In this Prime Talk Podcast Sponsored by GETIDA – Pierre Poignant - CEO of Branded, talks about the Rise of Online Challenger Brands, and also more information about his life's journey. #Branded #PierrePoignant
About Pierre Poignant of Branded -
Branded has a global network of experts in operations, marketing, merchandising, and product development, backed by their e-commerce tech platform, they can accelerate and amplify your brand. Their process is transparent, professional, and creative – and they value flexible deal structures for a win/win approach with entrepreneurs they choose to partner with.
Yoni Mazor 0:05
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of prime talk today. I'm excited. I'm having a special guest. I'm having Pierre Poignant. Fear is the CEO of branded and branded is a leading online brand aggregator. He's going to share with us more about it very soon. But first fear. Welcome to the show.
Pierre Poignant 0:22
Well, Tom, thank you. Thank you, Ernie. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you.
Yoni Mazor 0:26
My pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and for joining us today. So today's story is going to be the story of you. You're going to share with us everything who are you? Where were you born? Where are you from? Where did you grow up as you begin your professional career, station to station until you reached where you are today, especially in the world of E-commerce? So without further ado, let's jump right into it. There you go. So let's start so what were you born what where did you grow up? It sounds like but
Pierre Poignant 0:53
Yeah, so I'm we're French I was born in Quito Cafe, which is a small town in the west of France is the tip of France. Were famous for crap seafood and beautiful scenery. So
Yoni Mazor 1:11
The name again? Well, it wasn't
Pierre Poignant 1:14
Just Quito, Queensbury. It's awesome. Cathy doing so. Quite a few people know about it. But yeah, very small town.
Yoni Mazor 1:27
What was the environment, your parents work in industries? Where they're involved is what the environment in the house was? Was it entrepreneurial? Where there are you working?
Pierre Poignant 1:34
No, no. So that buffer is storing your teacher slash professors. And my father is a politician. So is the mayor of my hometown and a member of the French parliament, and the European Parliament. So it's been in politics for 40 years now. He's retired, but that's true. I grew up in that kind of environment. And not too much dealing with entrepreneurial indeed, yeah, but
Yoni Mazor 2:01
it seems like you know, being in the public servant that you got to have a lot of leadership qualities and, and being able to deal with pressures and making everybody kind of satisfied and you know, navigating the wants and wishes and needs of people. So that is very unique for you to grow up in that environment. Most people in town there's only a very few that can say my father was the mayor of the town, and the leader of the town, so I think that's very special. Okay, and when you were growing up, were you involved in anything entrepreneurial? Were you trying to make money on the side to save money for anything? Oh,
Pierre Poignant 2:31
No. I was there. When I grew up. I wasn't. I loved a lot of the science. So it was like a computer programming program, games, and stuff like that. So very, engineers, engineers can have a background. I grew up in. I studied, in Paris. So I went to Paris to study engineering school called Polytechnique there I am. Once more started with my friends, it was in the year 2000. So this was the big boom of the year, the channel.
Yoni Mazor 3:17
I want to step back a little bit. So Polytechnique is like the MIT right, friends.
Pierre Poignant 3:21
Yes. So we get to MIT data because I also had my master of science at MIT. So
Yoni Mazor 3:32
What year did you begin at Polytechnic? And what were you did your graduate?
Pierre Poignant 3:38
Beginning 1998 and got it in 2001?
Yoni Mazor 3:43
About three years, and then by 2000, you're already involved with the business, you say?
