S2 #27 Victor Lugger | The Purposeful Project Podcast

Key Takeaways

it literally took us two months and a half to build a vision meet amazing people in tech both in the us here in europe all of that has built a trust in us and and three months later we were raising a seed fund of 24 million dollars we re-empower people with their time it's you don't have to raise your hand again and ask for the build and wait and ask for the credit card and split the machine etc etc then ask for a receipt all of that last 15 to 20 minutes three weeks later he has built an mvp that mvp has 40 bugs a minute and then i'm like this is actually bigger than it seems it's actually really big and then we come up with the name sunday and then the lawyers tell us well that's actually good victor welcome to the podcast thank you so much for joining us today do you mind kicking off the podcast by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do thank you i'm really happy to be here i'm victor lager 36 i live in london married to a french wife three children one through and five um i'm a restaurateur i started with my partner in the restaurant business eight years ago and we now have 26 restaurants in france uk and spain uh the name of that group we've built is big mama and it's been the most amazing adventure doubling size almost every year we're a little above 1 500 people doing italian food and trying to cook the most artisanal authentic italian food but in what happened to be pretty big and large restaurants considering that a meal is not only feeding people but it's actually offering them an experience and trying to enhance the best moment of their day and i'm also an entrepreneur in tech four months ago we launched sunday which is the fastest way to pay in restaurant in the world it's a spin-off from big mama uh and it's been in the in the recent months the most crazy adventure when we started literally with a with that very small idea a few months ago and now we are 90 people uh developing this product in the us uk france and spain um and rotting it out in over 2 500 restaurants wow you uh did you say you had this idea a few months ago it is really that that quick you've managed to to build this out yes before christmas we we actually said oh look with curvy now people are shooting are putting qr codes on tables why why wouldn't we do that in-house at big mama and enable people to pay so you scan the qr code and on your phone appears your bill you click on pay you've paid you go that lasted all in all seven seconds wow and so we developed that in-house and we were amazed by the results we got both from a client experience experience for clients it's literally stunning you you just we we re-empower people with their time it's you don't have to raise your hand again and ask for the build and wait and ask for the credit card and split the machine et cetera et cetera then ask for a receipt all of that last 15 to 20 minutes and from a restaurant point of view the what it brings namely table turn 15 minutes faster you get 40 to 100 more tips average spent is 10 to 15 percent higher as well because people have more time how many times have you been in the restaurant and you didn't get that coffee or that dessert because you really needed to go and well you needed to pay and that would last 15 minutes right so we were amazed by this and because i believe we are entrepreneurs already because we have this network because we have this um adventurous mindset it literally took us two months and a half to build a vision meet amazing people in tech both in the us here in europe all of that has built the trust in us and and three months later we were raising a seed fund of 24 million dollars and two months later we're 90 people in the company it's an unbelievable story and uh very exciting and very inspiring i i have that exact problem yesterday it took me 10 minutes to get the bill the poor waiting staff were also so run off their feet i didn't like to chase them you know it was such a busy day for them so it's uh i think that's just an awesome idea now just for my audience listening let's just step through this a bit so people can kind of visualize how they could do it so the first step was you had the idea and then next step was uh raise the money or next step was build the product what what happened next it's it's a very good question and as an entrepreneur i've i always try and share the true story about how we've built business and that true story is always very humbling and it's never that complicated and and it's always a very iterative process so we started with the idea the next minute one guy who is a 27 years old developer who works for big mama my restaurant company and practically day in day out he enables hardware and software in our company but he's not like this big tech city cto you know he's just a young kid he has an entrepreneurial mindset so when i call him and i say do you think you could like connect our pos with a qr code and we could enable people to pay i said oh yes let's try that three weeks later he has built an mvp that mvp has 40 bugs a minute but still it's there on the table and then people start to use it and then you realize that like six months before you would never have to put a qr code on the table as a restaurateur and as a client no one knew what qri codes were and all of a sudden you realize like everyone gets it you put them on the table you don't even have to explain the next minute like 40 of people pay with it you're like wow then that same guy he takes another one months two months three months just to make it a little better and we go for 20 bucks a minute to two bucks a minute and then it grows from 40 adoption rates to like 80. then you get really excited so the true story is at that point my partner and i were like okay we should spin this off let's find a 20 years old guy out of high school or out of business school we give him 200k from big mama and we spin that off like small time i find such a guy it happens this guy works for unicron and i have to like call him and say and explain to him why he should resign and join this and at the end of the call which lasted like for an hour i hung up i i hang off i call my partner