Episode 08: What it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, how to select employees and more!

Nicolas Vandenberghe is the Co-Founder and CEO of Chili Piper and Gipsy Time. Nicolas began his career selling newspapers in the streets of Paris in high school, studied Maths at Ecole Polytechnique and then received his MBA from Stanford GSB. He started and sold 3 tech companies with up to 65 employees and $11M in revenues, and also ran sales for a $2B telecom firm negotiating billion-dollar deals with companies like Google. Most recently in 2016, he co-founded his 4th startup and presently is the CEO of Chili Piper – a pioneer in Buyer Enablement. In this episode we discuss: Growing up with a sense of adventure [3:01] Meeting Steve Jobs [5:17] Taking inspiration from Steve Jobs [8:04] Struggles from building businesses [9:04] Starting and growing his internet company that attracted the attention of Amazon [11:32] His biometric company that went from incorporation to exit in just 13 months [14:25] Talking about a CRM company he started to go against Salesforce [16:16] The birth of Chili Piper [18:31] Frustrations in the middle of growth and creating a solution via GipsyTime [21:21] How GipsyTime helps you be more focused [22:40] What it takes to be a successful entrepreneur [25:43] Why Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world [28:03] How he selects who is going to work on his projects [29:20] Believing in talent and help them people grow professionally [31:04] How to get in touch with Nicolas [34:37] Quotable Quotes I wanted to try things people haven’t tried. I wanted to explore The nature of entrepreneurs is whenever they see a problem they think they should solve it. They don’t wish someone would solve the problem, they solve it. The key is to be able to do product-market fit. How to know if you have a product-market fit? You won’t know if you have it until you try. Some people are better than others at assessing people. Links to sources and tools Try GipsyTime-https://gipsytime.com/-to help you get things done and give your feedback to Nicolas and the team Follow Nicolas on his social media accounts: Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TeamChiliPiper/ Personal Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/nvandenberghe/ Company LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/chilipiper Twitter https://twitter.com/NicolasVDB Go to https://www.chilipiper.com/ to learn more about Chili Piper and how it can help turn inbound leads into qualified meetings, instantly. Support our podcast Rate and review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pass-the-secret-sauce-by-matt-shields/id1506940483 the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a family member, friend, or colleague about the show. Subscribe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pass-the-secret-sauce-by-matt-shields/id1506940483 so you never miss an episode. Subscribe to us on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ5eItxsGWyGKC91zd1pzbA and follow us on LinkedIn: