need a year for it, but it's super valuable.

Alexis:

I love that. That's really beautiful. Thank you for being on the podcast today.

Héloïse:

Thank you!