and say that young guy he's not doing it i'm doing it it's too [ __ ] exciting why because for one hour i had to really convince the guy that it was not just playing with cure i could which is a little well it's interesting but there was a way bigger picture and there was a way bigger story because i was forced to on board someone to convince someone i actually convinced myself and then my partner says well yes yes you do it you were in a very comfortable situation victor you had built a business and my team here at the podcast studio were just talking about this that they eat in your restaurants and love your food right you have a reputation you built a business you know what you can green light it at that point you don't need to be doing what you're doing right now right you don't need to put your reputation on the line by doing something crazy right you could just sit back but but i can feel it in your energy you're alive because you're doing this because you're pushing yourself and taking that risk and that's what i think people don't understand about risk right i mean it literally can ignite you and and and i feel it and i love it everyone every entrepreneur i feel is different talking with fellow fellow entrepreneurs and talking with my partner who is obviously very different different to me as far as as for me [Music] what i think my motto in my in my i was about to say my professional life but actually in my life in general and then i'm not going to tell you how i met my wife but it's it was very much like this is if i i believe that if i want to achieve extraordinary results there is one way to do that it's by doing extraordinary choices and by extraordinary i'm talking about the very literal sense of it which is if i want something crazy to happen i need to do something crazy and if i keep only doing things within the box things that are expected things in the playbook there is no chance something amazing is going to happen something great things are going to happen good things are going to happen but i actually strive i want more than good i like to be in the i like to be in the crazy zone and so i have to force myself to do crazy stuff and yes starting a new venture in tech when you are an entrepreneur entrepreneurial restaurant it's a crazy thing it's not rational we had eight restaurants in france we were very successful in france which is a very small country right i i'm aware of that and then i said i'm going to move to london which is a city i've never been with my whole family start again here where no one is expecting us and launch a restaurant here it took me a year and a half and i went from managing 800 people to literally managing a team of 10 and we launched gloria and it was starting from scratch again and practically if i look at the money side of it uh we would have a bigger financial success if we had just been rolling it out in france and doing 40 restaurants in france whereas we took all that energy and we did two restaurants in the uk but i believe it makes my personal life way more fun way more unexpected way more crazy and it leads to another stuff which is going to lead to another stuff and my partner went to spain moved to spain he doesn't speak spanish his wife at 32 years old was in the top 20 of l'oreal she resigned to move with them and their children to spain she doesn't speak a word of spanish last year just thinking we don't have to go to spain to open a restaurant in spain we have restaurants now outside of france we have a great team we could do that from paris but let's do something crazy because something's crazy might happen down the line and now it's only a year later we had no clue we would they would be covered we had no clue we would be launching this tech venture but now we're launching this tech venture in spain as well day one because they are in spain i try and force myself to do stuff that make me feel uncomfortable for me it's a sign that i'm doing the right thing and most of them they i mean you don't invite here you don't invite me here to talk about all the things i do and they fail but i can tell you there are many of them i'm talking about the one i did and they for now they have partially some of them been a success or at least they led to what i feel personally is a success because as you said i feel i'm lovely i'm excited it's not only linked to professional success or recognition of financial success it's just like life is short and we're all going to die at least that's what i believe and and the reason why eventually we said let's do and spin off sunday out of big mama was i felt i will regret it if we don't do that i will regret i haven't taken that chance because in three or five years down the line 90 of the population in europe and in the u.s would be paying like that in restaurants and if i end up paying in restaurants on a qr code tomorrow through another technology and and i and i will not live a happy life thinking i was the guy who could have done that and now it's not my technology and that's we're going to feel really frustrating i think we've we've all had that idea that we didn't do i've definitely had ideas that i didn't do then you see it happening and you're like oh i had that idea you don't you don't want to have that feeling if you can help it i think people listening to you uh i'm an entrepreneur myself so i can i like i literally i feel excited listening to you and i because i know exactly what you're talking about but people listening that don't feel what you're talking about this this uncomfortable thing this being uncomfortable is good feeling they're gonna wonder where you've got this from and i and i perhaps wanna i just wanna back up a little bit like were your parents entrepreneurs where did this where does this love of risk come from so yes both my parents are entrepreneurs my mother is a doctor but she has her own practice and so she runs this company it's a very small company it's her own secretary but it's still a business and my father is an entrepreneur again he is a small company there are three people in it but he's always been working for himself i'm not sure it comes from here i think it comes maybe more from the family culture of