Travailler pour une Start-Up : 80 heures par semaine !

My friends, good morning. I received a question on WhatsApp. Here, here. I received a question that says. Hello, Aldo. Question. This is Dagupta, the founder of Greptile. Never heard of Greptile, but hey, we understand each other. Ah. On X he announces right away that in his startup he does not offer a work life balance, that the typical workday starts at 9am and ends at 11pm, all often later. And that we work on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. And that the atmosphere is very stressful and that mediocre work is not tolerated. Is this normal for a startup? So I would like to tell you something. Startups are generally places where we work a lot. Personally, I am in startup mode. Indeed, I recognize myself in this program of Mr. Gupta. Huh? Indeed. 9:23pm I consider that to be the heart of my working hours. Seven days a week too. And then do I go over sometimes? Yes, sometimes I can go over, but sometimes too, huh? I get fed up, sometimes I'm exhausted, sometimes I'm tired. And then the alarm goes off in the morning. Well, it doesn't go off. It's one of the luxuries that we have when we're entrepreneurs is that we don't have an alarm clock. I have an alarm clock if I'm going to take the life or something like that. But in general, I. I don't wake up when the alarm clock or the bugle sounds. I wake up when I wake up and then I start working, which roughly corresponds to today. I woke up at 5am what is it now? It's 10am I woke up at 5am, but there are days when I wake up at 7am, 6am, all that roughly. Now, there's one thing. Startups are made to create value for the people who founded them. And creating value means that they're usually going to make them millionaires. So why does a guy found a startup at the beginning, as a founder, he's going to own an incredible number of shares. For example, he's going to have 100% of the shares at the start. Then he brings in friends, he brings in investors, he starts distributing the shares, he starts diluting them a little. But despite everything, if he's smart, if he's managed not to be too generous with everyone, he's in trouble. If one day it gets sold or goes public, if he doesn't have at least 30 or 40% of the shares in his portfolio, that could be huge. Without a goal, it's putting as much human work into your startup as possible so that one day it can have enough value to list it on the stock exchange or sell it if that happens. If it sells, then of course the guy will pay for it. And that's the goal of the startup. The goal is that one day he will pay for it and a kind of golden shower will fall on him. Now he wants to make people work in this way. So there's a little problem. I mean, I'm going to be fair. I don't want to just shoot him down like that. I'm very happy that he was up front. That means that he was honest in his request. Because what I can't stand is dishonest companies. You know, dishonest. For example, I work for a company in London, one of the last companies I worked for. They were fundamentally dishonest. I had a 100% home based contract. I negotiated a 100% home based contract because I would never have accepted a job in London otherwise. Because it's very complicated for me to get to London. Everyone knows how awful public transport is in the uk. It's long, it's complicated, it's expensive, it's always late, it's always cancelled. I mean, I don't want to suffer from that. I sometimes found myself going to London up to three or four times a week on a 100% remote contract because there was always a different excuse. We have a VP coming, we have important clients coming, we have a week of training, we have meetings scheduled, we have stuff. And I'll say at one point I was just getting screwed. So there are companies that also bring you back without announcing it. Like Mr. Gogda Des saying, yes, you come to us, we're all quiet and then as soon as you arrive, they start eating you up. It happened to me when I worked in a company where I didn't last long. I think I lasted six months. I, I started working there on a regular job, which means your hours start at 8am and end at 4pm I think something like that. Those were normal hours. On the other hand, I found myself working like a madman. I mean, sometimes my manager would send me a meeting and they'd tell me, yes, there's a very important meeting in California, you have to be there. Except that the meeting was literally in the afternoon in California. I live in the uk, so it means starting. I don't remember, but it was midnight, 1am for me. That meant that sometimes I could find myself in bed, lights out, my headphones on, at 1am to participate in a meeting and the next day it would be the same. And sometimes they would tell me. Oh yeah, in Singapore there's something really important. You have to log in