#17: Marion Chapsal and Ken Homer

Episode 17 - Marion Chapsal and Ken Homer - Collaborative conversations to build the office we all want

Key Points:

• Instead of blame, bring everyone to the table and involve all of the stakeholders

• Men and women need to work together to rebuild the community and to create a different culture

• Training should focus on identifying agents of change within organizations, then creating allies

• Before starting to address gender inequality, it’s important to listen and understand the issues

• Programs need to work on both the individual level as well as the collective

• To start addressing gender equality, we need to ask everyone how they would like their environment to be

The startup world has not been immune to some of the negative revelations that have come from the #MeToo movement. Stories implicating startup founders, teams, and investors have abounded. The startup world likes to think of itself as a modern, forward-thinking group of people but as we’re seeing, that is not always the case.

Soon after the start of public discussion about the #MeToo movement, we invited Marion Chapsal of Ideas on Stage and Women on Stage to join us in the studio to speak about gender equality, or as we have today, inequality. As a woman and as a coach, she’s witnessed this for years, so the emergence of #MeToo came as no surprise. Marion believes that as bad as the stories have been, the moment highlights an important issue and gets it out in the open, so at least now everyone can talk about it.

Marion recently teamed up with Ken Homer of Collaborative Conversations while working with a particular client. The idea behind their co-training sessions is that in order to seriously address gender inequality in organizations, they had to include everyone in the discussions. Both genders need to listen and be heard. They wanted to start a dialogue rather than continue a blame game.

This episode is a bit different and it’s not about a startup, though it’s a subject that is important to address. We can all do better and we all need to figure out what we want our future to look like, whether we’re in big companies or small startups.  

The #MeToo movement isn’t going away anytime soon and we believe this episode provides everyone with something to think about. If you’re a startup founder, do you want to be ahead of the curve and build a team that truly represents your market and is forward-thinking? Or do you want to be part of the old way of thinking that startups are supposedly disrupting?

#4: Sébastien Couture

Episode 4 -  Sébastien Couture - Building the future with blockchain

As much as everyone in Startupland talks about disruption, let’s be honest: there’s not as much disruption out there as there’s cracked up to be.  However, however...blockchain is one of those areas that may be living up to the hype.  We sat down with one of the co-founders of Stratumn, the highest-funded blockchain startup in France.

Sébastien is a great example of someone who proves there’s more than one model for being a successful startup entrepreneur.  As his professors described him, he’s “atypical”: he’s both a self-taught developer, and has a degree in marketing and communications.  What’s more, he was educated in Canada as well as in France.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Sébastien walks us through how he got started in the blockchain world (including launching the very successful Epicenter blockchain podcast) and how the relationships that he’s developed over time have helped Stratumn grow from a vision to a leading blockchain infrastructure business with two rounds of funding.

For technical founders who don’t like glitzy marketing, there are so many lessons to be learned here.  Sébastien is big on relationship development, building a community and listening.  In a world full of so many more pontificators than listeners, he provides some valuable lessons in how to build your business with open communication channels between you and your users.

In addition, we hear about both the upsides and the challenges of building a startup in Paris with a team that looks like the UN.  Communicating across cultures is not always easy, but embracing the challenge is certainly paying off for Stratumn.

There’s so much helpful advice here, you’re going to want to listen to this a few times to get it all.