enjoying difficult moments actually when you ask this question the first thing that got to my mind was how when i was a child and still today we've always been like mountain people so for holiday we would always be in the mountain and the best day ever could be that we would wake up at 5 00 a.m and at 6 00 a.m at night and it's like literally 10 degrees outside even in august at 6 00 a.m you start walking and you're shivering it's cold and then you walk like for five hours up the mountain every minute of it is like an intense effort so practically while you're doing it it's definitely not a good time it's it's it's hard effort and then you go down and your knees are hurting etc etc right so it's not in your feet or sore but then it was the best day of your year and and then when i was 20 i've done a few holidays hiking in really extreme conditions i went and i i went for 20 days canoeing in canada on a river where you had no cell phone and there were just literally bears and if we were not to fish yes to fish a fish at night we would not eat with my friend and so all these moments were actually technically really hard moments like you you're anxious am i gonna eat something tonight it's it's pouring rain for three days we are soaked we can't even like get dry during night it's all this but then it's the best memories in my life and i admittedly realized that the way i was raised was that i have great memories and and i cherish these moments that were technically really hard at the time if you talk to any guy who's run a marathon which i haven't they will tell you that it's one of the strongest memories in their life and running around 20 kilometers and it was really hard so running 40 must be really tough but then it's something you cherish because you probably yes you probably feel you're more lovely and you learn stuff about yourself about your emotions about who you are i think you grew as an individual one of the value at sunday is trust well there our three values are simple beyond and trust and what all of that say is that we're building this company so that each and every individual starting with me because charity starts at home who is going to participate in in this adventure should hopefully get out of this adventure having more trust in herself or in himself because it's because you have trust in yourself that you do great stuff and that you can make adventures and live a more full and comprehensive life we believe beyond yes it's wonderful value because everyone at sunday and i would say my family and with my friends etc are people who strive to go beyond wherever that is and beyond is not just like more money or more success that is pathetically easy in a sense it's how do i become a better father a better husband a better son a better friend a better boss a better colleague a better at the same time this is the ambition and that's actually really hard and i'm not saying that it's a good thing to be willing to go beyond which is why it's one of our value because there are great people who do not want to go beyond and it's absolutely fine it's just that we happen to be this kind of people and simple yes hopefully we can all become more simple persons by simple is how your your understanding of yourself and of life becomes more comprehensive again and how you differentiate between what is your ego what are your emotions what are your goals what are the facts what are the interpretation of the facts all of that these are our values because launching this business is the number one goal is that everyone in this company grows as an individual and then hopefully yes we will have business success and it will be a big adventure and all of that but but eventually it's really down to people because sunday exists or sunday doesn't well eventually people are still going to pay in restaurants you know do you but transforming the life of the 90 people who have already onboarded that rocket ship in two months that is what defines why i am really excited day in day out again there's there's so many frankly incredible points you're making here and i just i just get worried that people listening might miss it all but you know the the embed you just mentioned for example you're talking there about almost self-fulfilling prophecy you know if you if you believe it so much then other people will believe it if you doubt it i mean you said something earlier you know you talked about how you you someone offered you a hundred thousand dollars for your business and what it made me think of that saying is like you know you ask for advice and you get money you ask for money you'll get advice right so there's almost you you believe in the business so much that people just are attracted to the idea and literally so many people say it's hard to raise money and i think it's because they're just asking for money they're not talking like you're talking they're not explaining their vision their values the dream right they're busy talking about how much money they're going to make you're not talking about that you're talking about the dream and i think that's really really important and i think people do miss this in their in their ambitions to start a business right on a daily basis it's been a few years since i believe that launching your business is making something exist that eighty percent of the people don't give a [ __ ] about and twenty percent of the people are against you and then you're telling the story and the day where the whole world believes in your story well you've won so for instance my restaurant business i open a restaurant and i expect and we're gonna have like a thousand guests a day so i'm telling this story about how this restaurant is great and the atmosphere is great and the food is great and if thousand people a day believe it it's a successful restaurant well in the payment business we we hope we're going to have hundreds of millions of people using it so today that 100 million people believe in our solution then it's a success but yes it's about convincing people of your story and the first thing about it is i believe i couldn't be convincing people of a story that i don't believe myself but then what i would add to what you are saying