Pierre Poignant 3:48
Yeah, so basically, when I arrived at the University of this cooler, you had an everybody's other computer and the Internet in your room on the very, for the time is very new to me, you know, and to most of my friends who are looking at that, and we had a small start-up, we were essentially a sort of like monetizing some traffic, or doing some affiliate network kind of thing. So we're making a bit of money like this. But that got me into this. Into this
Yoni Mazor 4:25
World, yeah, the online world, but this affiliation that you were doing was local friends, or national or this international,
Pierre Poignant 4:33
Friends, friends, friends. So we were basically, we had some sort of news website and we would sell advertising on the news website and subscription on the news websites. We make a couple of 1000 US dollars per month, but that was
Yoni Mazor 4:49
More like a side hustle. When you're at school. You tried to push this and then it evolves. It's
Pierre Poignant 4:53
Not just when we were at school, but just at school that we all went in different directions. So I went through a cookie I studied at MIT in the, in the, in the US and
Yoni Mazor 5:05
2001. Shifted to the United States. Yes,
Pierre Poignant 5:09
From 2001 to three, I was there. And this is when I met my wife, my spouse, who is a Singaporean. So that's the whole Asia story later. And when I did, we had our second pizza over there. Then, when I went to Singapore, for the first time, I realized that a lot of electronics are cheaper in Asia than it is in Europe. So for those, the time it was true is not true anymore at all. It's like now everywhere at the same price more or less, but the time is true. So we had, we launched a small business where we would import poles, which are cameras from Singapore to friends and would sell them on eBay. So I was doing that for one last year. But so this was the beginning of eBay. Also, if you're, if you recall that when they took off and cured a lot of sellers around the world. And we are we, but we, we stopped the business afterward. Join McKinsey. So this one more time.
Yoni Mazor 6:25
So let me get this right. In 2003, you graduate from MIT, you transition a little bit to Singapore, you realize there's a bit of an opportunity to do some important business into France and you for like about one year from 2003. And eBay was also in the mix. You use eBay to continue selling it. But in 2004 and 2005 we already hit McKenzie.
Pierre Poignant 6:45
McKinsey? Yes. Okay. So
Yoni Mazor 6:47
Take us there. So you know, that's interesting. That's a
Pierre Poignant 6:51
McKinsey for, for seven years, or eight years in, mostly in Paris, and then spas nine, we decided to move to Singapore with my wife, doing a lot of tech at McKinsey. And
Yoni Mazor 7:06
Also in France, doing it or international.
Pierre Poignant 7:09
No, like France, and also Asia a lot in Asia. Back in 2012, I was in. I was actually in Singapore. This is when I joined the founding team of Lazada, which is an E-commerce platform in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was just the right beginning of the digital revolution in Southeast Asia for a few years, the whole ecosystem completely changed. As we are participating in this launch level, I became a leader in the region. And then I got acquired by Alibaba in 2017. So that's when I became the CEO of the platform from 2018 to 20. So that's, that's the story and a big part of my Southeast Asia story. So
Yoni Mazor 8:02
I want to, I want to unpack it. This is amazing stuff. This is big, big boy stuff. So this is what I want to I want to pack it for a minute. Okay, so in 2012 what were the circumstances for you being in Asia, you weren't Mackenzie but this opportunity with Lazada opened up in this era was a business Singapore or somewhere else? What's the story of Masada, if you can tell?
Pierre Poignant 8:21
It's a very, very simple story. So I was in Singapore for already a few years with my wife, we have two children, you know that. And I was looking to do something else. And after seven years or eight years in McKinsey, and I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial, and more in technology, and I met, Matt happened to meet through common friends and network, I met the CEO of Tesla, Max to just, you know, just owning the business. And the was looking, he was looking for someone to take care of operations and so on. And the goal was like, Yeah, let's do it. And, I mean, little, I mean, this is a big dream. And, seven years later, eight years later, we have a lot of things that we dreamt of, what happens is an amazing, amazing story. So I joined the team at the founding team and I was in charge of everything, everything, processing everything operations for a few years, and then logistics. That's, that's what I do.
Yoni Mazor 9:37
Being in a one-on-one ask the question here. So being in McKinsey for seven years, won't give you the confidence you'll be able to accomplish as a stream saying, I want to be the Amazon of Asia. It's a pretty serious thing. Asia has much more humans and people than the United States, right? So this is saying, you know, Amazon is this big, we want to be even bigger, in terms of service, you know, the end-user and clients. But what were you doing for seven years in McKinsey? What was the nature of your work there that gave you the confidence to be able to build such a big structure?
Pierre Poignant 10:05
Well, I think the I was doing a lot of Operations and Technology at McKinsey in many ways, for neural stem teams, very different teams that are what I started to do it every now but then I think it's also about confidence because if you, if you only do things, you're certain you're going to achieve, I think, where's the five and you won't probably do much. I think I don't see, I don't see my money, or I don't see my carrier or what I do as a series of steps that, hey, every step, I need to take a smaller number step.
Pierre Poignant 10:46
And then I want to make sure that, you know, I'm in good condition to make my career so-called theory, progress. No, I don't see it that way. I think, you know, your carrier, or is a series of adventures, you know, there's more of the way I teach adventures, he was a project. And what matters is that you, you find, you find the right people writing, nothing can be done by yourself. This is very clear. You meet the right people. I think, as an ambitious project, you know, where you say, the sky's the limit because that's never the case. But the ambitious project, ambitious, goals, and then also something where I'm going to learn and potentially have fun doing it. So that's the way I look at the reviews of my skill set. So at the time that I met the team, this year, different colleagues, really enjoy this project was very big. Let's do it, you know, and then she doesn't work, a new adventure. That's okay. You know,
Yoni Mazor 12:00
You’re ready for the adventure, you want to take the challenge. You met the people, you feel confident, and you know, what the people want for the team. So you took a leap of faith, there's a risk level, but you're willing to take the risk and go to that adventure, and it paid off big time? And how big was the team? What was the I guess? The material?
Pierre Poignant 12:16
Yeah, at the end of the day, when I left, it was 25,000 people. So the beginning is only a few guys potentially. So the whole journey, we ramped up very quickly, because they're so very rapidly, we were close to 1000 people in Asia. And then it grew the region. And that time, I think it's important to understand that the scale was Makeva very quickly because they were in Southeast Asia around 2012 1314. Then the region started to grow and a lot of people accessed the middle class with disposable income with nowhere to buy because there was very little offline. There was the deployment of 5g 4g, new high-speed smartphones that cheap Chinese smartphones arrived from, from China, you know, Xiaomi at that time, was one of the first you know quality cheap Chinese firms and on social media, also Facebook arrived and so there was a combination of effects that the whole digital economy so commerce but not only, you know, a lot of different sectors gaming on mobile gaming took off you had a digitizing of food delivery afterward. Right adding a lot of things content, a lot of things is split everything up and online. It will be very, very big scale.
Yoni Mazor 13:57
Centre in Asia, which is in India, in some regions, they leave, they took a shortcut. They never had a wire connected to the internet, they were brought into the digital age with smartphones and the wireless. So that was the case for many of those who are the, you know, ecosystem users?
Pierre Poignant 14:14
Correct. So I think they're in Southeast Asia. Most people on the other mobile phone never had a desktop to shop. So that's perfect. And it takes off. So it was a pretty amazing
Yoni Mazor 14:30
Guy. And when you came in how many people were Lazada at that point, it was still it was already global. 100 a couple of
Pierre Poignant 14:35
100 No, no, no, the team was there. There's a team already, I think a couple of friends at that time
Yoni Mazor 14:40
In how many countries approximately five countries. Got it. And when he stood when you entered your CEO position was 20 over 25,000 and also five countries are expanded to more
Pierre Poignant 14:51
In six countries we opened up Singapore later. So the first countries were Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, and then, Later on, we also have, for example,
Yoni Mazor 15:04
Okay, so you come in right away in 2012, and you enter a CEO, right chief operating officer position for Lazada. And, you know, the tremendous, tremendous growth, perfect timing, everybody's already leaping into the digital age with the smartphones and avoiding the wired connectivity altogether, it would just stop to anything. So, touch with us get more on the structure in terms of your focus, and the transition between CEO and CEO, what was your insurer, there's a lot of adventures there a lot of drama, but give us the highlights of possible
Pierre Poignant 15:33
Those who were there. The now it's a bit, you know, it's like an acre of the booth. So sometimes, it's like Time flies. So I think the important thing is the region is highly diverse, this is very important to understand. So it's a highly diverse region. All the great religions of the world are very, very different. Very different geographies, very different economies, histories, and so on.
Pierre Poignant 16:05
So the boy is very young. So two things that the one is you need to make sure that whatever spreadsheet you have, you do it in the countries to fit the countries and pretty sizable country teams, and you need to make sure you overcome some of the challenges. So logistics and so on. At the same time, there was very little company that was able to provide access to all the regions, you know, like your brand, you want to access the region, you very complex. So we wanted to be the are the gateway to Southeast Asia. So we had a bit of a dual structure in a way we have a lot of emphases given to the country, but also, we were running it as a group to make sure that we give that to the opposition to, to the team and the to the brands and our partners. And yeah, I think after the acquisition, the law will get acquired by Baba in 2017.
