Felix Lorenzen’s Post

I have often said that networking events in Paris are bad. Not to say, terrible. Poor organization, audiences optimized for quantity instead of quality, lack of vision behind the event. And as many of you know, I started organizing my own as a result. ***BUT*** I have to say, people & companies are stepping up their game. The events I attended recently were all pretty neat. First of all, they were very well organized themselves, they were part of a bigger vision of the organizers, and, the approach I also follow, had a very limited and highly curated small audience. Intimate atmosphere, incredibly easy to connect not only with other attendees, but also to engage directly and meaningfully with the organizers and panelists. 🥐 ☕️ Breakfast panel event hosted by Sifted about solving a French challenge to go international. 🧑💻👩💻 AI Work Day hosted by WeWork with a 60 minute panel on how AI drives disruptive innovation [it was less buzzword bingo than the title might indicate 🤓]. 🤖🔮 Roundtable hosted by Cycle App & Hexa titled The Future of AI with Olivier Godement, Head of Product at OpenAI. I have to say, chapeau! They were not only fun to attend and great to meet really interesting people, but also rich in insight. And, my personal favorite: I was able to ask some 🌶️ questions and get into the nitty gritty instead of just scratching the surface, especially in AI where the same message has been repeated for a year now 🤓🙏 As I write this post, I'm thinking about what the three events have in common that isn't obvious (like they all had panels). Interestingly, they were not in the evening. They were all in the morning or noon at the latest. This requires attendees to make the event a priority in their busy daily schedules, rather than using it as an opportunity to get a free apéro before going home to watch Netflix. Could that be part of the secret sauce? I also thought about organizing breakfast events in Paris, but I was actually too worried that people would not make time for it, would not make it a priority. And there are a lot of reasons why events in the morning before work are a terrible idea. But I think we can reject that hypothesis. Time to grab the secret sauce and get cooking 🧑🍳 🥘 🥘 🥘 So what's on the menu? I'm currently organizing my next Founder x Investor event. Keeping it small, thinking about 10 attendees max. Possibly with a focus on health & longevity, but not decided yet. Wanna to join? Shoot me a message! Love, F 🫶 P.S.: Back when I was in SF, Morning Tech Brew became my personal favorite meetup and was a non-negotiable for me. Nuné and Felipe are building a superb community full of inspiring people, meeting every Thursday morning (Another strong argument pro morning events 😏). If you happen to be in the Bay Area, you don't want to miss it. P.P.S.: Shout out to all who made this possible and are making a difference in our beautiful 🇫🇷 capital city.

An homage to ambition. And A players. And ambitious A player teams. There's a quote by Paul Graham that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and it's the reason for this post. It's about why ambitious people need to be around other ambitious people: "Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water." The narrative of PG's quote is pretty close to what Steve Jobs once said about managing your team: "You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. It's too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players." That got me thinking. Beyond the obvious. Steve's quote is nothing new - especially in the startup world. Every A team can withstand a B. Every ambitious team can withstand an element of mediocrity. It will eventually self-correct. B's will complain about A's as much as mediocrity will complain about ambition. But it will self-correct. As long as it doesn't take over the majority of the team. Then it would require not-so-nice actions. Reed Hastings wrote a bestseller about how his company, Netflix, thrived after making these tough choices and defining their famous culture (of course, it's just one element of many, but it's fundamental 😉). I've been through this dilemma myself. Recruiting quickly became more important than hiring A's. This became a downward spiral that negatively affected the team. Not only performance, but also mood, motivation, even helping colleagues and finally turnover. The number of A's got smaller and smaller, while the total number of employees stayed the same. -- All of which brings me back to Paul Graham's words: ambitious people need to be with their own kind in order to thrive. When you take these individuals and put them together, they blossom like dying plants given water. A powerful metaphor for the importance of creating and protecting the right environment. To attract *true* world class talent. To create *true* world class teams. To build *true* world class companies. The ambition of ambitious people. Happy Friday! Love, F 🫶