is that well it's the difference between the successful company and the fire festival for those who've seen the documentaries there is one thing which is telling the story we managed to get we managed to get through it we managed to get through 100 podcasts about mentioning fire festival so we're well done for bringing it up but yeah you're right i know what you mean by that you have to tell the story yeah they had a brilliant story but their execution completely fell over for those that haven't seen but then you need to get [ __ ] done and this is what we've learned in restaurants you can't cheat people in the restaurant industry practically does the food come on your table or not does it take 10 minutes or does it take 40 minutes and how good is it and practically when you have 10 000 clients a day do they get sick in the end or do they get really happy are you are you getting it done or not is eventually you need that you need both of them you need a big vision you need to dream big you need to believe your own story and then you need to execute well you're talking a little bit here as well about fake it do you make it right that that startup analogy which i think my take on it is that it's fine to fake it do you make it as long as you're actually going to deliver right if you're going to fake it to your makeup but you don't have that i'm a french guy um i've heard this a lot since i've been in london this is not it's not my culture i'm afraid i come from a very different scholar go through the north face culture which is um make it and people will i i if i want to quote something i would say build it and they will come which is this amazing movie with kevin costner a field of dreams build it and they will come you i don't know who it's a very old and no one i've seen this movie but it's is that still true he's building a baseball field and eventually all the ghosts of the former great baseball players would come and play in his field which is a stupid film build it and they will come get an amazing product out there be it a restaurant or be it's a payment feature hopefully eventually if your product is bloody amazing they will come yeah i guess there's always with these sayings you know i always feel like that saying it's probably these days you know in the old days when henry ford built he'd say okay i'm going to build a factory and i'm going to put cars into the market and then people will buy it but that's a lot of cost up front a lot of infrastructure nowadays it's probably not build it and they will come but like ask a client if they'd pay for it if they do then go and build it for them and they will come an elongation right because in reality people a lot of stuff's got built on the app store and no one's coming you're right which is for instance let me tell you about the story of how we've been we launched the delivery business at big mama so it's curved we have never done any delivery the next day we have to shut our restrooms there is 1500 people not working staying at home and we're like okay let's deliver it's everything we didn't want to do because we believe in building an experience and if i'm delivering it to your place it's going to feel so much harder to to build that experience in your in your living room but then we have no choice and then we start working and the next issue the next week we were delivering so very mvp style let's try it let's test the temperature and it happens that yes we build this new recipe of pizza it travels very well and so we are getting traction but then we post and we say okay so now it's working now we see a path so now let's sing big let's invert the wheel it's not like always running to the next product is showing yourself you're doing something great pause build a big ambition find the money for it and go big or go home and i can tell you another story to the story on how we built big mama so the concept of our restaurants is it's a place where we spend five thousand euro per square meter in works so it's a lot of money for a thousand square meter restaurant it's a five million investments and these are one thousand square meter restaurants and a 1000 square meter restaurant is very different to a 20 seats restaurant because you're in a room where there are another 300 people and all these people they it creates an energy it creates a moment it creates something that you can't feel in a 20 people restaurant so if your concept is you're gonna have is you're gonna spend five thousand square five thousand euro per square meter and it has to be one thousand square meter restaurant then the only way you can test your concept is by opening such a restaurant so if you want to do this find five million day one because if you don't you're never going to test your concept don't think you want to do something like a thousand square meter restaurant test it on 20 seats see that it doesn't work and say okay so i'm not doing it no if your concept is one thousand square meter do one thousand square meter which is why it took us two and a half years to do our first restaurant and i can tell you these were two really long two and a half years like all my friends were telling us like what are you guys doing like it's been two and a half years you're telling us you're making italian restaurants so you've got two hcc business school pretty successful 29 or 29 years old guy and it's been two and a half years you've not even opened one restaurant what are you guys doing yes but our concept is it's going to cost a lot of money and it's going to be a big restaurant so we need to make it right in the first place this is this is something now we're building a payment stuff goes through all the time it's it's it's a sorry to interrupt you we've got a slight lag on the on the feed sorry but i i just want again i don't want people to miss something important here you're you're talking actually in a way entrepreneurs are walking conflicts with kind of contradictions because you know what you're saying and i actually find myself nodding everything you're saying because what you're saying and i completely agree is you know you want you have a theory that a type of restaurant a big restaurant like this will work and you