Hugo Amsellem: Backing Founders Building For Millions Of People | E72

Hugo, so let's switch roles for a second. You know, if you had to pitch Intuition to founders, what would your elevator pitch sound like?

Yeah, I mean, it's just like a— it's a friend in your cap table that understands what you're going through and that basically is probably as crazy as you, even more sometimes. But, you know, we're not founders, so it's a bit different. As crazy as you around the delusion you have to basically target millions of people. You got to be crazy to think that what's in your brain is going to resonate with millions of people. That type of delusion, that type of thinking, that type of almost like sweet, crazy ambition needs to be essentially protected, nurtured, cultivated by the people around you. So that's what we do. That's essentially the friend that is a bit cooler and a bit geeky in your capital.

Welcome to the EU Startups Podcast. Sit back and enjoy the show hosted by Marcin Lewandowski.

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You'll learn more about it in a minute. Everyone give it up for Hugo Amsellem, the co-founder and general partner of Intuition. Hugo, it's such a pleasure. Welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot, Marcin. I'm really impressed by your introduction because that was done live for people who don't know. It's not like something that has been edited. So congrats.

No, no. Yeah, but I really, I truly love— by the way, congrats on founding Intuition. I love the name and I went through manifesto just last night preparing for this interview and I think it's awesome. So yeah, congrats on that. Maybe let's dive right in. Your journey from, you know, rocking the music industry with a decentralized label to diving into the world of video creators and consumer startups and now co-founding Intuition sounds like, you know, a hell of a ride. What got you hooked on the idea of empowering founders in consumer space and shaping consumer culture?

I mean, it's funny because now that you say it, you know, like you sort of like put the perspective into what I've been doing before and what I'm doing now. I started by trying to help artists like musicians essentially become independent and build their own careers. You know, I built my first company with that angle. That was 2010, '11. So essentially I was trying to help those folks just scale and put their art into the world. And then I helped founders do the same at the family for 7 years. Right. And basically during that time, like 7 years, most of the friends that I made as founders that I still have in my life right now, they're doing stuff in consumer. And funnily enough, after I did that, then I essentially tried doing the same with creators, video creators, because at the time when I built my first company, video creators didn't exist, right? It was just like musicians that were on the internet and basically scaling themselves. And so with the YouTube and TikTok sort of like movement happening, now you have like those new, like this new generation of creators just, you know, basically like doing millions and millions of views. And again, you know, like I got obsessed with them. And so essentially what happens is that either you're helping artists scale themselves online or you're trying to help consumer founders, you know, scale themselves online or creators. But in the end, you're always doing the same thing, which is backing individuals who are trying to basically influence millions of people, right? Because when you're building consumer companies, you're targeting millions of people, that's for sure, at least. And they generally do that going against the status quo of something. Whether you're an artist, a creator, or a founder, it's the same thing. So I guess that like when you put into perspective, you know, which is what you just did and that's what prompted this thinking. That's what I like, you know, like backing, you know, individuals that are just trying to do things at scale. You know, that's what's fun.

Amazing. Hugo, so let's switch roles for a second. You know, if you had to pitch Intuition to founders, what would your elevator pitch sound like?

Yeah, I mean, it's just like a friend in your cap table that understands what you're going through. And that basically is probably as crazy as you, even more sometimes. But we're not founders, so it's a bit different. As crazy as you around the delusion you have to basically target millions of people. You got to be crazy to think that what's in your brain is going to resonate with millions of people. That type of delusion, that type of thinking, that type of almost like sweet, crazy ambition needs to be essentially protected, nurtured, cultivated by the people around you. I'm not saying that if you're a consumer founder, you only need to be friends with other consumer founders, but empirically, that's what happens. Empirically, when you're building in consumer, you're surrounding yourself with those people. And we're one of those. Helped founders scale, creators scale, artists scale. My co-founder is a former basketball player. The analogy between sports and consumer entrepreneurship is also super, super, super, super strong. So we're that type of people. The way that I pitch it a little bit, and I know it's an elevator pitch and the elevator is already at the 1,000th floor right now, but The way we say, you know, yeah, the way we describe ourselves, my co-founder and I, we often say that we're the cool people for the geeks and we're the geeks for the cool people, right? So when I'm talking to, you know, artists, creators, athletes, I'm super geek. Like, you know, for them I'm like, wow, you know, like, oh, can you do this? Blah, blah. When I'm talking to founders, I'm a little bit cool. But I'm neither or, to be frank. So that's what we do. You know, that's essentially the friend that is a bit cooler and a bit geeky in your cap table.