Yoni Mazor 17:11
Involves a merger acquisition activity,
Pierre Poignant 17:14
Many m&a processes under basically I mean, several steps and so on. But essentially, the position was finished with logic 2017. And this is when the law was integrated into Alibaba. So in a very strong way. And this is when I came in to be the CEO after a few periods. What I did for two years to transition and so that, essentially, the story is for the two years when I was still working a lot with 100, and on the quarters of Alibaba. So that's what happened,
Yoni Mazor 17:58
Essentially. Wow. So yeah, this is a lot to unpack there. I think we probably need a few officers just to kind of learn how all these structures work and having all these m&a deals with these giants. So just want to maybe take a few points here. So when Alibaba wants to take over Lazada, how does this communication begin to start? How it integrates with any insights you can share with us about that process will be, I think, very unique because then we can borrow the ticket and later see how the m&a works right now for you guys when you acquire brands in the Amazon ecosystem space. So I don't think there's any resemblance or anything like that or not.
Pierre Poignant 18:32
I mean, I can't, you know, provide too many details on these are these are highly, highly confidential transactions in many ways. But I think has always been very upfront in their intention in saying that they want to have a presence in Southeast Asia, it's a very important region for a biller. And do I wanted to, too because he's very close to China, geographically speaking, they want to, there's a lot of cross border trade happening between the two regions, and they want to, they're very big in this. So, they were looking for, for general average return for the partner or acquisition and they chose to do this in 2016. This is when we started and then you know, 1217 and when we completed the correction because that's essentially what happened here.
Yoni Mazor 19:34
Got it. So I want to say a little bit more about the character of Hazara you mentioned five and then later on six countries and each country operates differently with different languages, cultures, ideas, and marketing stress strategies, but the marketplace is open just for third party sellers to sell and let's also sells or what's the structure is more like the eBay where just the seller So eBay doesn't sell or is more like Amazon where the sellers sell but also Amazon sells
Pierre Poignant 19:58
Normally. Mostly Letters on another doc, we also have a small one key business. Same as many our essentially, often, you know, sometimes brands they did, they can't do it or marketplace for whatever reason, or you want to make sure you, you have the right discipline for each category. So you use one p or retail to secure that. So but predominantly, it's there, it's a marketplace with 1000s and 1000s. of sellers, I think they're the differences I would say compared to an Amazon are largely the, I would say, the user experience, if you go and on, on Nevada, or many other Asian apps or marketplace, the experience is far more colorful, engaging, fun, there's a lot of content, possession, much less, you know, constrain on what picture to put on the products and stuff like that. It's a very lively, lively channel for the platform. And so that's the main, the main difference. And that's the woman, Jack Ma was saying it at Alibaba, like, hey, you know, the issue on Amazon, and you want to make people save time to be shopping efficiently. And what we do at Baba is to make people lose time. And enjoy themselves, you know, to make shopping on the statement. So that's a philosophy of platform. And we see the trends now more, I think more towards is our way of doing things. And so yeah, I
Yoni Mazor 21:45
Find it very interesting at that point where you mentioned with Jack Ma, and because when you go to the physical world, you have these types of stores where it's all about efficiency, you go in, go out, buy, buy, and get the best price, maybe we're more like a supermarket, right? But then you have the malls and the shopping malls, where there's, it's more of an experience you come in, there's a certain ambiance, right? There's certain design, the certain areas more some areas are for, you know, for children, for them to play. And then you have a cinema, you have the restaurants, maybe some bars, of course, we have boutique shops, you have big, big brand stores. So that's more of the experience.