can't do it by testing out a small restaurant first an mvp wouldn't work in this example of a business because you've got to go raise 5 million to make it real to see if it's true so build it and they will come based on a theory equally however i feel like your tech product you know sunday you kind of went the other way you built a you know buggy not quite right product and and launched with that right as opposed to the perfect restaurant right so you so it's an interest i guess it always depends you've got to keep flexible right it depends on the type of business you're building doesn't it it's probably very frustrating for everyone who is listening to this because i i realized i have said so many things in their contrary in the span of 30 minutes yeah but that's the entrepreneurial journey and you know what's important i think what's important here is that you know you can go raise 24 million dollars and build the perfect app you can also do that you could do that but there's no reason you couldn't also do what you did which is initially build an mvp prove it to yourself it's how i see it prove it to yourself and then raise the money based on proof of concept yes because again i wouldn't raise 24 million dollars if i didn't have a deep conviction a deep belief that i can make it work because it's a lot of responsibility to raise that money totally yes and and i wouldn't take that that much responsibility and on board so many people i know and i trust and they trust me if i had if i didn't have a deep belief that we can make it when we launched our first business we've raised money with only entrepreneurs so we have 17 of them uh in big mama it's only it's only entrepreneurs we don't have private equity and it's only entrepreneurs 17 of them and i remember in the first days of the big memo i would call my shareholders my investors and i would ask them for a piece of advice and they would they would tell me something and i would say wow that sounds really smart and the next day they would tell me the opposite and i would think this is so frustrating and probably if you listen to a podcast and to the next podcast the two guys are gonna say something very different and maybe if you listen to one podcast the same guy is gonna say something very different in the span of 30 minutes which i bel which which is why entrepreneurship is quite hard to codify that's why that's why i actually do this podcast because i and i have i have my view on how to build a business and i love listening to other people's because there are so many different ways to do it and i think you just need to be given the tools and the options i think that's what your shareholders are doing there really they're playing devil's advocate half the time aren't they they're probably just giving you the opposite view to yours to give you a chance to at least think the other side right yes yes and most of the time when i listen to a podcast or to a blinkist or when i speak to one of my shareholders or partners or friends most of the time i disagree with them but at least it got me thinking about it and that's key i think to success in entrepreneurship it's it's challenging your own knowledge i think yes and this equals to what you said before which is that many stuff in entrepreneurship or self what was your world uh self-realizing it's because you think they're right that they're gonna be right let me give you an example there is this great entrepreneur he's a friend he's an investor in sunday his name is jean-charles he is founder of which is an amazing french unicorn insurance tech and so he says all my sales people they don't have a bonus structure they have a flat salary he's like the only guy in the world doing that technically if he's the only guy in the world doing that my take on it is i'm not sure he's right technically but because he's advocating so hard for it because it because he's saying it because it's so unique and it's so [ __ ] crazy to do that and because he's doing it and because he's supporting his sales team day in there from the office saying we are the only sales team well there is no bonus structure because you have something else that's it it works it works because it's his id so it works for him which means that i've said they work for me i would say the most difficult stuff is to find out what other things that's going to work for you when you're an entrepreneur this is a very good point by the way i love sales so we'll get into that subject i actually think no commission is actually really smart because people are doing it they're doing right by the customer they're selling to if it's based on a bonus they might sell when it's not right to just get the bonus it's the wrong incentive actually which is completely the reverse thinking to nearly every single sales team out there so your your investor and friend is a very smart individual if you ask me but just stepping back because again i think when people are listening to i i actually think you're really relatable but i think people might be hearing what you're saying you know with an entrepreneurial father a doctor as a mother you know they might be thinking that you'll wear thinkings out of their realm and out of their reach you've raised a lot of money it sounds i i feel though you're quite you're quite grounded i just want to go back to something you said earlier you mentioned you were doing 50 hours a week in your other business now i know a lot of our listeners are working really hard paying the bills right now so there you are working 50 hours a week just for a second just talk about the psychology you gave up this 50 hours a week so you know first of all you must have been enjoying it so i feel like or you weren't or how did that gap i mean i guess a lot of people are working so hard now how did you convince yourself that you no longer needed to do those 50 hours a week and were able to do this new venture what was the what was the nuance to that experience that we could share with the audience [Music] i like to be out of the comfort zone it's that simple you just said right i'm too comfortable there's a long story about i've identified that this is what i like i don't like the repetitive stuff so