For many people who like me grow from being very good engineer to becoming a leader. You have to remember that leading orders is leading yourself first. That means you need to add some point. Really sit down and understand your own character. How you regulate emotions would behaviors? You have how you communicate this Behavior. We will girls, how you handle difficult, conversation and difficult decisions. That's a very big work of self-awareness and you should always do that.
Hey everyone. My name is Henry Surya. We Rollin. And you're listening to the tech lead journal the show where I'll be bringing you the greatest technical leaders practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team and to make an impact in your personal work. So let's dive into our Journal. Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the tie clip Journal.
I'm very, very excited to kick. Start the show with my very first guest Jerome put of in Jerome is a respected friend of mine and a great mentor for all his massive wisdom and experiences, especially in the technology and startups. He has been a Serial, CTO co-founding, multiple startups, and he has had multiple successful exits in the past. The last few years Jerome has been working at Google cloud and Amazon AWS to help startups grow, and make the most of cloud
Technologies in this interview. I discussed with him, various aspects of technical leadership, especially in the startup World ranging, from his lessons, learned dealing with investors, hiring and building great technical team, building vision and Jerome's rule of 50%, which can be very insightful for those of you who are building a start-up or product out there. He also shared interesting anecdotes of his experience working with different cultures around the world.
So let's get started with this episode and I hope that you all enjoy it. Hi Jerome. Thank you for being part of the technique Journal. Jerome is one of my respected colleague. He has over 30 years of Korea. Experience, has been a Serial ctOS in multiple startups and successful exit. He has worked in multiple countries. Trees and culture. He's been traveling around the region, which is interesting enough around Southeast Asian. He has also been in the west Silicon Valley and in Europe,
and lately. He is working in multinational Cloud companies, helping that up to grow and to be successful. So, welcome, Jerome, Henry. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to chat with you Jerome to start this episode. Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and your experience right eye. I kind of get a good into computers when I was very young, like, many people, because I wanted to do video games, and I got lucky because my parents couldn't really afford video
games. They could only afford a cheap computer or so. I sort of had to build them. And one thing I've told you there, I ended up taking a computer science, graduated in Computer Engineering, and I've started working in a few companies mostly large scale companies. Like, I are both or Alcatel. I got lucky. I got an opportunity to go to the Silicon Valley, and I worked there for a few years. I got bitten by the starter Berg.
And after I left the Silicon Valley 2000, I started creating companies with friends and colleagues. And even my own brother had some point. I haven't really stopped. We got successful a couple of times. And then also, after I decided that startups were really good. I liked, I've been working around startups for various and big cloud providers. I've been also working in multiple countries in Asia.
I've been in Asia essentially, since 2000 in various countries Wilson. So very interesting Journey. Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean looking at your career, there are so many things that you have seen. You have experienced not only in terms of Technologies also dealing with the people, right? So can you tell us a little bit more about your highlights? What are the biggest highlights that you have in your career? The biggest highlight.
The thing that lets me really the deepest impression, which is why I sort of tried to replicate it multiple times with the exhilarating time when you're creating your first company and then you sort of hit. Bottom of the hockey stick and then everything go crazy. You get this surge of adrenaline all the time. All of this was very, very new. I trust and catapulted into these positions that I didn't really know anything about. So that was really exciting.
I don't think we handled it the best way it was possible. But at least I learned a lot and this is actually what motivated me to create more companies after that. What about some lowlights? I did have one company with actually a complete failure. We created a new Company around an ID and very quickly decided he was killed by a very large company. Basically provided the same service for free. And I ended up having to cancel the team. Tell the investors.
We were not going to proceed anymore because there was no business model and managing the best. I could, that was really a great moment in my life. Wow. I'm sure that many people also in the startups have experienced failure, but I think every failure journey is unique and is there lessons learned that you want to share with the audience? Here. One of the things I tell everybody in my work today, whichever mental state, you are in today as a CTO of startup.
I've been there before, even if you think you are failing, even if you think things are going bad, I've been there. I've also been lucky that it was successful. Took me a little bit of time to pick the pieces up. But then also I had a long list of ideas and I basically have a mental checklist about all the things I should definitely make sure all before I even start because honestly, this startup Fail because I really wanted to start up. I was in a hurry. I didn't really look at the
market. I didn't really look at anything. I just thought a, it's a cool idea. Let's do it. And I was very ignorant. The next company. We created, we explore the market and we did a lot more research making sure that it was actually a very good opportunity. Researching the market, finding the right business model in a sense and maybe assessing the Technologies. Yes.
Well, I mean we had been very lucky my first doctor with a very talented team that counselor we You are a bit lucky because none of us really knew the industry or knew the market.
We just had a good feeling that it was a good idea and we were able to navigate the obstacles and at the end of the day the startup that emerged after four years with very different from the one we had envisioned to me. This is actually something I very often tell people who are looking for funding, you will talk to investors and they will evaluate the value of your idea and maybe the value of your technology, but first of all,
they will evaluate your ability to Navigate the future because they know that what you are showing them, the idea and also the financial projections. The only thing you know is that this is incorrect. This is not going to happen this way. So your credibility as a person is important, and having had failures before is actually something that is also somehow playing in your favor.
Of course, if you were created the next Facebook wall of, this is mood, but in fact, most startups do not end up being Facebook most start. Ups and end up being not multi-billion dollar businesses, but multi-million dollar businesses. And in fact, this is actually most likely what's going to happen to you. And investors, don't always look at the next unicorn. They also look at this sort of companies.
So your ability to evolve, the ability to Pivot your ability to negotiate are very important when you talk to the investors, how can you show this side of yours? Like showing that you have credibility, you have learned from your failure and show that you can deal with any of the future uncertainty. These investors will ask you questions. I've been in this situation when you have to face investors, you are being evaluated. But also one thing for me is you also evaluating the investor.
I tend to think that this is something investors should know. So they will look at your profile. They will ask have you created companies before? Are you cereal founder? What if they will do their homework on you? If they don't, it's usually not a really good sign lately. One of my friends was going through some fundraising but exactly This experience, he went to see an investor or from a very reputable firm and it was facing somebody with a don't want to see your slideshow.
Your PowerPoint will tell me about your team and he had to jump to slide 12 or slide 6 in that case and we asked him about something else. And we had to book go back to slide 3. And then something else and yet, no, slide. What they really wanted, was to know the quality of his team. If he was prepared to handle questions, and they did not really want to hear a prepared speech and the prepared pitch. They just wanted To know how
deep we wanted them. Deep in you is stuff and how prepare Lee was and how we could handle or discussions and how his team of co-founder was structured. And that was the mark of a really deep knowledgeable investors. Most of the girls go. Okay. I look at your page and do I believe in your power point and it's actually not the best investor. You can have by being who you are. You can just show your experience and you have to rely on the investor to sort of do
their homework on the outside. You cannot just go and see. Let me tell you. You know, for one hour about what kind of person I am before you judge my business idea, right? You mentioned something about the investors, assessing your team, right? Like the quality or maybe The credibility behind the team. And I know you have like a very good skill in hiring. People hiring talented and good quality people.
Maybe you can share with us. What are some of the tips for hiring, especially in a start-up, right? What do you look for in terms of quality of a candidate may be skill, set, or maybe Behavior. Other related stuffs. First of all, I think being a start-up or not being a start-up, you still try to hire the best quality. You can inform what you really want when you are hiring for a small tea. You want to hire somebody with a bit multi-talented. Somebody you're going to be
working very closely. So you need to have a personality fit. You also want to hire somebody with not just because they are great at the technology you need right now. Just fill a technology Gap, but you want to hire people when you feel are going. Be able to grow with you and grow with the company and bring additional knowledge with. So that actually is very hard. This is true. Regardless of whether you're in
a start-up or not. I think the idea tional features you need for somebody is that they're able to carry their weight individually without very much supervision and you want them to be passionate some point.
