Jamie | Day 15: Enriching each other with our differences
Mettons en commun ce que nous avons de meilleur et enrichissons-nous de nos mutuelles differences. —Paul Valéry
Let us embrace the very best of what we share and enrich one another with our mutual differences. —Paul Valéry
Tonight I enjoyed a collaborative dinner at Aribnb with other founders of Sharing Economy startups. Olivier, the Airbnb Regional Manager for Western Europe kindly hosted us in their Paris office. It was an evening of new encounters and one familiar face: Antonin, the founder of Ouishare. After several hours drifted by with pizza and conversation, we made our way outside and each of us headed home.
At the end of the evening, as Antonin and I readied to part ways on the metro platform at République, he turned to me and said, “Maybe we met two years too early.” I didn’t know what he meant, at least not immediately. As we faced one another, listening to the swish of the metro doors open and close by our side, my memory began to play back the scenes in my mind that would explain what Antonin meant.
Our first encounter was two years ago in Paris, almost to the day, after a friend of mine introduced us over email. Antonin suggested we meet at a barbecue in a courtyard of a stunning building that houses a foundation created by Eugénie Napoleon the wife of Napoleon III. I didn’t think much about the significance of our setting at the time, other than that it was beautiful and a perfect entrée to my visit. Now, looking back, all the details of that first meeting are like poetry; the Napoleonic backdrop, the potluck and even the odd darkness of the night have all taken on a new meaning with time. Reflecting from where we are today, that mid-September evening may as well have been another lifetime.
Vayable was only a few months old and the term ‘Sharing Economy’ hadn't yet been uttered by anyone beyond a few people we personally knew. Even Airbnb was just beginning to get real traction abroad. At the time, you could count on one hand the people discussing the idea of a peer economy publicly, and 24-year-old Antonin was one of them. His make-shift soapbox of a blog, a Facebook group with an ever-changing name, and small community events were modest, but his mission was not. So it turned out, we had that in common.
I was bootstrapping the business on my own and had just recently raised a very small amount of angel funding that allowed me to do things like host our website, allocate a small stipend to myself and a couple employees, and throw small community meet-ups. A conference was flying me to Milan to speak, so I took the opportunity to make a stop in Paris to visit a tiny, but promising Vayable community that had seemed to sprout up out of nowhere. Today it’s our biggest destination.
Antonin and I spent the evening alternating between speaking English and Spanish, with brief exemptions for French, when I had the vocabulary. The topic of conversation centered almost exclusively on travel, cultural exchange and why the sharing economy is inevitable. He spoke about the transformative experience he had living as an insider in South America, and I spoke of the same I believed everyone could have worldwide. I don’t think I realized that I was already achieving what I’d set out to do that night in that Napoleonic garden.
Over the next few days a very small, modest community began to cohere in Paris as Antonin, an innate connector, introduced me to people he knew would be excited about Vayable. Together, we brought them into the fold of the seedling that was Vayable’s Paris community. We had about 12 insiders in Paris. We wanted to double that, and we did. But looking back now on who is still using our platform, who is not, and why, I realize that it’s not actually the quantity of insiders that made the impact and spurred our growth— it was the quality. The true metrics of our business are engagement, empathy and openness — one insider who possess these traits is more valuable 100 people who do not.
Antonin had become my insider, not only to Paris, but to a core piece of my own business. And I, coming from halfway around the globe, had become his. Talking with Antonin was like taking a crash course French culture. He was always running late and he loved to criticize the U.S.. He introduced me to music festivals in Neuilly, home-cooked meals in the 13em, and to local reporters — everything I’d want to get out of the city in my three-day visit there. To Antonin, criticism is good, money is bad, enjoying life is more important than following a schedule, and process is overrated because the things that matter will get done, eventually, somehow. I contended that criticism is only as good as its application, money is what makes the world go ‘round (whether we like it or not), schedules allow us to enjoy more life and process is necessary to yield the best results (which we should measure!) quickly. We never resolved our conversations, but rather punctuated them with “you’re so French” or “you’re so American” to mark the end of a round of light sparring. We were opposites; we saw in the other an embodiment of the parts of our entrepreneurial selves that we most feared.
In many other ways, we also were each others foreign counterparts. We were equally as obsessed with the future. Despite our cultural clashes, we both rejected the idea that barriers could stop people from connecting. And when we placed side-by-side the images of a better world that each of our minds had painted, they were identical.
