Antoine Pouppez: The Founder Who Refused to Outsource

Antoine Pouppez co-founded neuroClues six years ago. Today it's raised over £25M and employs 40+ people across Belgium and France, building MedTech that treats neurological disorders through eye tracking.

His approach from day one: if it's core to the product, you build it yourself, no matter how much longer or more expensive that is. James and Antoine get into why that decision holds up outside MedTech too, how he kept investors on side through a year long delay, and the one question that decides what's worth doing properly versus what can wait.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi, I'm James Johnson, founder and CEO coach. Welcome to the Pure Effect Podcast, where your peers will tell you what's unlocking their 10 million plus business. In today's episode, Antoine and I explore how you build your company differently if you play the infinite game. Remember to hit the subscribe button before we get started. And now on with the show. So Altoon, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Thank you for having me, Tim.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Now, from our research, you can fall asleep in under a minute. So I I think I've got about 60 seconds to keep you awake, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yes, that's true. I can sleep anywhere and I can sleep really well.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Is that something you've trained, or is that something that you've just always had?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I think I trained myself to do that. Since I started working, uh I usually try to have that sort of a power nap when I really feel I need to, and that's something I've been using since I started working. And it it really, really helps because that instead of fighting the whenoon against that feeling of sleepiness, you just go along with it, accept it, sleep 20 minutes, and then you're way better afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Well, I mean the topic we're going to talk today is this kind of a cost of building fast, and so part of that is looking after yourself. So we'll probably come back to this idea of letting yourself sleep and looking after yourself. But perhaps let's start with your origin story. What's got you to here today?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I was always intrigued by entrepreneurship. I've I've been an intrapreneur for all my life because as a project manager, basically you get a blank page, you get a budget, and then you need to deliver within that a set time frame with a defined team. I've always liked doing this within that space, but I wanted to do it for myself once. And so I had several discussions with people, but at some point I encountered my co-founders, so Pierre Des and Pierre Pouget. They're neuroscientists, experts in neuroscience have been working in Europe and in the US. And they were trying to build neurocruise, which is our venture today. They were trying to build neuroclues in their garage, and so basically I did what I'm used to do. It's basically take a blank page, define the strategy, identify the resources, and then move forward. And this is what we've been doing now for the past six years.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

It's amazing, because you've got you've already made so much progress in terms of like you've raised 25 million plus, like your team sizes now over 40, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Correct, yeah. So, and so we we are on two countries in Belgium and France. The half of the team is in Belgium, the other half is in France. And indeed, we we've done several rounds, but in total we've raised 25 million with investors like the European Commission, mid-tech investors like Team Pact and White Fund, regional investors, friends, fools, and family, the classical, typical first founder journey where you start small and then you leverage every euro you find, you try to leverage it.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Now, what's interesting is that so on this. You've done it as an entrepreneur, you're now doing it as an entrepreneur. What what have you learned about this kind of zero like zero to 40, sort of you say, like this phase that you would do maybe do differently again with hindsight?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

It's a good question. So, what I've learned is that you need a trait to be to do that, you need to be optimist, resilient, and naive. Naive because when you start as an entrepreneur, you say, Okay, I see the mountain, it's not gonna be a big one, and I'm gonna be at the top within the next year or two. Five years later, you're at the top of the first hill, and you still see the mountain all the way there at the back, and you sort of try to re-evaluate. So there's where you need to be naive enough to say, Okay, I still go, and I go again, and I go again, and I go again. You need to be optimistic because on the road there's gonna be a lot of hiccups and a lot of the road is not straight, and you need to be resilient to keep going and to keep having that same energy. And so, as a first founder, you need to be really passionate about what you're doing. My passion is project management, impact on human society. I the passion of my co-founders is neuroscience, they can speak about neuroscience for hours and hours and hours. And so, you need that passion, you need that drive from day one. If you don't have that, the road is so long and so sinuous and so complex that you basically you'll drop out at some point. So, when I'm looking back, what would I do differently? When you're first founder, you're very naive on your ability to deliver on several aspects, and potentially you're trying to deliver on non-core value for your product. So you're trying to deliver on finance HR, you're trying to deliver on office building, you're ending up working on things that don't create direct value for your product, and so that's where from the beginning you need to be surrounded by the best ones. So, for instance, accounting, who works first with a first small accounting group, they did not understand what we were doing. So it took us two years of a bit of a hassle, and then we moved to one of the big five. We we were now working with Deloitte, super happy. I know my accounting is square and clear, I know I'm paying an extra value for that, but I'm paying the value that it's it's it's my time that I'm paying actually. I'm saving me time because I'm I'm sure that this is done square and perfect. And when an investor wants to look at my books, they're perfectly fine. And if they have questions, I'm putting Deloitte in front of them, and and then I don't have to worry about that. And so that's something I would do differently is from the beginning, where do I want as a team bring core value to my product? What is really important to keep in-house, and what is what are the activities that are supporting that that are really core, but that don't bring direct immediate value. And so, therefore, these outside of the core activities, surround yourself with the best ones. You'll pay the premium. Same for the lawyers. We start with a smaller firm and then a medium firm, and now we're a big firm. The value is not the same and the wariness is not the same. It's it's it's all the process is going much faster by working with the best one. Unfortunately, as a small startup with empty pockets, you have to go through that cycle. You have to sort of so identify the lists. You have to have always that balance between the cost and the value that person is bringing. But yes, I I wouldn't cut corners on that surroundings, on these, on this value creation around that main product. But on the other side, again, that's where potentially we've also made some mistakes. We try to subcontract activities that would directly bring value to the product, that were directly linked to the product, and there we had to roll back and take it internally because the uh it was too core for us, and the understanding of what we wanted to do was not completely there from these subcontractors. So, so so having a proper balance around yourself for non-core activities with people that understand what you're doing, but for core activities, do it yourself, do it the hard way.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