If your company grows, you're going to start having to handle people who might be a lot less passionate about the product, and you start hiring people for whom Umm, this is just a job and I want to highlight that even people who do a job because it's a job can be extremely good and productive but they might not be as motivated as you are. And also actually they will be unmotivated, very easily by things. You don't even consider important.
So to give you an example many years ago, in my first startup, we hide some really, really good people at the beginning, and one of the person was pretty like, the family and they had to pick up the kids. At some point. They had to Even six regardless. And for one of my co-founder was very much obsessed by this company.
You always was a little girl. So I had to do a lot of negotiation to make him an exam was normal, but on the other hand one day this employee came up and we had forgotten to pay one of his expenses. And the reason why we forgot to pay one of these expensive was because the company was very going through some hard time and we are still, like didn't even know if we are going to make it the next five months, right? So we were so worried. I was handling the bear all the
expenses. Fences everything, we couldn't afford an accountant. I forgot to read to pay this expands and I'm talking about $10 and the guy came in, in a meeting and say, you haven't paid my $10. Wow, and I was very dismissive and I said, come on. It's just inbox, right? We are talking about important stuff. That was really, really the wrong thing to say. Because yeah, for me, the company's my baby and I'm talking about the survival of the company for him. It's the fact that they need.
Elected to do what I promised that was very important and then ten dogs and I was very dismissive and was like, Hey, you know, I'm doing important stuff and you're not and for him, ten bucks was important. I completely forgot to look at this, from this point of view. It took me an entire month, get him on the positive side because it was so upset because I was treating him very dismissively. And for me, it was just like in the Heat of the Moment. So you have to be very, very
careful. So you need to have people who are at some point when you grow the company, you will have people. However, slightly different outlook on the company as you. But when you hire your first employee is you have to have them be passionate and willing to make some sacrifices. So how can you actually like when you do the interviews, right?
Or when you talk to this person, how can you assess whether their passion and their personality actually fit with what you find and what the company is all about. Really? This is a lot like dating or, you know, at some point you see, if you click on the human level and which means that very often when I All you people for my early roles. I would really go through a formal set of interviews. But I also, after the interview sat with, with them four coffees that with them, make them stay
over lunch, talk about life. And you try to gauge the personality. Also, let them talk about their past, let them talk about. How would they like, in the management culture of the hard talk about their own experience? And I think in the, in a relaxed sitting people tell you a lot more than in the formal interview, sir. Seeing for me. I basically very often did this for the early early days or you hire people, you know, my third
startup. I actually poached a number of developers, but I had worked before with and then and you know, I already knew we shared a lot of values. Make sense. There is no magic formula, right? It really is a very personal thing. Yeah. So this hiring one person is one aspect and one challenge, right? But in talking about hiring a team right where you have multiple people with their different characteristics, their way of working. So how do you ensure that?
You can build a solid and effective engineering team that can work with each other? I think you need to have a clear culture. So I used To very quickly, very early in the process. First of all, I used to have always all my engineering when your startup or five people having all the engineering and interview.
Somebody is very easy, but I would say, the team that going to work with this person should be in charge of hiring the person even though you have the final say, so, first of all, I would cover the basics about culture. Also very fun. I would do an interview where I would like to see you with the like, in management culture, how they like to work with result. Mate, I would be like to work with management because they wouldn't be managing them.
So I wanted to understand Zelda aspect of their personality, but when it comes to, then the rest of the team and the competencies and the technical fit, I would have my engineering team interview. Then there are two reasons for that first of all, because I didn't always have all the time. The other part is you making the engineering team by hiring the people themselves, but they have the responsibility to make it work without wise. It's too easy to blame the bus.
We hide this process on. I don't know. Why, because he, or she doesn't do this X, Y and Z, but it's not my problem. So actually by making them in charge of the hiring, you actually Empower them to take the people who are fit you as a manager should still keep veto. Because I found in my experience that engineer's, the team will not look at it with management. I and you as a manager are really watching out for, is this person going to grow?