Awesome. Sounds awesome. Hey, so let's talk about the term consumer. You know, it often sounds like someone mindlessly munching on snacks, right? But you cleave the script emphasizing it's all about, it's all about the culture, not just consumption. So can you share more on what consumer means to you and Intuition?

Yeah, because, you know, when you start evolving in tech, you know, people say, oh, you're doing B2B or B2C? At the beginning, you're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? Like, it's like, yeah, if you talk to your parents, like, they're like, what the fuck? Right? So then people say, okay, it's, you know, it's business to business. And you're like, okay, you're selling to business, I understand. Or it's like business to consumer. And then you're like, but what is a consumer really? Right? And then so people generally say, you know, you're just selling to people. So we could say like business to people, right? But then those people that you're targeting when you're building in that space, they have to be millions. They have to be a lot of them, right? It's like you're not hunting for elephants like you are in the enterprise space. Like my friends at Pointnine would say, you're hunting for flies, right? So like millions of flies you need. When you do that, when you impact, when you need by definition your company to change the way millions of people, billions of people now are going to behave, you're essentially changing culture. So for me, saying consumer is a bit reductive because it's not about consumption. It's about how people behave at scale in groups and how your product, your service Your sort of like ambition is gonna change that. And so that's why we say consumer culture when we talk about intuition and the thesis that we have around it. Because to be frank, you know, the type of founders that wanna do that specific thing, you know, that wanna play that specific game are very, very, very specific. And it's funny 'cause as a founder, I failed as a founder, right? So like, I cannot talk about myself, but as a founder, when you move culture, it's the high you always want to get back. And it's the same with artists and it's the same with creators. And in a way, it's the same with athletes because athletes are seen by millions of people. They're the inspiration for millions, literally dozens of millions of people. When you moved culture, you want to get that again, right? Yeah. The consumer founders, the founders trying to change culture are often in the need of getting that high back. And it's really, really difficult for them to do something else. And that's the type of people that we want to, that we really want to be surrounded with.

Hugo, that's awesome. I'm hooked. I'm hooked. Yeah, I actually read that in your manifesto last night that this is the high you want to get back. And sounds like you really do. You know, speaking of your manifesto again, to me it's like a consumer tech revolution wrapped in a taco. You know, it's bold, spicy, and full of flavor. Can you share maybe a little bit behind the scenes? Like, how did it, you know, come? How did you guys come up with it? How did it come together? And, you know, what inspired those insights?

So with Etienne, we were like, Why do we like this shit so much? Because it's so— Etienne and I are very ambitious people. We want to be successful. That's something that is really deeply inside us. But there's something in us that like almost— it feels like we don't have a choice but to do consumer, right? Yeah. Despite the fact that it's really hard, you know, to invest in consumer. in general, but like specifically in the past few years, you know. So you're like, okay, if you really, really, really want to be successful, you know, your chances are not to be doing a fund that is only focused in consumer. So we had to think about why we actually didn't have a choice but to do this, right? And so we sort of like worked backwards of like, you know, why are we doing this? Like, why don't we do anything? Like, won't we do anything else?

Yeah.

And so we started to like sort of unpack this deep fuzzy feeling of us being on a mission to basically back those founders. And so we started thinking about this and we started like thinking about this in a more sort of like conscious way that, you know, ONE could also be something, this manifesto that we wrote, ONE could be something that we could always go back to, you know, be like, why are we really doing this? that, right? Like, this is like an intuition. Of course, like, we know it's the fund, its name Intuition, but we could always go back to it. And but also, you know, sometimes we realized that founders where they're not surrounded with the right people, and again, you know, like if you're a founder, your job is not just to be surrounded but to change your environment, right? But like sometimes as a founder, you also struggle, you know, you go to like your your VC drinks, which you shouldn't go to necessarily, right? Because it's not just the best investment of your time, but you just go and then you see successful founders, blah, blah, and they usually have done something in B2B. And then you're like, why am I doing this, right? I'm struggling with my D30 retention at 5% flat, and those guys are just raising more money than ever. So you need a bit of a reminder why. It's of course an emotional, irrational decision to be building in consumer, but you have specific points that are like half rational, half emotional, that are a bit the sort of like the unpacking of this fuzzy feeling that when you read again, you're like, yeah, yeah, I remember why I'm doing this, you know.