That's really, really nice practical insight of just two thoughts on that. It sounds like you covered one of them, which is sometimes you might have to wait a bit till you've got the money to get the very best, but don't like do it as soon as you can, I suppose I'm hearing. But I think how do you decide, how early can you know what is core and what is non-core? Because obviously, in this early stages you're sort of looking for at market fit, you may have done exactly what the product is. Do you know enough to make that decision?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

No, indeed. But as soon as you identify something that is core, then you need to internalize that. And we are very, very pushy on that. And so there's companies out there, certainly in MedTech, that say, okay, the product is not core, it's going to be sales, marketing, and so on, and then subcontracting the whole product. The challenge is that you get stuck with your product version. You don't your ability to iterate on feedback you get from the market is limited. Certainly in MedTech, where you have strong regulatory constraints that don't allow you to be very agile in terms of a product version. Basically, you have a whole documentation package to produce every time you want to produce a new product. And by being able to do that internally, you're a little bit more flexible. Still, flexibility is not great, but just you're a little bit more flexible. We're able to have two to four releases a year. If you're doing that with a subcontractor, you'd be stuck with one or two releases because then you try to extract most of the value of each release, and so you'd reduce, you'd say okay, because you're you have an overhead that's linked to uh product release, which is a regulatory overhead. To give you an idea, the whole documentation package we have to produce every time we extract, we produce a new release, it's about 10,000 pages. And within that 10,000 pages, every line is written by a person, is reviewed by another one, and it is approved by a third one. Luckily, we don't have to reproduce that 10,000 patient every time we're doing doing a release. We just have to change the bits that have that are impacted by the new features. But indeed, this the regulatory constraints on medical device reduces a lot that agility that you might have.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

So because when you said like keep it in-house, I was thinking of companies like Apple or Nike, who famously basically outsource pretty much all of that. Is it is it because it's regulatory, this there's a regulatory burden? Is that what makes it unique for your industry, or do you think this advice holds wider?

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I think this advice holds wider because owning your tech stack completely from A to Z allows you to be way more agile and adapt and way more way more adaptable to requirements that are coming from the market. So you don't have to fit a square in a round because you have a product that has been designed by someone else, and you have a requirement from your user that says XYZ, and basically you're trying without changing your product to fulfill the requirement. For us, it's easy. We go back to the Randy team saying, Okay, look, we need to change this, and they identify usually quick fixes. Sometimes a feature it takes them half a day to add, and they're bringing a lot of clinical value. Well, then you have the regulatory burden where you have to wait an extra three months, four months because you can't just ship it for that the next day. But but yeah, I strongly believe that companies that do everything internally have really an edge compared to others, and and the country, the the example in that sense is companies like Tesla or SpaceX, where they everything is done internally, or more European one, Aero Space Lab, which is a Belgian guy, they're also verticalizing everything, doing everything internally, and you're also cutting costs on that because relying on an external supplier to produce your tech stack and to produce your whatever activity that is core, you're dependent on all the knowledge that the know-how that they've been created that is not documented. So basically you're locked with them, and usually they're way more expensive than having someone an internal resource. The flip side of this con is that you need to be very, very cautious on who you're hiring because you want the experts because you're doing everything internally, you want the best guys in your team, and so for some positions, some of our positions have been opened a year, two years, three years, because we couldn't find the right person to fulfill that position during that time. Obviously, because we had to move forward, we hired some contractors and we tried, we sort of internalized them. They had our own, it was as if they were collaborators, and we really made sure that there was a strong handover between these two guys. But but indeed, it's that's for me, that's a uh a recommendation that for deep tech startups that does apply to internalize this because that's it's your technology that is your knowledge, and you don't want to lose that to anyone. And then it also also used to identify IP opportunities. We have eight patent families because we've identified challenge along the way that said, okay, now we need to erase, we need to to go over this bar and how are we going to do that? Okay, we're we've we've defined a novel way to do it, okay. Now let's patent that as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