Over the same two years, Vayable’s group of 12 Insiders in Paris in 2011 has grown to 120 engaged, passionate members. Globally we’ve grown from 150 to more than 5,000 insiders. We’ve built a team of some of Silicon Valley’s top talent and found investors to help us become a viable business. At the heart of our business are the relationships we’ve built with our Insiders, and no coffee or apéro with them is ever too long. We’ve opened up our product for debate and critique by our community and I’ve learned to embrace the often brutally honest feedback here as a gift. What else is more valuable? I’m less afraid of being transparent and sharing the whole story, even the “bad” parts. Because here, it’s not bad, it’s valued.
Meanwhile, Antonin’s mini soapbox has grown into a global movement that has captured the hearts of thousands of members and the attention of industry executives, government officials and the media. He’s worked without funding and leveraged his own passion and that of the people around him, but discovered, this is not fully sustainable. Antonin’s rigid schedule is now packed with speaking engagements and meetings, which are part of a new business plan (turns even movements need money).
As the overhead clock ticked past 23h in the République metro station, we stood opposite another in a rare silence. Why were each unable, or perhaps unwilling, to assimilate our mutual lessons two years ago when we met? We were so quick to embrace our similarities and so quick to reject our differences. As time has passed and wounds we’ve suffered along our respective journeys have scabbed, it is hard to imagine now that the wisdom we so easily and naïvely gave away to one another had gone lost in translation. But connections take time to build, a truth that’s easy to forget in the era of Facebook. The disappointment we experienced by seeing our ideas bounce off one another other like teflon was merely a result of our own impatience.
The slow transference that eventually took place between Antonin and I over the past couple years cuts to the heart of what our communities are seeking to build: a more inclusive and collaborative world that is open to change. And we’re far from alone. The movement toward this new economy is motivated by economic, environmental and social factors. It’s driven by changing regulations, changing governments and a changing idea of what it is to live a good life. But at its core, it’s driven by people from different places, backgrounds and ideas coming together over a shared value, a collective change of heart: the need to build a culture that puts experience and human collaboration at its center. This will take time, but it’s inevitable.
Standing in the metro station that night with Antonin marked the first of countless conversations we’ve shared over the last two years, in which neither of us referred to the other as “so French” or “so American.” We’re not so much anymore. Instead, before Antonin transferred to his next metro and I departed the station, we found a new way to punctuate the end of our conversation: with an embrace.
Who did you meet?
It’s been a great week filled with great people. I met with Christophe to shoot an interview about Vayable for an online course he’s teaching. I met with Alexandre, the former founder of a startup that used to be a competitor of ours in Paris. I attended a Sharing Economy dinner hosted by Antonin (Ouishare) and Olivier (Airbnb), where I met other local founders in the Peer Economy space, including Marion (Zilok), Paulin (Drivy) and Geoffroy (Pret d’union).
What was the biggest challenge?
I caught a bad cold that’s been going around Paris, so I had to work from home and was lower in energy than normal.
What new ideas did you have?
When I think back on our wins and losses as a business, the wins seem to almost always come from doing less with more intention. I think it can’t be a bad way to live life either. When I think about most successful entrepreneurs, this seems to be a common thread. I know that the last two years of building Vayable have certainly required this of me. It’s a good reminder to continue to apply it more granularly as you master each level of this practice.
What did you discover about yourself?
I think perhaps there’s more to gain by slowing down. The idea that speed = more = better is something I take for granted that’s quite prevalent in our culture back home. It’s not really the case here.
What’s something new you learned about the Vayable business/community?
Transparency and openness with your community is truly an underrated strength for a business. In the U.S., our low tolerance for criticism and unhappiness has the insidious effect of incentivizing us to bury the truth, because it’s not always pretty. Or to tell half-truths, which can also be harmful. While I wholeheartedly believe that organizations and businesses must craft their narratives in order to build a vision and grow, it’s also essential to provide raw data and information for users or members to craft their own narratives. Transparency both necessitates as well as mandates dialogue with your users. The beautiful consequence is the opportunity to build something even greater and more sustainable and beloved product from the sum of the praises and critiques you receive by sharing with your community.
Everyone is excited for our Community Demo Day tomorrow. In a sense, it’s the culmination of everything we’re doing. I think we’re all exhausted as well. It’s been nonstop activity for everyone while here and the stimulation of the city alone is enough to wear you out!