if i don't like repetitive stuff and if i want to grow and not just do one thing stop it do another if i want to grow the business we're doing which is build one business keep it maybe do another one do one restaurant then do another one i don't have to sell the first one to do a second one etc etc then my obsession has always been to as soon as i'm doing something and i'm figuring it out stop doing it so someone else gonna do it and very early i've realized i've been lucky because the first guy i've ever recruited to do something that i thought i had figured out he did the job it was twice better as i he was twice better at this job than i was and i thought i was good at that job and i would recruit this guy and he would do just a job as good as i was doing and he was doing the job twice as good i was like that's great actually because now i can do new stuff and actually job is better done so i'm always like obsessed about never doing twice something that i've kind of mastered because then someone's going to do it better than i was doing it and this enables me to do new stuff so let's say we haven't done sunday if we haven't done that then i'm still at big mama big mama is doubling size every year it's a thousand five hundred people company so if you wanna double next year it's about onboarding a new thousand five hundred people it's it's big on in street territories it's a lot of work so if you want if i if i want to do that i need a lot of time just to focus on next year so i can't be doing the day-to-day management of the company today it happens that because i've always anticipated that i know that next year i have a blank page ahead of me because i know every year i will need to be focused on something that i don't even know exists now and so this is how we've grown the team and grown the team and grown the team and more than a hundred people are shareholders in big mama all the management team is very very deeply incentivized in equity um it's not tigran or nice that igan is my partner it's not just us it's a team of 20 now who are like co-founders of this business so yes one of the 20 co-founders me has stepped out to do this new stuff then we have enrolled someone else and because we had this pool of people we're meeting great talents all the time yes i am kind of proud if you ask me i think it's a success it's a personal success that i was able to pull the plug out of big mama so quickly to be able to do something else but this is something that we have always tried to be try to be building by design which is let's always have time to be able to do something else do something new grasp grasp an opportunity you would say that yes grasp an opportunity because opportunity they do come everyone gets opportunity all the time do you have time to grab them there's something here again i'm just i know there's people listening to this podcast right now that are perhaps for example in a job they've got comfortable and they're scared to take a chance and you are inspiring me i hope them too to realize that maybe they need to shake things up you get one life the other thing i think i just you know i can hear hear my listeners and you know there's someone right now with a business and they're trapped in that business they they haven't done what you're talking about which is believe that someone else could actually do it better i had exactly the same experience as you i had a perceived successful company and i thought i'll bring someone else in to run it and they made it even more successful they did a much better job than me when i brought them in and i didn't even realize it was possible i just assumed i was the best it's a mistake you get trapped and and and so what you're sharing here is is experience and i and i don't i always wonder how to take experience like you've got victor and give it to people right because it's it's gold you know people are sitting in their business right now and the reason it might not be growing is because of them because they've got comfortable they haven't they haven't believed that anyone else can do it better than you have done victor and that's that's i think where genius comes from where you almost put yourself in uncomfortable positions all the time because i can just see you in that job doing the 50 hours a week and i'm sure you are making an impact but you also recognize and it's a brilliant awareness you recognize that perhaps it was time to let someone else do that but i ask you this did you need something else sunday in this case to make that switch do you think you would have made it if you hadn't found sunday i think if we were not doing sunday maybe i would be starting a hotel business within big mama or we would be starting another kind of cuisine or etc i mean we started with one restaurant and now we have one restaurant which is like 5000 square meters in france it's the biggest restaurant in europe we have opportunities in so many cuisines kind of hospitality we are we've launched delivery we now have three brands in in three countries in the span of the last six months we've developed that business as well so we've we've always kept innovating i would say back to what you were saying sometimes you know you work hard on something like you participate in a meeting and you give your opinion and and you realize that you're spending a hundred units of energy in that actually you've created five units of values because there were already six people in that meeting and the extra amount that you've built with your 100 unit of energy is five unit of values when i start sunday and i'm on my own the first day of sunday i spend 100 units of energy and i build a hundred units of value and with the question i ask myself entering every meeting is do i need to be there and is it a good leverage of my time and energy because there are already people in this meeting which is why actually i hate meetings where there are so many people and so again getting out of big marat the only the other stuff that happened is what i witnessed when i was in france so two co-founders in france and a team of 800 people and i go like the next months almost by surprise we got i i moved to the uk i'm an entrepreneur i take a lot