Man, this is awesome. You know, you also talk about the loneliness economy. I saw your article about it yesterday. And, you know, being a founder, building for millions, as you say, you know, can feel like you're kind of stranded on a deserted island. Yep. How does Intuition aim to address this loneliness and, you know, create a supportive community for founders?

So it's a very, very, very big topic. One, it's a large topic. Two, it's a topic that I'm obsessed with, not necessarily just regarding, you know, helping founders be less lonely, but in general, helping our generation, our society being less lonely. And for me, it's an obsession that I've had at the same level than the the obsession that I've had about empowering creators or artists. And for me, it's like 2 sides of the same coin. That's really weird, but essentially, and I'm going to do a little detour on this, but when you give incredible tools to individuals, essentially a phone, internet, et cetera, Yeah. what happens is that it's amazing because they don't need the permission from anyone to scale themselves and build an empire, right? Like creators, one phone, one empire. It's amazing. Startup founder, one laptop, one empire. Amazing. But what happens is that even if this phenomenon, this permissionless phenomenon is incredible and I celebrate it, at the same time, this independence, because we don't need many people except just our phone and our laptop, right? To do a lot of stuff now.

Yeah.

This same phenomenon is creating loneliness because when you don't need anyone, then you're independent, but you're lonely. And so this happens, of course, at the maximum level for a video creator, for example, because literally it's like one phone and that's it.

Right.

A little bit less for a startup founder because you still have maybe co-founders and employees and then you're all in the same boat, like this adventure. But of course it happens for each and every one of us because we are all a little bit the creator now. We are all leveraged by technology, right? Yeah. So this is a topic for me that's really, really important, like in general, transversally in the society. But for founders especially, it's actually very, very, very profound as well because you're alone most of the ride when you're a startup founder, right? The only moment that you're not alone and you have people cheering you on Is when you start your company and when you succeed, when you exit, right? That's the two moments where people are like, yeah, I always believed in you, man. Yeah, let's catch up for coffee. Let's grab blah blah. In between, it's not, right? It's like a friend often said that if you're building a company, it's like if you're going swimming across the Atlantic, at the beginning people are like, yeah, sure, you're going to swim across the Atlantic. It's crazy. Then you start and people are, you know, on the boat like looking at you and be like, what the fuck are you doing? You know, why are you doing this? And when you go to New York, then it's fucking amazing again. Like, oh. And so it's the same when you're building a consumer company. You're crazy most of the times until you're not. And craziness, because you're crazy in sort of like relatively to your environment, craziness is a very, very lonely feeling, right? Be like, fuck, am I Am I alone believing in this thing? And so around that sort of journey, what we're trying to do essentially, of course, one, that's why we're building the fund like that, writing a consumer manifesto. It'll be like, we believe in you, right? We are people who believe in you. It's normal to feel crazy most of the time and to feel lonely most of the time. And 2, what we're doing is that we are essentially gathering consumer founders in small sort of like laid-back formats in every city in Europe and the US that matters in terms of like startup hub. And we're doing that every year. You know, like we're just basically launching our consumer tour. The format is very simple. 50, 60 founders, just a few investors because, you know, when you're lonely, sure, you feel lonely. Like when you're alone, you feel lonely. But when you're surrounded with too many VCs, you even feel more lonely as a founder, right? So we gather founders, mostly founders, 95% founders, just a few investors that love consumer like us. And then we basically get together and the founders that come to those events are always saying the same things. It feels so good, right? To be surrounded by people who understand the game you're playing. So this is how we do it. It's both by speaking the language by speaking your heart around consumer and the crazy journey that it is, but also doing that sort of like community work of gathering people together.

Sounds awesome. Hugo, I don't remember who it was, but there was one artist who said that, you know, the loneliest he ever felt was always when he was on the stage in front of like huge audiences. So there is definitely something to it. You know, getting back to your manifesto that I like so much, it also mentions the importance of building trust and love with users, something that, you know, tech giants often struggle with. What do you advise founders to prioritize building these relationships while scaling their startups?

