All cracked? Probably not, no. But the exceptional entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, those who are capable of raising valuations to several billion dollars, in the vast majority hide deep traumas, linked to their personal history.
Based in Silicon Valley for more than ten years, as director of BPI France for North America, Romain Serman spends his time looking at business plans and meeting entrepreneurs and investors. According to him, the “drive”, the extraordinary motivation of the tech entrepreneurial elite, comes from the individuals’ tormented past. Based on his observations, he cites numerous examples of entrepreneurs – mostly men, because women seem more stable and more rational – whose personal history is marked by the trauma of an immigrant past, multiple rejections, periods of intense poverty, sometimes even an impossible relationship with the father. Romain Serman draws on multiple conversations with Silicon Valley investors, all of whom admit to having an over-representation of managers with a flaw of this nature in their start-up portfolio. This observation is so common that beyond the purely examination business of an investment opportunity, many investors seek above all to detect this intimate flaw. Most often, it emerges by itself during a somewhat in-depth conversation. Then the investor will be able to better judge the level of entrepreneurial aggression he should expect.
In this episode of Control-F, Romain Serman discusses specific cases of entrepreneurs whose over-motivation is the result of trauma and suggests that this type of psychological assessment should be more systematic.
Listen to this episode and subscribe to Control F on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, Deezer, Google Podcast And Amazon Music.
The team: Frédéric Filloux (presentation) and Jules Krot (editing and production)
Music and design: Léonard Filloux
Logo: Jérémy Cambour / L’Express
Image credit: Eric Piermont / AFP
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