Yoni Mazor 22:17
So they want to kind of wrap you in and get you to know, a very premium user experience on the physical side. So maybe there's kind of these two dimensions, and now online, these two philosophies playing a role, which I never kind of stopped for a minute to realize. I think that's very important to realize, yeah, there's two, two philosophies Is it touching go efficiency, safety and by and best price, or content interaction, also shopping more like the physical world where you have a much more enhanced experience. And this is the gamble of Jack Ma, with Alibaba taking over Lazada. So I think also for Alibaba makes perfect sense strategically there in the region, you know, it has the good experience and the user base, and it was made perfect sense. And you came in, and for those two years, where were you mostly focused on the merger and integration of things, or more like, you know, going aggressively after all these goals and dreams that you have for Lazada. But now that you have the resources of Alibaba, you can go crazy with it. Now, because
Pierre Poignant 23:15
Both sides, you know, are unique, I think it's a very fast-evolving market. So you need to make sure you're, you're on the bones, I think, at that time, and the company continues to do this, you know, are the strategies around making sure we ever really an amazing experience for consumers, both in terms of shopping products offered, the kind of shopping and entertainment and you know, James and stuff like that we can have on the platform, and also providing amazing business opportunities for both for brands and sellers. And make it easy to do this on the platform. And at the same time solving the pain points, the reasons for the pain point in terms of logistics payment, for example, and bringing the infrastructure to do this. And
Pierre Poignant 24:08
This is, you know, this is true. This was true when even when we started eight years ago, I think this is a
Pierre Poignant 24:20
It’s especially eCommerce and retail, it's a fast-growing industry, and you need to constantly up the game to achieve these goals. And I think we can never satisfy ourselves with where we are essential. So
Yoni Mazor 24:38
Climbing and climbing and get Yeah, no matter how you get it seen, there's more to climb. It's amazing to be in this industry in this time of history. I know you mentioned your parents are history and people so it's historical times as you climb so much you get this altitude. You get to learn the lesson from that nice landscape. But you look up you see there's more and more and more. And it's very, very exciting. So I think that's unique. The experience that you had with Lazada and Alibaba and now we're shifting towards 2019, I believe, when you kind of stepped down
Pierre Poignant 25:07
20 to 20. So towards me 20 I exited the CEO position, after eight years, time to time to move on over the better ones than I pretty quickly met, wanting to go back to Paris. And they're where I am today, and quickly met my partners to launch bandages which we did towards the end or for 2020 slash beginning of 2021. So that's, that's the story.
Yoni Mazor 25:42
Got it. So let's, let's focus on branding. You know you go back to Paris, you meet your current partners, and team, and then with Brandon, what was the vision? What was his dream, let you know, something like in Singapore when you have the opportunity to meet the CEO of Lazada. And then he had this once again, a leap of faith and excitement, take us there share with us these moments of branded.
Pierre Poignant 26:02
So I think this is the, you know, this is a bit post-COVID. We can all see that. Ecommerce. is massively accelerated. So some, some of the category that we thought were strangled off offline and just, you know, being all disrupted very more rapidly than we thought it's a bit of acceleration, but it's so we there's a lot of interest on how can you, you know, shape eCommerce in the future in, in, in what are we the implication that for the opportunity, and I think we're one of the opportunity or implication is that consumers nowadays, because the shop the shelf of e-commerce or infinity, you, you don't need to choose between five bands or 10 brands on some, you can choose from hundreds of brands and that's that means the determines that it is the future is going to be less dominated by big factor Unilever, big brands and big groups give opportunity for smaller brands to emerge. And fast boss, we want to create a group that deals launch acquire group, Challenger brands. On the category we decided to focus on, of course, you call the Challenger brands, small band challenge.
Yoni Mazor 27:43
Yak micro brands into challenger brands where you have a historical opportunity to engage with consumers directly with no brokers nobody in between, because it's the old brick and mortar retailer, it's a lot of the buyers are the gods, if I buy your product and put it on the shelf, you have a business, if I don't, you're out, it's very narrow. Here's saying it's a different, completely different game. It's all open, the ones that will play the best and attract the best consumers and be authentic and unique will build micro brands into challenger brands, which is a revolution as far as we can consider it on a business level. So that's what kind of these are kind of the components that you saw and said, you know, I want to jump into this, do this. I'm excited about this. And so what's you know, looking five years into the future 10 years for Brandon, where was the dream? Or what? What's the structure? What if you can paint a picture for me?
Pierre Poignant 28:31
Yeah, so we want to, we want to I think the time step or the ecosystem of brands will be very different than 510 years from now how to build brands that are consumer shopping, and we think there will be some group that will emerge that will manage and be sizable indiscretions. I mean, being one of the ones it's like, never Procter and Gamble, they all appeared together with Walmart, when we beat box retailer when you had to move products into the shelf in big ways, you know, Weaver, and this is when these groups appeared to do this to build some synergies and build a platform to do this. And we want to do this in the context of the online effects of marketplaces also want to believe is that marketplaces will play a very big role in the future in building this brand as they do today to build this brand in terms of scale, but also terms of branding so that's what we want to do.