What is person going to bring? Beyond immediate ability to write this code or design this system and I did veto my team's decision a few times. Right? Because I felt that the candidate overall didn't have the potential to evolve beyond what was just being a skull that specific position, right? So speaking about the team right after the hiring obviously you have a bunch of people working as part of the team. How do you ensure that they go
towards the same direction? We're working towards the same vision of the company, building a great product, with good quality. Any tips about that. First of all, for me, the very early when I always had it in all. The companies. Who is they onboarding process? Right? It sounds silly. But I actually did have an onboarding process. Even if it's just say, because Jimmy and is going to be your body and ask him any question, but I always had the process because mean talk about Yells
Rock developers. They need to know how the system works the need to understand what has already been built. They need to understand the process. You will be surprised but I have had candidates that I was interviewing for four positions and they asked me, do I get a laptop and I was like, what do you mean you don't get it?
Of course, to give you that top and giving you the tools to work why I asked you, do you ask this question and they told me and my previous employer expecting me to use my own laptop and they expected me to buy my own office. This software, I found this ridiculous, but apparently it still happens. And so for me, it's part of it. Here's your machine. Here's your tools. Here is how you compile code. Here is, are you you go?
I am I would have them spend time with developers in order to get to know the whole tool set the whole process. And I will usually have a discussion with them about how we have one-on-ones on a regular basis and trying to explain to them some of the philosophy of why we doing this. What is the company of With, with problem, we are solving and trying to sell the vision really leadership. Process Management. Leaders are instilling the vision to the team. And to be, there are some pretty
to the clients. But really, for me it was really just about getting them to understand where you come from because now, okay, they, you know, they say they're going to do this school work and write code. We've all these good people and having fun with this fancy technology, but beyond that, they have to really understand who the Clients are, what problem you're solving be able to think in their shoes. And this only comes if they are
very familiar with the problem. So really having a structured onboarding even when you all five people team and having regular sessions of hey, you know, let's play. Let's imagine your client. This is what problem we are solving for you. Okay, so like simulating a customer problem and asking the team how to handle those kind of
things. Yes, for example, but also really Once a month, when I was a small company, we would spend a Friday afternoon just brainstorming about situation or reviewing feedback from customers and trying to understand the scenarios and trying to see in the greater scheme of thing. How this was really a problem for such and such person. Lot of this was the I like role-playing. So it was kind of fun.
We did this by pretending. We have our client and trying to understand what motivates them going over. Some discussions, we had going over. Okay, I would very often comment. Say a team. I talked to this customer and this is what they told me. Now, let's hash out some potential discussion. We will usually end up by saying. Okay. So this is the answer. We want to be able to give how can we then build the product features in order to be able to
give that answer, right? But I found it was very interesting way to evolve the products and it would get people to reading, by in nowadays. It's very fashionable and it's not a bad idea. You don't lose fashionable. Did you know in the bad science? But people talk about storytelling lat and that was actually maybe our early sort of informal way of doing storytelling. Yeah, and also I find that kind of exercise.
Sometimes, give you another perspective or in terms of ideas, especially from the people who build the product. Maybe they find a new ways of using the products, even like in New interactions of how user customer can use the product. Sometimes those kind of things can come out of this brainstorming. Activities. Exactly a little bit. I've been into your presentations talking about building a startup engineering
product. This presentation talks about from zero skill to planet-scale, right? It's okay and you share us a little bit about this. I find it super interesting for people to relate to the story. We are you right? I've talked about this subject many times, actually, for me. The whole idea is that you need to keep an eye. On the question of what you're focusing on the means you are mobilizing.
In the effort you are putting. So, for example, today, you're bombarded by messages about technology. Yes. So search for Content, programming method is the best you are nothing. If you are not using this programming language, or this kind of database is the future. And if you are using an older kind of database, then, you know, you're dead in the water
before you even start. It's a very strong messaging and very often people tend to select a collection of Technologies even before Actually trying to understand if they are really useful for that. So my message is always did not get distracted because when you are a company, you are not building a technology, most of the time, you are actually building a business and technology is actually just supporting your business. Unless right?