I watched an interesting interview with Max Marchione earlier today. Super inspiring overall, but one particular question stood out to me. *What’s the number 1 thing you want us to hold you accountable for?* It got me thinking. How would I answer this question? What's the one thing I hold myself accountable for? At the beginning of the year, I wrote down just one single resolution for 2024. To keep it simple and focused. *Being in control to grow* Yeah, sounds pretty vague. True. While you're right that 'in control' or 'grow' isn't clearly defined and probably too vague to be held accountable for at the end of the year, it still does one thing pretty well. It calls out certain actions that don't contribute to 'control' or 'growth'. Or even if I don't take any action (which is also an action, right?! 😏 Not answering a yes/no question is a no answer). There are a few things in my life that I am procrastinating on right now. Where I have chosen to delay an answer, a decision, an action. Some are more important than others. Obviously. While I can avoid talking about these points with others, at the end of the year, however, when I hold myself accountable for *being in control to grow*, there are no excuses. Yes or no. Black or white. It's a great reminder, almost at the halfway point of the year, to check in with ourselves and be brutally honest. What do we want to accomplish? Or to come full circle with this post, what's the number 1 thing you want us to hold you accountable for [in XYZ months]? For me, it's kind of a kick in the a**. Getting back in the driver's seat again. See you at the finish line 🏁 Love, F 🫶 P.S.: I've been talking about health as a massive opportunity for a while now. It's incrediblly inspiring what Max and his team are building at Superpower. Hyper ambitious and yet super well equipped to make it a success. I'm a fan. P.P.S.: Link to the video in comments (Shoutout The Sachin and Adam Show) P.P.P.S.: Yes, I miss (running) in #sanfrancisco

Let me share a little anecdote with you. A bit of food for thought. Something to think about during the weekend. "Well, I was a little kid, at school. And every day, I'd pretend I was two things: a giant and a pirate. All day long, I believed I had the strength of a giant and the rule-breaking swagger of a pirate. I told my teachers I was these two characters. And at home, I told my parents the same thing. My teachers laughed at me— and put me down, telling me to be more realistic, to behave more like the other kids and to stop all my ridiculous dreaming." "What did your parents say? Were they kinder to you?" asked the entrepreneur, now sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed in a yoga posture. "Same as my teachers. They told me I wasn't a giant. And that I definitely was no pirate. They reminded me that I was a little boy. And told me that if I didn't limit my imagination, stifle my creativity and put an end to my fantasies, they'd punish me." "So, what happened?" "I did what I was told to do. I caved in. I bought into the attitudes of the adults. I made myself tinier instead of grander, so I'd be a good boy. I suficated my hopes, gifts and powers in an effort to conform—like most people do every single day of their lives." 🍒 🍒 🍒 It's a paragraph from Robin Sharma's bestselling book The 5AM Club. A paragraph I saved to my iPhone notes. A paragraph that I read over and over again. It made me think a lot. Think about my own childhood. About my childhood dreams and what happened to them. Most of you know that as a consequence of this reflection, I went to San Francisco for a few weeks. One of the best experiences I've ever had. No doubt. But coming back wasn't easy. The energy I soaked up drained quickly. But, and here's the big but, giving in is not an option. The arena to play looks different. The game to play is the same though. Giving. In. Is. Not. An. Option. Not for me. Not for you. Doesn't matter what others say. Doesn't matter what others believe is right. Happy kick-ass weekend! Love, F 🫶

Most people take the limits of their vision to be the limits of the world. A few don’t. Love, F 🫶

𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥: listening to podcasts and audiobooks on 2x or more.

This might be the most 🤯 video I (and you) have seen in a long time. OpenAI et al. raised millions for something what Darya and Hugo built in 24 hours. Provocative statement, I know. But take a look for yourself. They made Mistral AI multimodal. In 24 hours. 🔥🔥🔥 Keep an eye on this (inflationary word, but here it's nothing but true) rock star team. Crazy sh*t incoming. Very soon. 🍒 Love, F 🫶