So it says there are quite a lot of sort of positive externalities from this from this route, sort of faster speed, IP creation.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

And but the faster speed is not always the case. Because when you go to a contractor, they've done it usually also already in the past, and they can pick up some bits while the in the first building part, but then afterwards you have more agility because you've built it yourself, so you know your engine and you know where potentially the issue is, but in in the initial setup, that it there is then it's not faster, unfoldly. But you're it's it's the infinite game, and you're building that for the long term long run, and and that's potentially something we've done well from the beginning. It's from the beginning we said, okay, we're gonna build a product and an organization that is built to last, and along the way, potentially we will find a partnership that that makes that we will do an exit, but the the core principles are there to last, and it's not just a quick fix all we we have all our processes are in place, like a big company, we own a full, completely our tech stack. So that's really something that was core from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

What gave you that confidence to set out as the infinite game model? Like, is this is this sort of the new founder optimism we talked about? Or was that or was there something that was that was giving because doing deep tech like a research team was expensive? Like in in having your own in-house team team is expensive. Yeah, so where did this confidence come from?

SPEAKER_01 15:22

So it's so it's the naivety of the of the first-time founder, but if I would have to do it again, I'd do it again as well. It's also the fact that you want to have an impact on society. It's the impact-driven thesis that we have saying if you want to have an impact, you need to be there for the long run. So you're not just there for the exit. Are you there on your own, or at some point you're there with a partner that allows you to increase your impact? That's another question. And then the example, so we both of us were working, Pierre Day and myself were working at IBA, so the big medtech company, and it's actually a startup that was started 25 years ago in Belgium, and from the beginning was the same idea. They're there, they're building things to last. Well, obviously, the product is also there to last because when you're building a personal therapy center that is the size of a tennis court and it is three floors high, you're not building that for three years, but you're potentially building that for 25, 30 years. So they they knew also they had to build something to last long. And we saw the value in that. So that's that's how we were also inferenced by our bigger brother.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

How do you then resist the temptation? Like, so in the early days it's about survival, there must be moments when you're like there is a short-term like quick win that makes us moves us a bit closer towards it, or there's a longer-term decision which is gonna take more difference. How do you how do you balance that?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

It's a continuous balance, and it's not an easy one. Certainly, in the beginning, in the first three, four years, where you basically said to your investors, yeah, we're gonna be on the market in 23, no, not 23, 24, no, not 24, 25. Okay, not 25, it's gonna be beginning of 26. Okay, we're on the market. So basically, your investors are there, okay. You promised something, now deliver, and so you're being pushed. So, indeed, my co-founder, he is very, very concerned, very strong on the quality we deliver. So, that's really one of the so that's one of our our our core values is quality, because we're a medical device, obviously, but also because it's part of the values. We want to deliver qualitative product, and so in these situations where you had to decide, okay, do I cut corners and I move forward, or do I do things right again? And that's where it's come to value. Is this feature your core value for your product on the longer term in the infinite game is gonna be there forever, or is this feature a short-term value creation something that's gonna be there for only a few years? If the answer is gonna be there forever, then you do the things right, so you don't have to do them again in three or four years again, because reworking an existing product in medical device, it's extremely costly. And again, we've seen that also in our past industry, where we've seen companies working on a very old tech stack and having to carry that burden of technology, of that old-fashioned technology across releases without having the opportunity to fix this issue. So basically, if you're putting if you're putting a band-aid on a on a bug, you're potentially gonna find that band-aid 25 years down the road from now, and it's gonna be a band-age on a bandage on a bandage on a bandage, and basically no one took the time to really fix a core issue. So that's what's so is it core? Is it gonna be there in our tech stack and in our code lines for 25 years? Then we do it right. Is this something that can be fixed later on and that's easy to fix for in the next release? Yeah, okay. Then we try to find the 80-20 role, what is the parital role where we can provide a first value and then iterate. And now that's also how we how we define our features. We we have now our platform that does eye tracking, so we evaluate energetical disorders using eye movements. That platform is there, and when we add clinical value, we first do it with a where we provide the first insights, allowing key opinion leaders to first test the product, we iterate with them, and then they provide a feedback. We and then we provide we put the final version of the protocol with all the information we need. And so therefore, we we are we have to work in two releases until over a year. We we don't again have that flexibility to ship uh quick.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