Yoni Mazor 29:36
Got in what's currently this the status with branded um, you know, how many acquisitions you guys already had? What's the nature of it, and which marketplace is it?
Pierre Poignant 29:46
Wherever are probably the multiple on Amazon, so a lot of brands on Amazon, but not only do we require a few direct-to-consumer brands that are only direct to selling direct to customers, even online.
Yoni Mazor 29:59
Then
Yoni Mazor 30:00
Versus online, it wasn't like a physical,
Yoni Mazor 30:03
Online. So we have around or I would say a bit more than 40 brands close to 50. Now,
Pierre Poignant 30:10
That’s a bit more. Yeah. So that's, and, of course, some of the different offers, you know, so we ever, we have a presence on our brain small. And
Pierre Poignant 30:21
So we have a presence in, in, in beauty and personal care, it's important for us, we have a presence in wellness, health wellness supplements in sports example. And then a real presence at home. So home we, we do teach on Baby Class. And then we also do some art and crafts. So that's the picture of branded and I think in many ways, it will, we will evolve within that frame. So we ever have categories and our brands that within our categories, we are build synergies and capabilities within these categories that platform to help grow faster in the different marketplace in different channels.
Pierre Poignant 31:05
Today we do crypto as I mentioned, Amazon, of course, but Walmart is clear one month online, is being born. We have direct consumers also, we're going to append a few other marketplaces this year, I think we're still looking at butter in the US, there's no issue at all. And this cannot have grown a horrible crap, of course, you're going to look at Wayfarer. And rightfully so we looked at additional marketplaces. And we have some of our brands are offline. So we are we have a brand called Tressie with natural shampoo and theatre, they are in target and Kroger. And another brand in the kitchen is called Auto designer. And we distribute goes to the house, online and offline. And it's very easy to find that it's more like a kitchen, you can always bring speakers. The idea is ID Company. And so they have a lot in gifting shops and forms. So
Yoni Mazor 32:16
You got to wonder if you kind of unpackaged the structure of the status, it seems like Right? Right now you guys are mostly focused on marketplaces around North America was similar to Liberty Europe. But in looking into the future, you also see Asia is a destination for you guys. Maybe you can do full circle when you market your brands on Lazada and Alibaba? Is that something that's kind of in the works and the
Pierre Poignant 32:39
Vision? Yeah, I think we're always looking at that I think the opportunities in the US and Europe are just massive. So you always have to look at it from a resource location, I think China is going to be a is a very difficult market. It's very big, very massive, but also it's quite expensive to come in as a newborn. So you need to have a very clear angle, and potentially quite a lot of investments. So that's a very, very big, big price. You know, I think I'm clear. The consumer now in China looking more and more toward local brands, as opposed to international brands, there's a clear shift towards domestic assumptions and so on, especially on the meteor brands,
Yoni Mazor 33:28
You think nationality reasons or just other Chinese brands can touch the hearts. I think Chinese Bofors
Pierre Poignant 33:36
Both, I would say both. A bit of both. And also China, if we can just put up the news is turning back a little bit on I mean, looking more and more inwards. So there's that political element that plays a role also. And then, of course, the market Villanova very well, it's an amazing market. Economics is very different. Because it's, you know, price points are much cheaper. And because you go for scale, so that's, it's an amazing market. We can try it out there. We have a via care that we tried to build. So that's also that is for the roadmap next year, and then we ever finally I would say finally we ever we have a soft America, which is something where the market is closer to North America than Asia is
Yoni Mazor 34:40
A natural progression. It goes to Mexico, Central America, and Latin America. I think it makes perfect sense. Also, logistically, another question I have is when you buy all you know, you mentioned more than 40 brands, maybe you're getting closer to 350 brands in your portfolio. What's the nature afterward after the merger and acquisition? You guys usually keep the native T names, the company, the founders OR, or NOT what's usually the play
Pierre Poignant 35:05
Was done both. I think we like to, we like to, we do like a lot to partner with founders, I think we believe that their founders are the soul of the brand. And the year, our platform enables founders to focus on what they like, what they do best, that's where we were, the way we've been the company is a platform to empower brands, and empower carrot categories, so unroll them. And of course, you know, if the, we don't partner with the brand owner, then we do, we have our brand manager that does this, but that's the type of brand we typically like to partner because in terms of growing the brand, developing the product, and so on the founders is are usually very, very strong in that.