of space i speak a lot i mean you you've sensed that in the 50 minutes we've been together really victims no i didn't sense that at all my team my teammates they exploded they took so much space because eventually ownership responsibility and passion which are three things that go really well together it's not something you can delegate it's like a plate that you hold in your hands and you let it drop and you hope someone is going to catch it before it breaks on the floor on the ground so when i left for the uk i was like okay i was handling so much stuff i had the final responsibility for so many things in the company goodbye guys i'm in london and i've been back in france like once every month for two for one night so now it's on you and the next second well people feel empowered and because they feel empowered because they feel responsible they do a twice better job that's right and i do a twice better job because i'm by myself in the uk and i have to run this new restaurant we're doing and it's on me it's really on me it's not on the team it's on me and so when i when we discussed with tigran that i could leave well that i could step out of big mama to launch sunday the first thing we thought about was the opportunity that wow nice victor stepping out do we have a team who can take the space and grow it even bigger we sensed that we had that team and that we could do that which is how we this is why we did it victor i just want to translate what you've just said there in another way and and correct me if i've got this translation wrong okay but i just i wonder if there's another way to put what you just said for people with left brains instead of right brains you know i i feel like there are profiles of people listening they're either they might probably either be specialists or generalists okay and i i feel like and correct me if i'm wrong you're a generalist which means you can do a lot of things you you like to be contributing a lot which actually means you're really good at building a business zero to one right now when your business gets to one and you have a lot of people working for you and it's and the system is somewhat flushed out then you need specialists you need people that come in that know each niche that you've been covering in a broad sense as a generalist right and i think that's what you're talking about there you're talking about you know yourself you know that you can act as a specialist if you have to and have five minutes worth of contribution to a one-hour meeting you can but it's not your natural state right is that a good translation is that a fair translation of what your insight is there don't think too long no i'm not sure it's the way i feel it the way i feel it is there are skills and there is personality um my personalities i'm a very creative risk-taking out-of-the-box thinking person but i can ex i try to express it both in the big picture so building a vision building a broader team raising actually 10 times more money than we saw stuff like this but i also try to express it in the very details i know everything about a restroom kitchen and i sometimes get very creative on how we're going to cut the tomatoes because this actually creates a lot of value or how we're going to cook that sauce or how we're going to reinvent that pizza recipe to go for delivery so that it's still crispy and delicious after 15 minutes in a box and these are very detailed points or how we're going to negotiate that sourcing deal with this mozzarella guys in naples in the payment isis i feel it's the same we are trying i am the creative guy thinking out of the box and i can do that for let's go zero to one build a story build a vision but then i also spend a lot of hours like on tech matters on very precise tech or product or ux ui matters and i've i've always felt more confident doing both like helicopter view and trench's job and doing the trenches job as well actually builds my confidence so that i feel i am more relevant i understand my team better i'm able to help them better because i understand deep down their problems and when i'm talking with other people about the helicopter view i know i am relevant and i i know i'm not bullshitting i'm actually again maybe because i'm french and but it's definitely not fake until you make it is to to be able to tell a big story i need to trust it myself and so for that i spend actually a lot of time in the trenches if you want or in the details there's so many things i want to ask you we're kind of coming up to the one hour mark and i know um we're lucky people listen this long and i i i could literally talk to you all day there's just so much knowledge in your head that i want to download and share with the world but there's a couple of practical things i wanted to ask you your business is called sunday now i know when people start a business they sit around the table they come up with a name and i love the name sunday but you know tell us on a practical level is it easy to trademark that name how do you how do you actually go about making a company called sunday actually happen because isn't there a phone network called sunday for example this is this is a very good one it's a very practical question and i have asked that questions to so many people said we're building a lot of brands each restaurant is a new brand so i'm always like working on ip so sunday we were thinking we want something we have found thousands of ideas and every time you want to reference check if it's taken or not if you can use it or not it costs you and if you want a world trademark it costs you like 5k dollars in the u.s it costs you another 2k here in europe it's 8k every time you want to sense check a name it's a lot of money it goes i mean it goes really fast and then i have 10 names 80k whoa 80k is that money well spent and then we come up with the name sunday and then the lawyers tell us well that's actually good you can call it sunday it's fine because it's not taken in your specific range on iep i've got one piece of advice is do not ask lawyers if it's okay or not do ask they have there is a company who does very quick and easy payment online it's called fast dot co there is another one who's called