You are building the technology and if you are building the next running language, yeah. Okay, sure. But if you are having something well said technology is very strong component like an e-commerce shop or maybe some software that will read X. Is and be able to interpret, it better than a human technology is very strong component. But what you are really selling is medical diagnosis.
What you are really saying. If you have an e-commerce shop is not the ability to click on the button and pay by credit card board. You are enabling people is to basically create shop from their home, or you are enabling sellers to make money, and you take a cut. You are really just not building a very powerful database for articles. All right, so you have to be very conscious of that. Very often I can see that
earlier. Founders and co-founders, really focus too much on picking technologies that they are not comfortable with or just because they read that, it's the cool thing. My first message is when you start a company, the best technology you should pick is the one you are comfortable with right? Not believe the Sirens of whichever programming language, do whatever you are comfortable with today's programming
languages. Today's databases are largely enough rig, Less of their maximum capacity. You are actually going to not be there at all. So anything you master is enough, when you reach a few million to a few million users of then, you know, you'll be the hit the limits of what you originally did. But for your first 200,000 to few million users, really being in your comfort zone, is what matters.
And what about the scale? Obviously, when you starting up your scale is kind of small and you will grow in terms of number of users number of traffic to your application. To your website, right? And for a startup team. How do you solve this scaling problem? Do you start by solving for a small scale first or you build a design in such a way that it can handle a large scale in the life of your topic? You always have five factors that you have to balance. You have cost, you have
reliability. You have performance, you have scale or how we manage the scalability, and what I call Operations, which is the ability of making releases very From the ICD having automatic testing and not all of these factors are always important at the same time. So for example, if you are very young starter.
Typically, you're very worried about costs and you're going to focus on reliability because you typically want to have your first results have a good experience and I don't think really should care about scaling and performance and that's job
selling performance. But typically it's not really a big concern at some point when you start growing, but you Going to have to focus on different factors, for example, if you have now funding cost is much less a concern and you start having users to reliability and performance are now important and scale starts to show in Tim Burton's, and when you are really much bigger, operation is important. Performance is key cost will be managed differently.
So every time you have to go through one of these steps and you have to bring in something in Focus, you will have to make new technical decisions. You will have to bring New products, you will have to make your architectural more complicated, you know, you're going to have to rebuild your technology multiple times and every time you will build it for the next level, of course, but if you are very experienced, like I've been in this for a long time, so maybe for me.
Well done it a few times. It's easier to architect from the 04. Something that will be able to scale into tens of millions of users. Every time you make this architectural decisions. You actually usually involve a few more Moving parts. So you have to maintain them. We typically I would build this. Okay. I need to deal with from zero to let's say 100,000 users. But when I reach 50,000 users, I will rebuild for 100,000 to 1 million.
When I reach 500,000. I will rebuild for 10 million and every time you add a little bit more info so you have to really really fit the effort and what your software can do to where you are targeting for the next six months to a year. I used to call this the Jerome's rule of 50%. You plan in multiple stages and every time you reach half of your capacity, you reveal for the next stage, which is usually ten times what you were planning.
So you go from a hundred thousand to a million, to 10 million to 100 million like this. And every time a fifty thousand five million, five hundred thousand five million. You rebuilt. That's very insightful. Jerome's 50% rule. Is that correct? Yes, the rule of 50%. That's correct. Okay, and it's very hard.
