INSEAD 2003J Podcast

We talk about how one adjusts from living in California to returning to France and going from working at big companies to hiking his own path at various PE acquisitions. 

We talk about going from investment banking to two sided internet marketplaces to becoming a professional board member.

We talk about riding the dot com boom/bust to taking a job at big Pharma to becoming a headhunter to working for the Gates foundation to becoming a film maker to running an incubator.

Pilar takes one for the team and allows me to bore everybody with stories about my mediocre attempts at tech companies and start ups.

We have a surprisingly modest (for a Dutch person) discussion ranging from barely graduating high school to working haute finance in New York and London to how to think about retirement.

We talk about going from investment banking in NY and London to running the world's 4th largest lithium mine.

We talk about going from private equity to INSEAD, back to finance and then returning to Greece to become a MP and cabinet minister.

We talk about going from France to Australia (via Florida), helping France get a contract to sell submarines to Australia (which was stolen by the Americans) and setting up a fund and advisory service.

We talk about going from being a hot shot M&A lawyer in Spain to being a hot shot M&A lawyer in Spain to starting his own M&A advisory firm in Spain and an amazing foundation that is saving baby's lives. 

We talk about going from a small village outside of Calcutta to working at McKinsey to becoming a broadband fiber expert.

We talk about starting a women's portal in Vietnam, moving to Singapore to work for Samsung and moving to Vancouver to start a metabolic health platform.

We talk about setting up a web agency in China, sleeping on Greg Mittman's couch, starting up digital marketing in China for Nike and philosophical questions around retirement.

We talk about raising Alpacas, sneaking pregnant wives onto transatlantic flights, working for a little company named IBM and starting a deep tech VC fund.

We talk about going from consulting, to pumpers, to failing to become a C-grade celebrity in Italy.

We talk about going from being a journalist in Russia, to having to leave Russia for the same reason, to using generative AI to create news in Germany.

We talk about building brands for skincare, fragrances, herbal tea and militant chocolate. Note from Laura - Looking forward to telling you what drove me from L’oreal & Hermes via Insead to building 2 fine french food businesses (one in herbal teas and one in organic chocolate) to my  ultimate goal which is under way: taking over the 40 hectar family farm based in Brittany, France to at l...

We talk about starting in the dot com boom/bust, to taking a job at McKinsey to ending up at a salmon food company in Norway. 

We talk about going from an Accenture consultant to being the CEO of the biggest bank in Northern Ireland. 

We talk about going from selling websites to selling derivatives to doing whatever it is that a hedge fund does. We also have a mini therapy session.

We talk about bootstrapping a chocolate and coffee company in the Yucatán. Orale. 

We talk about going from being a cold hearted investment banker in Mexico to being a socially conscious private equity person in Mexico (via New York and Paris).

We talk about going from managing a small factory in rural France to becoming a ‘big deal’ in the European green energy space.

We talk about going from spending a decade in the US army to starting and running a winery in Texas.

We talk about starting off as a rearview mirror engineer to founding and running a nuclear medicine company. 

We talk about how a Spanish boy worked all the way through Europe to eventually become a Scandinavian.