It feels very deliberate that's like each each part of device is kind of like it feels like there's an analysis, analysis and planning is really important. Like periodically taking a step back and go, okay, what's core value, what's non-core value, what is what is the stuff that we need to infinite build versus 80-20 on? How how what was this cadence? How are you practically doing that?

SPEAKER_01 20:26

So, first thing we've done when we started company is write down the storyline of the company. So that was back in 2020. We sat down Pierre, Pierre, and myself, we defined what are our core values, why are we doing this without even talking about a product? Why are we doing this? What is the driver of everyone and making sure that these are aligned? And so there, that's where we define quality is one of our one of our core value. Pragmatism is another one because yeah, you can have a great product and spend 10 years developing, if if you're not pragmatic about the fact that you have resource constraints like like money and and and human resource constraints, then you're going nowhere. Uh, trust is one of our core value as well, care. And so so we've defined all these and empowering, sorry, that's the last one, empowering people around us and empowering our our customers with the technology we have. So, so these are the five core values. We also took three, four, five months to write down everything. So we did a few due diligence on ourselves. So we wrote down what is the science behind what we're doing. And so my co-founders did a proper literature review, identified what we wanted to do in a scientific aspect. So we identified it was Parkinson's first, potentially other indications afterwards. What is the product going to look like? What is the market? How are we going to address the market? And what is the company going to look like, and so on and so on. So we defined that. It was 150 pages at the time. We're updating that document. Every fundraising, and now it's about 350 or 400 pages. Basically, every newcomer, when he comes to the company, he gets through that whole document, not in one go, because otherwise we lose them. But at the end of the first six months. Yes. But so at the end of the first six months, they sort of they they should be aware of what is in that document, at least. And so that's that's how we basically we've defined the path forward and how we wanted to do that. And so that's that's where we laid down that aspect on quality. We we really took the time to to to think about it. And if I had to do a startup again, I would do the same. Because when you've started, when as soon as you incorporate your company, then you need money, obviously. So you need to move forward fast, you need to raise money, so you're constantly on operational tasks. What is usually said is in startup, it's one year strategy and nine years of execution. Take your time to do that one year of strategy when you don't have constraints, you don't have people looking over your shoulder, and you can take the time to really think it through. Then afterwards is going to be much easier, much faster because you're you're aligned between founders and newcomers, he's aligned between because he's read the storyline, he knows where we're going, and so that's how within Neuropus we're trying to stay aligned continuously, is by having that centralized document or centralized vision on how we so was that put together before you incorporate it, or was yeah, it makes sense. So like we don't have the pressure of sort of yeah, yeah, it was before the incorporation, and was basically a way to sort of shake hands between founders saying, okay, do we all agree on that hundred pages? Is that the way we see the company? And we defined also the value, the how we're going to operate the company, who's gonna be in the board. We went all the way to the details, what is the exit strategy? So, so what uh what is the place for our collaborators? So, for instance, we all our collaborators, everyone has a stock option plan, they have a seat in the board, they so so they they they really we defined the the why, the how and the what completely, and then we start. And obviously, things have changed along the way, and the planning, the risk, everything, a lot has changed, but we still try to maintain that document every two, three one year or two. We we try to update that with what what is the current state.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

So, should we quickly jump back to investors? Because you said like sort of the 2020 22, 23, 24, 25, oh a lot 26. How did you bring them with you on that journey? Because clearly you've you fundraised during that time.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

So how did you do that? I think it's very useful for sort of other founders.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