What I do pretty regularly is reflecting. What I do. What I enjoy. If I still enjoy what I do. As most of you probably know (🤓), I've been posting on LinkedIn every day for more than two months now. 63 days to be precise. What was a great source of enjoyment and even energy has, however, turned into something I feel like I have to do. Even draining energy. When I started, I promised myself that I would post every day, no matter what. And it worked. Even pretty well. Especially - and no big surprise - when I was in #SanFrancisco. I took the liberty of ignoring some believed LinkedIn etiquette and went into full honest-authentic-Felix mode. Talking about what I think. What I experience(d). What I think about what I experience(d). Which was - and still is - the right decision to do. Nobody needs another news outlet about the latest AI stuff. Nobody needs the same old wisdom repeatedly repeated (🤓) over and over again. I highly advocate for authenticity. Dare to have a (well-informed) opinion. The connections I have made, the people I have met (also) thanks to my posts are still 🤯-ing for me. But now let's get to the but. **But** if we (I) are honest with ourselves, it got a little out of control. At least out of my control. I optimized for continuity - not to say quantity - instead of quality. Eventually, I did exactly what I didn't want to do. Posting just to post. Posting the same old wisdom that everyone else can post and has already posted 1,000 times. To eventually become irrelevant as a person (I like very direct but candid messages as you know 😉). For me, this is a sign that I need to change something. Get back in control. Even if it means not optimizing for LinkedIn's algorithm. When I started posting, I asked the rhetorical question of what I am passionate about and where I am authentic. And they are still the same: 1️⃣ - Personal growth & ambition 2️⃣ - Building crazy new sh*t (aka tech, startups, entrepreneurship) 3️⃣ - Obviously AI [though I feel a certain fatigue when it's AI as a product rather than a product powered by AI]. 🍒 Finally, let's get on to the *So What?!*. What is going to change from now on is that I am resetting the focus. It will be what it should be: Quality. Not quantity. That doesn't mean I won't post every day anymore. But, if I miss a day or if I'm just not happy with the post, it's okay to stay silent. “A smart person knows how to talk. A wise person knows when to be silent.” ― Roy T. Bennett Over and out 🎤 Love, F 🫶 P.S.: There are two things that I find particularly interesting in the "Building crazy new sh*t" category. One is #health (-tech). Optimizing health and longevity is a topic I am deeply involved in right now. The other is #community. I find Adam Newman's Flow incredibly fascinating. I'd definitely move in today.

Over the weekend, I found out that - ICQ, my teenagers' biggest tool crush - is shutting down its service on June 26. A 💔 moment. But you can still sign up as of today. That's what I did right away. I went straight to the login where you can enter your account's 9-digit login number. I typed in my login number, my password, hit enter, logged in, accessed my profile and all my chats. But here's the kicker. The last time I used ICQ was somewhere between 15 and 18 years ago.  However, as if it were 15 year old Felix, the 9-digit account number and password are still top of mind. Easily accessible memory. This completely blew my mind. I asked my brother if he remembered his login. Same reaction. Instant answer. Fast forward to May 2024, after a long battle the decision has been made to shut down ICQ. And I'm asking myself "is my family the only one who can remember their login without a blink of an eye? are we the only ones who instantly fall into 30 minute nostalgia stories from back then? Could there be an overlooked - or misjudged or poorly executed - opportunity? An opportunity to create an instant, powerful connection with one of the strongest customer groups (our dear Millenials and early Gen Z's) out there? I am thinking LimeWire. Or is it - much like the Nokia 3310 - just nostalgia? A product/tool that is great in our memories but (sorry, but let's be honest) worthless today? Could ICQ be reinvented with an instant competitive advantage that normally takes decades to build, a strong brand? Could ICQ become a completely different product? One that has nothing to do with messenger apps. Despite all these unanswered questions, my first reaction when I read the news was: is ICQ for sale? I'm really interested. At least to know. To possibly react. 🍒 Many questions are in my post today. Is there an opportunity with ICQ that could be wasted? Or is it time to leave the playing field? What happens next with ICQ? Is it for sale? Or what's up? If you have any thoughts on this I am super interested. Let me know 🙏 Love, F 🫶 P.S.: Photo of the Lorenzen's aka ICQ brothers from somewhere between "we use it all the time" and today's "what do you mean they shut it down?!" #icq