So yeah, of course, like, you know, when you're When you're a startup, like the only thing you have is speed and focus, to be frank. Like that's the only opportunity that you have. But it's an amazing sort of like asset because again, when you see like the tech giants and if you've been unlucky enough in your life to work at one of those companies, you see how laggy this is, how slow it is, how unfocused it is, right? So you're a startup founder, speed and focus. Amazing. That said, I'm an investor. And so the first thing that I would say is, as a founder, never listen to any advice from investors. Like never, you know, except like if the investor happened to just sell his company like 6 months ago and is still on the right sort of like operating system the same version, right? 'Cause when I built companies when I was young, when I was just out of school, and I was not successful, but I was a founder. And so there's, I could talk about stuff because I was a founder. I could not talk about success because I didn't succeed, but I could talk about a lot of other things, right? Right. When I stopped being a founder, I felt that my operating system was, up to date just for 6 months after having stopped. After 6 months, I started repeating the same things that I knew, but I didn't feel. Interesting. So right now, like, if, you know, you're a founder and you're listening to an investor on a podcast and like, just don't. And so the thing that I usually say is essentially either go talk to other founders and ask how they do, Or just like go, you know, talk to people who are talking to founders all day long and that are talking on their behalf almost, right? So of course Y Combinator is an amazing resource around, you know, like what they see, you know, talking and being with founders all the time, being mostly founders themselves as well before. So go to them for advice, not to me. I suck.

100% agree with you. I hope still founders will listen because you're giving kind of contrary advice here, even being a VC. So Intuition has a strong— it seems to have a strong focus on Gen Z. How do you see these rebels shaping the future of consumer culture and how are you guys going to rock the stage together with them?

So Gen Z is an amazing topic, right? Like forever, you've had, of course, new generation sort of like being opposed to like a previous culture, to a previous generation. And so you always had this sort of like counterculture, right? Mainstream culture, counterculture. And that sort of like tension was sort of like the yin and yang that was moving the culture shift forward. What's really, really, really puzzling right now is that Gen Z is probably the first generation that is built as an archipelago of subculture and not like a new continent of culture, right? So like millennials were like a new continent, right? So you had like whatever, like the people before, new culture, new continent, sort of like homogeneous. Of course, at the fringes you have a lot of different subcultures and stuff like that, but you really had like— Mainstream culture, counterculture, and new continuities being created. Yeah. With Gen Z, the issue is that it's scattered around millions of small islands that have their own culture that basically also move around a lot. So you're not staying on the same island forever. You're just doing island hopping all the time. So what happens is that then the very definition of culture is being reinvented right now. If there is no mainstream culture, there is no counterculture. So you're entitled to ask, like, what is the culture, right? So it's this really moving sort of territory that is essentially enabling a new form of everything, you know, new content, new platforms, new behaviors, new values.

Yeah.

More dynamism instead of sort of static analysis. And so what I think happens, in my opinion, but I'm probably wrong with this as often, what I think this basically changes is that being like a cultural analyst becomes impossible. I think the only way you can analyze and predict anything is by having a static environment, right? So the only experts that are truly possible are experts at something that doesn't move too much. Right? So mathematics, of course you can say like, oh, let's invent a new number and then everything changes. But still, mathematics is just like one thing that doesn't move. Right? So expertise and predictions are maybe possible. Physics also a little bit. Again, I'm not like a scientific guy, so I would just— but culture. Yeah. When the culture was really slow. And so anthropology, you can do structuralist analysis in between cultures, but this is sort of like fixated culture that have a lot of complex movement. But still, it was very difficult, almost impossible. But still, now the cultures itself are moving all the time. So the only thing you can do with Gen Z, the only thing you can do with this new generation, behaving in very complex sort of like moving ways is just to like look at it, observe it, and try to see retrospectively what happened, but impossible to essentially predict anything. The only thing that I can really, really sort of like benefit from as an investor is that it seems It seems, but again, maybe not. It seems that Gen Z are by culture, but mostly by necessity, one of the most entrepreneurial generations we've ever seen. Mostly again because they need to, but also because they can. And they, again, with just a phone or a computer, can now— Yeah. actually make money online without the permission from anyone. And that has never happened before, right? So that's actually something that's pretty cool to be investing in that type.