So, what is useful, what excites these investors is the market potential. The product itself is great, but it's not what why they invest in you. So that's what we've done really well. Is that we our first two hires, we had no product, we had a few lines of code, but so we had our CTO, which is Pierre Day, my co-founder, myself, and then someone responsible for regulatory and quality, and that's the good. So she's the one that allows us to go on the market, get on the market. She's basically the gatekeeper to the market, and someone that works on strategy, sales, marketing. There's no developer, no, these ones are coming afterwards, and and someone, and we had someone with a medical background that was working with us to really clearly understand the needs for our customers. And so the fact that we had all these dimensions from the beginning allowed us to keep our investors excited because we showed that we were moving on the product, we showed that we were moving towards market approval, we showed that there was a market appetite. So we had initial discussions with the market even though the product wasn't ready, but based on the potential of the product, we already signed research contracts with big institutions like NYU Langon, like uh La Pitié Salpétrière. So these are frontrunners in neurology, and so that kept the investors excited. It was tough. I can tell you, it was not always easy to update the planning every every now and again and say, okay, lock sorry. We actually would think it would be the worst, it was a full year. So basically, I don't remember exactly, I think it was 22, 23, where we said, yeah, end of 24 is gonna be finished, and it was actually in 2025, so we we had a more than 12-month delay in 12-month planning, so that was very, very tough. But investors, when they also see the passion, the involvement that you're putting in there, then they see the potential on the market, they're willing to support you, and they know in deep tech. I don't think there is a deep tech company that can say that they are on on budget and on time, and even very, very big, big, big deep tech companies that have infinite resources on time and on budget. So investors know that, and and it's factored within their their risk for ratio for for on their side.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

But were you also explicit with the investors about your infinite game focus?

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's part of the 100 pages. So we're we're uh and also as a medical device, the regulatory constraint you have on top of you is forcing you to build also partly on the infinite game. Basically, the regulator, the FDA in the US and uh European Commission, doesn't want a medical device on the market that is not built for the infinite game. Imagine you have a pacemaker from a startup company that fails after two years. You, as a patient, you're stuck with your pacemaker with no vendor that can maintain it anymore. So that the regulatory constraint on medtech is also built in that mindset. And therefore, that mindset also attracts people that are more into the infinite game in the impact on society. It's a very I think medtech is one of the toughest ecosystems in which you to operate as a startup because you have strong regulatory constraints and you have a lot. You don't only have the medical, like when you're building a molecule, relatively easy. You have just uh GMP and you have to show efficacy and safety. But we on top of that, we have to show GDPR, cybersecurity, battery regulation. You you name a regulation, I think we have our foot in there. We we we keep a list of the regulation we're complying to, and that list is about a hundred lines long because it's super super complex. So you you're as a medical device, you're also attracting people that are there for the infinite gain, that are there, okay. But if I'm doing this work, I'm gonna do it straight from the beginning. So that's it's clean and and also a potential partner, an acquirer, they will look at that as well. If you're if you're if everything is half cooked, they they would have to do it everything again when when you exit, when they they buy you, and therefore they factor that into the uh the interest they have for your company.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

And I suppose if you are a serial investor in the space, going back to the naivety point, you know what you're getting from founders. They're looking for those things too, and they're expecting that sort of five-year sort of like, oh, we're just at the foothill realization, they just probably don't want to tell you at year one as it might spoil the surprise.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, they're they do share nicely, saying, Okay, look, come back with and and they tend to be so there's a real value of debt. So you have these early investors, friendfuls, families, regional investors that are more government supported, and then you have the VCs, and but between the two, you really have that value of debt whether you have to build your product as fast as possible, but with the right quality for that infinite game. And so these VCs, they know what are the proof points they they're looking after, and they're looking at how fast you're moving. Basically, it's that what's going to attract them. It's it's okay. I see that the team is able with limited resources to still deliver on their promise, they're still moving forward quite well, and so I'm gonna jump on that plane, on that train, because I see that the the rhythm is there, and so that's I think one of the criteria they're looking after.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

It just disappeared. So good. I just if we're to leave like people listening with like one actionable thing they could do after after stopping listen to this podcast, they're going back to their desk. What is one thing that they could do right now around the infinite game or scaling that you would you would suggest?

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Identify what is core to your product and work on these points first and put the right quality on these aspects and then leave the rest for later. From the beginning, we've we've also used that. Is it urgent and important framework to say, okay, what do you need to work today on? Because obviously, as a startup, you have my to-do list is long as my arm, never goes down. Yeah, exactly. But so, what is really important, urgent and important, like Obama says, what is your P1 priority? Choose one or two and make them yours for your week, and then move to the next ones. The same for your product. What is really core and important, where do you need to deliver value on, and then move, expand from there on.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Amazing. Well, John, thank you so much for sharing and well done on getting to the foothills and look forward to seeing you take take over the whole mountain.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Thank you. Thank you a lot, James. Thanks for for this discussion.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Subscribe now if you want more Ashman Insight from Founders Scaling right now. Thanks for listening and happy scaling.