I mean as a ticket You will understand that maybe better the people who you have to really celebrate Cel this Vision to, I usually the CEO and the investors because they don't understand exactly how the technology works. So your CEO is going to say, but Jerome, it works Confucius like 62 little bit and make it better. And as you take here, usually understand that. It only holds because the foundations are able to support
a certain amount of load. But in order to be beyond that, you need to rebuild Foundation, but this is really something that comes. We have deep understanding of technology and that is. Where are you as a city? You usually I'm going to company, grows. Your leadership, role goes into not just hiring a team and making sure you know, the system works and they have the proper onboarding and team culture and there's a lot to talk about there. But also you still end up having
to manage a ports. You'll see you and your investors. And to me, it was also equally equally challenging when I started. My own companies, I discovered the not only, I had to manage my employees by an to manage. A lot of other people that I never really thought. I would have to manage. And that actually is also something that is very worth discussing. About, when you get into
leadership position. You have to learn how to pace yourself, how to explain why you're doing, what you're doing to people who do not fundamentally, understand technology, and for room, maybe would you do looks mysterious and not needed. Also, you have to understand, you have to pace yourself. You have to build a roadmap where you going to paste it a certain way with investors in mind. Clients in mind new products in
mind. All of these size of the company, which is very different from when you are just an engineer and your job is to make sure that your eye this code before the end of next week with no bugs. I also find a lot of times as the CTO or engineering manager or head of engineering, right? There are Times that we all understand in a start-up. We all want to do things in a fast way, do things as soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow. I want to release that and give
it to the users. Right by the same time. Obviously, looking from the engineering perspective. There are things that cannot be done. Just like what you mentioned? Stakeholder management or investor management is also one key area of a CTO. You have any good tips? Like, how actually should you explain this kind of, you know, Paradox, should I say between
engineering and business? I think the number one thing is you should always, you should learn to not say no. Mhm. So never say, no, it can't be done. Just say, yes, it will be done and maybe in a different way, than what you thought. What I learned is also that as Engineers we have this idea of perfection. There are very often ways to pitch what you're doing in a positive way.
So if you are going to rebuild the system and is going to delay something by a few weeks, your it is you're not going to explain that. You are redoing the system. Your point is, you're going to sell the dream of the next feature. You're going to be able to build with that rewrite. You are not doing okay? And, you know, redesigning, this core part of the system. What you are doing is we are enabling a, i driven something
in the system and very often. This is what you are doing except that you cannot explain it in technical terms. You have to rephrase it in a functional way that people who are not Technically inclined can understand. And this is actually a big part of it. The hardest part is you have to grow out of the engineer mindset. You have to learn to sell and you have to learn also to explain to talking to maybe more financial terms and salesy terms.
And for many engineer. This is a hard thing to do. So really, let me rephrase it. When you have this sort of situation don't talk about tech. You are actually doing it for a reason which is business reason and you cannot go and say we are really factoring this Because we don't have the right performance in technical terms. You have to say, we are enabling this part of the roadmap, which is why.
For me, one of the things I learned very quickly was to always have a roadmap and always refer to the roadmap. And in fact, also, I done to Pace myself and keep a few innovation in my back pocket. Even if I had ideas. I will not always put them in a roadmap or I would phrase my work plan, in terms of roadmap, and in terms of features that can be understood by the board. Remember all the first time, many, many, many years ago. My manager was on leave.
I will start within the team and the project manager was on leave. And so, I was kind of the second guy in charge, and they asked me to go to the monthly business review of the whole company to present what my team with doing. So, I went there. And when it was my turn to speak, I started explaining some database issue in deeply technical term. The see, you looked at me and said after I was done, he said, okay, so now Now, can you say that in English? And ultimately I was okay.
So it's going to still going to take three weeks and it was like, okay and I was very deep in the weeds of explaining intricate programming Concepts and it was like, so how long is going to take? And this was I realized I was very young. I was in my late twenties at the time of this is when I realized that. Yeah. Universe to have had the question. Message for example. Another thing is you're going to talk to your investors and you're not going to tell them. We are using the cloud.
You're going to tell them instead of having Capital expense. We are using operational expense. So I don't buy computers, but I buy capacity by the minute. So this is actually an Opex, right? Yep, many little, many little tricks like this, right? So, switching a little bit into your career Journey, right? You've been a start-up architect, a number of years lately, having In a lot of startups within this region in Southeast Asia, how do you compare between startups from Asian?
