Today, the editorial team offers you a selection of entrepreneur accounts to follow on Medium. Advice and feedback can help when embarking on an entrepreneurial adventure.
Brian Chesky
The co-founder and managing director of Airbnb is 37 years old. Created in 2008, this entrepreneurial unicorn now exceeds $ 1 billion in quarterly sales and has emerged as one of the symbols of a society in full transformation. On his Medium account, Brian Chesky shares his entrepreneurial experience. Very positive, his posts often invite not to be demotivated.
In particular, he tells how, in 2008, Airbnb tried to raise $ 150,000 from seven investors . With a valuation of 1.5 million dollars at the time, investors could have afforded 10% for the amount requested of what was then still a startup. Only, none of the investors solicited wished to put the hand in the pocket (mails of refusal in support). ” Think about it the next time one of your ideas is rejected, ” concludes the entrepreneur.
She Kaplan
She Kaplan is an American entrepreneur who won her first million before her 30th birthday. Voted Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 by Enterprising Women , Elle Kaplan is the Executive Director and Founder of LexION Capital, a New York-based wealth management trust company. On Medium, she shares lessons from her life as a businesswoman.
Among his latest posts, an article explaining how to network effectively .
Damien Morin
A most interesting entrepreneurial profile. Still a student at the EBS (European Business School), Damien Morin founded Save at the age of 22, a startup operating on the repair of smartphones, tablets and other electronic objects. The success was at the rendezvous, since at the age of 25 the young man was already running a company of 500 employees, which repaired one French telephone out of four. This beautiful adventure however turned to vinegar. Not profitable and consuming a lot of cash, Save was placed in receivership in 2016. After having dismissed a third of its workforce and closed about forty points of sale, the startup was bought by Remade Group . Damien Morin remained Save’s managing director for eight months before moving on to other horizons.
On his Medium account, the entrepreneur shares the story of a failure and his fight to recover from it. In ” On the road to new adventures “, he details his post-Save journey.
Darius Foroux
Darius Foroux is an entrepreneur, blogger and podcaster, whose articles are read by more than half a million people each month. His work focuses on one main axis: “How to live a life that counts? According to him, his reflection is organized around four themes:
Productivity: how can you do more without sacrificing your well-being?
Habits: which recurring practices improve life and how to put them in place?
Decision-making: how to make decisions that we do not regret?
Personal enrichment: how to create wealth without sacrificing one’s energy?
In early March, the blogger published on Medium an article establishing the 14 practices that he believes improve life , among which have found: keep a newspaper, free time or ignore the past.
Laetitia Vitaud
After having taught for ten years (in preparatory classes and Sciences Po), Laetitia Vitaud wanted to do something else. She left everything to go to London and recruit for an American band. An experience that did not seduce her. In 2017, the entrepreneur created Cadre Noir, a research and marketing company on the future of work and consumption.
Laetitia Vitaud uses Medium to share her vision of a changing world. She writes frequently about economic transformation, the future of work and consumption. Last May she wondered about the impact that artificial intelligence could have on human resources .
Reid Hoffman
This Stanford and Oxford graduate is one of the founders of LinkedIn. After working at Apple, Fujitsu and creating PayPal, Reid Hoffman co-founded the professional social network in 2003. In 2011, he was honored with the firm’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. Ernst & Young financial audit.
On his Medium account, the entrepreneur offers many toolkits of the type “The 5 best practices for …” His latest article lists ” 7 counterintuitive rules to develop your business very quickly .” A surprising point of view since Reid Hoffman enjoins his readers among others to embrace chaos, to tolerate “mismanagement” and to ignore their clientele.
Guillaume Gibault
The history of this graduate of HEC Paris has something to inspire … and to make smile. When one of his friends throws Guillaume Gibault the challenge of selling underpants, the entrepreneur in the making is relieved immediately and in 2011 passes a first order of six hundred slips from a French manufacturer. The French Slip was born. Seven years after its creation, the company posted a turnover of 13 million euros.
Guillaume Gibault is no longer very active on Medium, but his account remains interesting to consult. There are indeed published several articles relating his experience of startupper. In ” But what would I do in this galley? He tells how he came to entrepreneurship after a first experience in a large international group.
Dharmesh Shah
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, Dharmesh Shah established his first startup, Pyramid Digital Solutions, in 1994 at the age of 24. After launching it with less than $ 10,000, he sold it for millions a few years later. In 2006, the entrepreneur launched HubSpot, a company that develops a suite of software tailored to Internet marketing.
With his Medium account, Dharmesh Shah shares anecdotes about his entrepreneurial life and the lessons he draws from it. He recounts, among other things, his meeting with Elon Musk and what she taught him, or seven things he discovered about artificial intelligence .
Benoit Raphael
Benoit Raphael is a media entrepreneur. He is at the origin of the huffingtonpost.fr (Le Monde group), the Plus de l’Obs and the Lab of Europe 1. The one who now presents himself as a “breeder of robots” created Flint in 2017. This very personalized newsletter is made thanks to artificial intelligence and is considered as a collaborative experience between humans and robots.
On Medium, Benoit Raphael speaks a lot about robotics and artificial intelligence, but he is also interested in the news of the media landscape. For example, he shared his ” three amazing observations made about the collaboration between humans and artificial intelligences “.
Gary Vaynerchuk
A great wine critic, the man made himself known by making the family winery grow. He is also and above all one of the pioneers of digital marketing and social networks. Gary Vaynerchuk leads two New York groups: VaynerMedia and VaynerX that accompany brands in their web communication. He works for Uber, Birchbox, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, among others.
His Medium account contains many tips for entrepreneurs, like the 10 mental changes that can be put in place to succeed in business .