100%. But so like this, exactly. So this scaling from 0 to 1, it's easier than ever before. But let's talk about scaling from 1 to 10. That can actually feel like, you know, Trying to juggle flaming torches on a unicycle. Can you spill some beans on the secret sauce for scaling consumer startups from 1 to 10?

How the fuck am I going to know? I don't know. The short answer is like, again, I don't have a fucking clue. And probably, probably, Even the founders who've actually successfully scaled a company from one to ten, just they they don't know. They they know how it happened for them.

Yeah.

But they don't know what happens. What what I what I do know is that right now when when you're when you're harnessing a cultural movement, the the the network effect, the the the culture effect, the sort of like the mimetic theory. That is applied at scale with, you know, just social networks and stuff.

Yeah.

It's so powerful that you can basically surf an incredibly powerful wave towards 10, right? From 1 to 10. That's for sure one thing. The second thing is, and that's quite sort of like new as well. So again, might be wrong, but that's what happens a little bit. I can sort of like see it. Right now, because it's really, really not easy, but it's more and more possible to go from 0 to 1. A lot of companies are starting as a consumer company with a consumer-first DNA targeting the end user directly and then are sort of like morphing into B2B2C, B2B, etc. Right. So like think about like a company like PhotoRoom. PhotoRoom is an app that basically removes the background on your photo and essentially becomes from there your mobile-first studio for anything commerce, right? So like if you're selling stuff online, etc., like you're just doing the whole sort of like photoshoot with the app. At the beginning, it's a consumer company. Oh yeah, like cool. Like take a photo, remove the background, make it like funny, this and that. Now what happens is that one, it's a prosumer company because now like small teams, but professional teams are using PhotoRoom and are implementing it in their process. But also it becomes an API that then is served to other companies and sort of like gets their product being distributed with a multi-platform, multi-modal way, right? One is the app, the other one is the website, the other one is the API, and so on and so forth. And so what happens right now is that consumer also is not something you necessarily end up doing from 0 to 10. It's probably something you end up doing from 0 to 1, and then from 1 to 10, you get like a more hybrid approach, but still that is sort of like infused with the mindset, the DNA, the values of the consumer thinking, right? It's also like a way to sort of like go from 1 to 10 now.

Yeah. Awesome. Hugo, let's talk about the consumer and culture tour. You mentioned it before a bit already, but to me it sounds like the ultimate startup road trip. What's the most exciting thing you've got planned? And, you know, what do you hope founders will take away from hanging out with Intuition? And maybe a follow-up fun question to that. If you could soundtrack this trip with one song, what would it be?

With one song about a tour, about like a sort of like a music band going on a tour? Yeah, like the first thing that comes to mind is like the— because I'm a big Beatles fan and Paul McCartney. Wrote like a song after the Beatles called Ben on the Run. Ben on the Run. Well, it's like it's the music starts like like the second part of the music, which is like very sort of like punchy and yeah. So like you know that that would be like the the music that I would maybe put like that's the thing you know maybe put like on the on the on the beginning of the event. To be frank, I I'd love for for the that would be like a massive success for me. me if it helped the people who attend those events to just feel a bit better, right? To feel good, just feel like, oh wow. People want to be seen. They want to be understood. And I know that when you're putting consumer founders with one another, they usually feel understood. Of course, if they only hang out with consumer founders, then they have a FOMO of like, oh wow, what are you doing now? Oh, you're like This guy is going viral, all those things. So maybe not, but if it makes them feel good and feel seen, that's already like a big success, you know? And then if of course they want us to invest and they think about us when they raise their next round, it's a success for me. But that's like a— it's a byproduct of the initial success that I'm essentially prioritizing.

Awesome. Hugo, I've been enjoying this conversation so much. It's one of the coolest I think I've had since I took over the Use Startups podcast. Very personal and very no filter, no bullshit. Thank you so much for taking the time. And I love what you're doing with Intuition. I love how honest you guys are and truly caring about not only founders, but as you said, said, um, like helping people in general. Uh, I wish you all the best and I, uh, hope to see you soon in Barcelona. Thanks so much, Hugo.

Peace.