bolt all right these two companies launched like 20 in the last 18 months how do you get a company called fast dot co in payments how does that work and they were telling me like all these names we had were impossible guys don't tell me it's impossible and these guys they call the company fast because that's just impossible so if they can call it fast tell me how i can call it sunday that worked interesting yeah good tip there was always unfortunately i had a business called foodie and um and someone came out of the woodwork three years into the business and said i own the word foodie on a trademark infringement and you have you are passing off and all your profit has to come to me and it turns out they were a trademark lawyer so um so i've had a scary experience around this point but it's it's a very good point it's a very picking a general word um is is really powerful isn't it you know it's it's in theory in the dictionary no one can own it um and so it's it's an interesting point yeah so i just wanted to touch on that practical piece i guess um i just wanted to ask a couple of things before we wrap up um i don't i wanted to ask a little bit about well first of all i want to know how you met your wife you mentioned earlier you know you're not going to tell us and i know i want to know um but maybe there's another podcast for another time we can do well i go to this party and i think i'm gonna hit on her like later tonight and but it's jobs done you know and then it's midnight and i had these all the girls and maybe but no i said i want this girl she's so great and i want to kiss her tonight and i want to hang out with her but i can wait i have time it was her birthday and at midnight i turned around and she was kissing another guy oh and then i went to her and i took her to the kitchen i said no he's going i stay and she said oh no no he's saying you go that's how i made my way no no this is this this can't be uh crazy that's amazing that's an amazing story and and i just want to touch on this point um because i think it's not covered enough in business chats that your partner in life um is so crucial to your success like i i wouldn't be successful personally today whatever success is for you and that that's something everyone could define for themselves but i i personally don't think i would be successful it wasn't for my partner in life it's such a crucial deal can we put it that way i can it echoes two things i told you about how i hung up the phone and i called my partner in business and i say wish i should do it and he said yes and the next thing i did was i went out it was curvy so i was at home my wife as well so i go out of the room and i say the exact thing to my wife and i said actually i'm gonna spin up this stuff and she says yes go and i'm like are you sure do you understand the implications on the family yes i fully trust you can do it yeah yeah this was a this is the moment and the other thing it echoes to me is that yes of course she's she's she's she's the the foundations of how i build my life but also my relation to my professional partner so to tigran has had a huge impact on how i behave with apple in my wife i have never ever argued with stigan in seven years with my business partner never ever never ever have i raised my voice ever same with him and at some point i one day i was like arguing with that pauline and i was like almost shouting and i was thinking why is it i'm allowing myself to shout with her and i would never do that in business when actually yes with stiga and i share a business with her i share families with children my whole life and in work i find it easier to manage my emotions and okay it's professional life so i'm going to take my fear out i'm going to take my ego out i'm going to take all of that out and i'm going to be focused on results and realizing that i was able to do that in business actually gave me the strength to sometimes also do it at home because sometimes also at home you have fear and ego etc etc and i don't know why but a few years ago i would allow myself to let it go in the middle in my personal life and never in my professional life one person that i did i i'm taking something from that because i i always have this feeling that people say business don't don't take it personally i think it's so personal business i find business to be so so personal and and so i hate that saying but you're saying something really important here um that i personally resonates with me because i i argue with my wife and i argue with my colleagues and i i sometimes wish i didn't and and i do it sometimes to push the business and push and push back you know and but i'm i'm not saying i think your way's better is what i'm saying i think your insight there is really profound and i'm going to try to argue less with both sides of my equation so i've learned something from you today victor in fact i've learned loads of things i really appreciate you taking time out to share your story just to finish off i just want to say if you went back to the younger victor and gave some advice what would it be meet as many people as you can and do crazy stuff i landed my first job because i was actually it was 2008 everything was frozen i was unemployed outside out of business school and i wrote a manuscript letter to a french billionaire who was supposedly i read in a paper launching a new investment fund and there was no address for the guy so i found the official address of his headquarters and i wrote a manuscript letter hi i'm victor this is my resume i heard you were launching a fund i'm really interested in joining the guy is a billionaire like 50 years old he answered and that lent me my first job then he ended up being the first investor in our first company then he's an investor in my second company he's a mentor to us we've known him now 15 years do crazy stuff and meet people is what i would tell to to my former self i absolutely love it well you know i just want to say we're the purpose of project our mission is to help 10 million people start a business of their own and never feel alone doing it i think you've just helped us push uh push the message out that of how to do it i really appreciate it but