Yoni Mazor 36:04
Just seeing the founders if I'm an entrepreneur that I build my brand on Amazon, and then I sell to branded you saying that there's an opportunity to have a liquidity event when I'm going to get rewarded for my accomplishments with my business, but there's still an opportunity to grow within rather than take a leadership position within the organization, and get empowered. So well, you guys were Lazada was empowered. When Alibaba took over, you stayed, you moved into the CEO position. I'm not saying that every brand that you buy, or the next person, next time will be CEO. But inside the organization, there's an opportunity to grow mature, do things at a much larger scale, and have global skills. That is that kind of message that's out there for them.
Pierre Poignant 36:44
All right. Yes. You're saying it even better with me. I think we're on this every partnership would be a bit different. But the debate is what you're saying, yes. That we want one plus one equals three. You know, that's,
Yoni Mazor 37:02
I love that synergy? Yeah. And I think also just I think it's important to mention that sometimes, oftentimes, there's an element of an earn-out. Right, if you sell your company, you get you to know, cash component, right. But also there's an earn-out. So if you stick around and you have better resources to make it to, you know, to accomplish goals, if your business is a good chance for you to earn out will be even more rewarding as well. Is that also kind of an element there to consider? No?
Pierre Poignant 37:25
No? Okay. Jeremy. Of course, you know, when is the type when the founder stays on we do a partnership, it means that the young believing in the brand, the platform to grow faster. So usually, the targets we put out are bigger when we do together? Yes, that's bigger targets,
Yoni Mazor 37:43
Bigger goals, but bigger rewards later on. That's very nice. Okay, so now, I guess I want to kind of start capturing the episodes of everything correctly. So far, you know, born and raised, and you mentioned was western France, it was, was an immigrant come, compare, compare, compare, compare, and then, you know, your parents were historians, your father was a politician was a mayor, also in the French Parliament. You went to school at the Polytechnic, you started, I believe, around 2000. And you finished around 2001, but already or the year 2000, you got your first kind of business experience, you know, with the internet with affiliate marketing. And then 2001 and 2003, you moved to the United States, you were in Boston, MIT.
Yoni Mazor 38:30
And then you went to Singapore, you started opportunity to deal with imports of electronics melee, and to France, he did that for a year or two, he also discovered eBay, you know, eCommerce, then around 2005, you, you took a position with McKinsey, all the way up to about 2012. And then in 2012, once again, in Singapore, you find another opportunity. So this is very interesting. And to to to join Lazada as a chief operating officer, and around 2016, the touches with Alibaba, you know, came to take place in around 2017 Alibaba, you know, fully takes over Lazada. And then you step into the CEO position from 2017, all the way to about 2020. And then the pandemic hits you back in Paris, and then you see an opportunity with banded with, you know, with the brand new team. Fast forward about almost two years, you know, over 50 brands acquired getting close to 50 You know, heavily focused on, you know, brands, you know, micro brands and becoming challenger brands, and, you know, North America, and also a euro but you know, with the ambition to go even more global. We got everything correctly so far. Perfect. Very good. So thank you so much for sharing that I learned a lot. I wish we had more time to package more because there's a lot to do it. So it's a very unique experience and a career move that you did in your career. So now I wanted to touch on the last two points of the episode. The first will be if somebody wants to reach out and connect where they can find you feel free to share your information. And the last thing will be is what your message of hope is and its aeration for entrepreneurs listening out there.
Pierre Poignant 40:03
So, I think first everybody can reach me on LinkedIn and the air so just click on your band-aid on engineers look at my messages and the second message of opener for the entrepreneur I think there's are so much I always find that there are so many things to do to change just so much business ideas around I think the just find, find a good team. Enjoy what you do. Series has an adventure and a series of projects and success we've been there
Yoni Mazor 40:43
Got it so be passionate about what you do take the challenge to enjoy the adventure. You know, I think a pier is a perfect example of that would Lazada also now with branded beautiful stuff here thank you so much. I wish you and abandons him much continuously says going forward. I hope everybody has enjoyed this difficulty.
Yoni Mazor 40:59
Till next time.
Pierre Poignant 41:00
Thanks