And also Western do you see any difference? First of all, let me pick you up or anything. I don't think it's fair to say Western versus Asia. Okay, because there is as much difference between somebody who lives in Indonesia and somebody will lives in Vietnam as there is somebody with who lived between, you know, France and the west coast of America. They are very Unconscious. So to put them as Western and Asian is actually a really not
accurate. There's vast cultural differences, but even in the west, like, for example, for me moving from France to the US, when I moved to the Silicon Valley, there was a very vast difference and then I found when I moved to different parts of Asia, that sometimes things are more similar to Western Europe was in things were more and more similar to North America while things rather than just purely local. So I can Give you a bit of anecdote. For example, the French are very
famous for arguing all the time. So, in the work culture or their everybody has an advice on everything all the time. And even while you are executing a project, even when decisions have been made, we are still debating about the decision, right? Would have been made. Alright, rise in America in general and I of course, it's always simplified when I was in the u.s. In general decisions are made faster and people stick to the plan a lot more. It's a lot more about having
execution. Mmm, so less people are going to debate about decision. We should have been made while you are actually executing. The plan. On the other hand. I've told the plan is daughter after you reach a milestone - 34, all you, can debate would find the wrong word. Didn't go, what went well, but I also found that is very similar on between France and many Asian countries, France, and Asian countries have a lot of power
distance. In the sense that there was very strong sense of hierarchy and power distance is the concept that was defined by a psychologist, but Basically, it is how people relate to Authority, and how they react in front of authority. And that is very cultural in Asia very often. There's a very strong power distance in France, as well. Also, there's a very strong power distance. So this is one of the
similarities we have. But that basically means that, if you're the manager, actual the bus, if you work the authority, people will not contradict you. They will be afraid to speak up. They will be quiet. So you have this meeting rooms while you say something, and you ask, is there any question and everybody? He's very site on because nobody dares to speak up. As a manager of this, is not something you want. You want to have hit back because you're in the dark.
You don't know what's happening on the ground. You need information and they will not give it to you. So it's really hard. The way I dealt with originally was to try to educate people. So we my first experience of that. I picked a leader. I actually found somebody who was educated in the west but local and so I may learn the person would speak up for the others little by little they say So that you know, it was okay to tell me things. It was okay.
Don't contradict me. I was not going to override. Sometimes I would say that's a good idea. I didn't think about it and little by little, they felt very free. It took many weeks, several months before I got to go to that. Right. Another thing. I did was to learn the local language because everybody said that you know, you have to learn the local language.
And in fact, it didn't work out at all because in that particular account for every cent it's very frightening because the Use the local language as a safe space. They could be talking to each other and I didn't understand the defect is safe. But then, you know, I started to be able to answer understand the cosecant only. Well, I completely lost it was really, really disturbing for them and it actually made it even harder for them to adapt to me. So it was quite a few products.
Interesting. So the other thing is that the ability to admit that you don't know. So in many cultures, it has different forms. And in Asia, where I found very often, is that people find it very, very hard. And they can't say, I don't know, so they will make one sells. Well, very evasive. We don't necessarily answer the
question but I always correct. So I always make a joke, you know, if you ask this question and you say, is this program working and the guy looks at you and say today the sky is rather blue. It has no annual ignore, Elation with the question and he looks at you and say yeah, but it is correct today. The sky is indeed blue. So you can't fault me for that. And so I used to get very angry and then I realize that this is a way to tell me in a very awkward. Bleak polite manner.
That I don't know, I won't be able to give you an answer on. You have to stop being upset and being direct and say, okay, let's circumnavigate around this and go like that. It's very hard to admit, you're wrong. You meet, French people equate being correct with looking smart. So, in my culture, we also find it very hard to say. I don't know, but we will not do like this. We will say your question is
stupid. Let's and, and we will fight, which is kind of fun, because frankly would like to argue all the time, but we like to Argue very strongly and very passionately. So it will terrified many Outsiders and at the end of the meeting, we say, oh, you know, a good conversation. We should do that more often and the other girls are like, how come you didn't kill each other. All, you know, we were about to call for help and I know it was
fun right now. We had a great, great time to add power distance, you know, the fact that you're the boss and the fact that you say I'm wrong, you know, this can be very, very, very challenging in Asia. You can step on a lot of toes. You can help a lot of
sensitivities. I also think there is a little bit that is linked to the education system, where many countries are brought up where the system of thinking is you learn in the book and then you have the correct answer and in Europe and in the west it's varies, but it's usually not judged upon. Like, for example, I never had a multiple choice question in any of my exam until I was in third year of University. You always write essays and
statement of facts. You never had four books to check who is kind of very Three different way. We basically end up saying, I don't know the answer. I don't even want to voice search. If there is an answer. I'm just going to shoot from the hip and improvise something which can be also very disturbing for one looker. The last thing for me is really vocabulary. We all speak English, right?