at 5:00am So I would end up working some days from 5:00am until 2:00am, uh, for a one for one salary, for a mid level salary. So startups like this, if they say it lasts for seven days, okay, he'll give me a salary of €500,000 per year. No problem. I'm ready to work at that pace to make quick money. Well, I won't keep you for 10 years, that's clear. But if he gives me a salary of half a million, plus maybe 100 septillion, 200 sextillion, 300 quadrillion, €300,300,000 in bonuses on top of that. Yes, there's no problem. I can work seven days a week from 9am to 11pm and I deliver more value than what he's paying me, that's clear. But if it's for an average salary, if it's for an everyday salary. No, it's not. It would be slavery. It's the slavery of man by man. That makes no sense. So that's what we have to be wary of today. We have to be wary of these toxic CEOs who say, you have to work for me 80 hours a week because I also work 80 hours a week. Yes, you work 80 hours a week as the founding CEO because you're working to become a millionaire. I'm not working to become a millionaire. So I'm an employee of yours. I don't have the same stakes in the company. There aren't the same stakes in the business. Let me give you an example. Once I worked in a company and I remember they gave us shares. They. They gave us blocked shares, they paid us in shares, among other things. So we got our salary more regularly. They give you lots of blocked shares. When the share is blocked, it has a value. It has a value. You see it, you go in, you create an account. I think it's Charles Shivab or something like that. There are bank accounts, they create them for you, they put the shares in them. So when I logged into my account with Charles Vab, I saw the number that was high. For example, you see €90,000. Okay, that's €90,000. But you can't just click on Cash in because it's blocked, it's locked. So you can sell a quarter of your shares each year for four years. So, okay, you have €100,000, for example, but we're talking about €25,000 per year. So you're not going to get them all at once. Okay, that's the first thing. Secondly, the figure you see there varies depending on the current share price. You see, it depends on the share price, how it's doing. So we were in a very, very funny situation. By the way, I had colleagues who had a lot more than me because they had joined the company before. I had a colleague, I think, who had 300 or $400,000 of shares blocked in the account. Huh? And what he wanted was to buy a house. He said that day, I can cash this in. I'll buy my house. And that's it. Okay, that's good. Now, wait. These are carrot type scams. They put a carrot in front of you like this, and then you have to. You go, you go, you go, you go, you go. So the idea is that what happened is that our CEO started selling shares because he. His shares was the founder. Was the CEO and founder of the company. He had cashed in at the time of the company's opening, a large package of shares, millions of shares, which he always kept, despite the fact that he had to distribute them here and there, give them to investors. All that, despite everything. He was the main shareholder. Every Monday morning. He sold tens of thousands of shares every Monday morning. And how do we know that? Because it's simply called insider trading. It's when the directors of a company sell or buy shares in their company. This is public. This is not information that can be hidden. We don't have the right to hide it. This is information that is communicated. There is a form that must be filled out at the stock exchange regulator. And this information is published on a special page by the stock exchange regulator. And it can end up in financial blogs, in financial newspapers and so on, because it's very important to know, okay? So every Monday morning, bam, he. He would sell a big package. So we looked stupid because I looked at my $100,000, $100,000, and then, well, the guy sells a package, and bam. I dropped to $95,000. Then the following week, I dropped to $89,000. The week after, according to him, I'm at 78,000 and so on. And my colleague who had 400,000, well, he slipped to 250,000. Then he slipped to 190,000. And it's starting to shrink, to say the least. And pay attention. This number that we see, it's before the state. What does that mean when you see this number in dollars? I don't know. You managed to collect $10,000. You're not going to receive $10,000 in your account. Right. They're going to take away the taxes, they're going to take away the fees, the transfer fees, the conversion fees, etc. You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised between what you see and what you receive in your account. Right, that's it. All at once. What did Human Resources do? Human Resources were in the process of. Almost every. Every