The COVID situation require us to look out for each other more than ever before as the work life balance is completely shredded”
Last Wednesday, we launched a new series of Le Wagon Talk, informal networking events that let founders, accelerators and other important players in the local startup scene get together with future entrepreneurs to share their successes and failures.
We had the pleasure of welcoming Virgile Ollivier, CEO & co-founder at Livescale. Virgile is an active player in the local startup scene. An expert in video, digital media & innovation, he worked for 10 years in video post-production before co-founding Hubee in 2009, a leading provider for VOD platforms in Europe.
Livescale is his fourth company. He started his first startup at 19 years with the desire to be his own boss. Soon he came to the realisation that, as an entrepreneur, you are not really your own boss but an employee of a lot of stakeholders, i.e customers, shareholders, the state, etc.
Why do you think Livescale is has had more success compared to your previous ventures ?
When I look back at my first company, the motivation was clearly different. When the motivation behind a startup is selfish, most of the time it won’t work. With Livescale, first we saw an opportunity in the livestream industry and we added to that a clear vision and an even clearer idea of the impact we want to make as a company.
What are your main challenges as an entrepreneur ?
The biggest challenge for entrepreneurs is assumptions you have about the needs of your customers. For our case, the pain point our customers were facing were not the one we have identified. We had to work on bridging that gap, by doing a proper market fit, running customer interviews and get as much feedback from users as possible.
What are key personality traits for an entrepreneur ?
Leadership is a must. You can’t achieve anything by yourself. You need the right team to bring your ideas to life, and not only your internal team but all the partners, banks, lawyers and local community.
How are you adapting to COVID in terms of hiring and remote work ?
We were lucky enough to have tested remote hiring before. What we have to adjust to today is remote onboarding and it depends a lot on the empathy of the whole team.
Now, in terms of remote work, we are very aware of the fact that with COVID, the work life balance is completely shredded and we are extremely attentive to our team’s mental health situation. Most of us have family members in Europe or Asia and the news we are fed with every day from more affected countries are scary and can affect us. The situation requires us to look out for each other more than ever before.
Watch the full video 👇🏾
Join the next talk with StartupFest’s founder Philippe Telio, next April 29. 6:30 p.m.