Monday they send an email. Yes, you saw that our dear CEO sold shares. But that was. You shouldn't believe what the media says or listen to the critics. He knows what he's doing. Uh, it's normal for CEOs to sell because it's a sale that's been planned for a very long time. It doesn't mean that the company is doing badly. Uh, everything is going very well in the company. He's in the process of selling and all that. Human Resources. No, Human Resources. Once again, I'm telling you, the CEO can take a gun, shoot an employee in the toilet. I assure you that they'll find a way to write to you saying that, uh, I don't know. He went into the toilet, he heard a noise behind the door, he shot like that. Like Pistaras. Right. They'll find a valid reason. So the reality of the story is that our stock price, I think at its highest is. It was around $45. 50. I don't think it hit $40 50, but it was roughly in the mid-40s, 46s, 47s. I can tell you that after a few months, not even a year, it went from $47 to under $10. And then it was trading at $6. And that means that my $90,000, $100,000, I think, was reduced to next to nothing. I had. I had. I had nothing left. I think I had $11,000. $11,000 or $10,000. And when I sold it, I paid taxes and everything. I think I ended up with the equivalent of about €4,500. You know what I mean? The guy who wanted to buy his house, well, he didn't even have the deposit for. He didn't even have the money to deposit for a house. Because the guy, the guy, what did he do? He sold en masse, in fact, killing everyone's shares, of course. But he took it. He could sell because his shares weren't locked. While all of us finished. He's going to kill the action. It's going to become a penis stock before he's finished everything he has. But he doesn't care. He Got them for free. At the beginning, he gave them to himself for free, you see? So he didn't buy them. He really got them for free. You know, like when I created my company, well, I gave myself 100% of the shares. But I mean, these shares are worthless. As long as the company has no value that has been put into it by the work of other people, by cash, by patents, by products, by customers, it's worthless. Anyone can create a company today and say that they have a million shares, a million shares belong to me, but no one buys them. They're worthless. That's a million shares. On the other hand, the day that this million shares valued at $50 per share, 50 by 1 million, that's $50 million. You see? So that's something else. But you have to be wary of these types of people. You have to be wary of these types of bosses. For me, they're toxic bosses. I wouldn't work for people like that. For me, like I told you, you give me money. You give me money and you don't give it to me in shares. You give it to me in cash. I want it. I'll see it in my account every month, you see, I'll see it. I'll see the cash. You keep your shares. I don't need shares. I want money. That's how it is. So you take the note, you do it. You make the noise, you do it. You do it like that. You know, that's the kind of boss you're talking to when you go to their place, because they talk to them. They're not ashamed. You understand? You have to be like that. Look, I'll tell you something. When you go to these people, they don't talk about motivation. That means if you go to a startup, don't say, yeah, look, I'm looking for an experience because I'm looking for the next step in my career and I really like the work. I heard about your culture and I think it's great. Don't do that. You ask them for that noise. There you go. Okay, listen, you tell them. You tell them. You come to my ears. You say, listen, I have the skills you're looking for. I saw. Yeah, I saw the skills. I have them. And I know that these skills are very rare on the market. I can tell you I wouldn't want to be in that position because you can't find people with these skills. So if you take 100 random people in this field, I'm in the top five. Because I say that, because I'm being modest. So I can help you make money. I can help you get out of the situation you're in. On the other hand, I have a lot of qualities. I have one flaw. My flaw is, okay, so I understand that I can work 80 hours a week. I have no problem with that. It's just that I work like that every day. On the other hand, if you want me to come, you're going to have to come to my ears and make the noise of money. That's it. Because we're all here for the money. We're not here to open an orphanage. We're not here to run a humanitarian association. So there you have it. You have to be honest in these situations. Okay? I'm honest. I hide. That's it. That's all. Thank you, my friends, for listening so far. I'd like to remind you of my toxic book that you can find on Amazon. What career coaches don't tell you. See you soon, friends. Mister.