So we think because actually we speak our English which is usually a translation of our own native language and sometimes you might be making big errors without any intentions of my favorite example. That is the French when they discuss about ideas, and they think that another idea is not valid. They would very easily. Say this is a stupid idea. Hmm. Because in French, when you are in this context, the world stupid is not altered as strong as English in this context.
The world. Stupid just means that it's a little silly, silly, totally irrelevant. It won't work. It's the nice little enduring world. It is not at all. The this is stupid. And by extension your stupid is It's not at all confrontational. You have to be very careful when I was in the u.s. I could see my French colleagues coming for business trips and standing up in front of American colleague on the your stupid. It is stupid that I could see the American having a little bit of a hard time.
So I also did this in Asia and I could see people getting really, really, really upset. So, at the end of the day, you know, what do you do? Because when you are in a country like Singapore, you don't even have to just adapt to one culture. You have teams that come from all over the world, so you can Have something that is just fitting. Everybody's culture. So, the only solution I found is you create your own culture. This is something I'm already mentioned.
The culture in. Your company is super important. This is the summer for the behavior of this is, what is correct. What is not correct? So you really have to build something where people with the new joiners will come in and say, oh, I see, this is the standard and I can confirm to it. This is how it is done in this company and that will help me free up my own limitations or, you know, goo Rock on my own
desires. If I don't like it, there is a feedback mechanism for you to actually say it, but you need to build this into your company because you need to be sensitive that people need these standards and they don't necessarily have them. And I don't really have a perfect country or building recipe where I can tell you is this is really fun and you will have some real times, you will laugh afterwards, but we know it's going to be very very challenging and entertaining at the same time.
Interesting interesting. So what are some of the Maybe interesting stuffs, you have seen in the startup scene lately around the region. I generally think that the liver of technical ability is rising but amazingly and I know I sound like maybe can be taken bad. But I really I've been here. 14 years in Singapore. And before that. I was in Asia for seven or eight years in multiple countries, and I do know that my first startup in Asia, I had a hard time.
Recruiting people that met my quality standards and now having worked here. And I've been in multiple countries. I can see that. So many startups are popping up and because I actually traveled a lot and talk to many of these. All those amazing to me is that these guys are really seriously good at technology which 10 years ago, was not the case. So everybody in Asia is really really building up to be some really high potential. That's very good to hear. So, how about business model?
Maybe in terms of scale, challenges, are there. Any interesting stuff you've seen lately? So you have a country, like, Singapore is very technical. And many of the startups are embracing highly technological problems. While you have your, I'm Indonesia with the country that is growing extremely fast. You have a lot of startups who are about solving issues that have been solved a long time ago.
So for example, many of the startups, I took two are about ensuring quality of delivery of service. Right, right. I talked to companies while ensuring quality of delivery of coffee and showing quality of office space and showing franchising. Laundry systems. It's not like you don't have laundry in Indonesia. Is that the model of the startup is to make sure that if you go to certain laundry shops, you have a guaranteed level of quality.
Whereas, in Singapore, for example, this is not really a question, which you do have is more about this related to the population. Density. The high industrialization of Some more for the areas and the importance of the port and the importance of logistics and that sort of. So it's very highly controlled. A lot of the very large successful companies in Vietnam, for example, our e-commerce and well it because it's something that is very important and successful in Japan.
There's a large amount of companies while mobile first and will stay mobile because mobile has been really, really big versus about of India. Web applications are still very, very big. So what You find is people are different stages of evolution and very often in the reflects. What is the local culture about interesting insights? So before we recap the show, I would like to ask you this question. What are the three with the means that you would like to share our audience here in terms
of technical leadership? Sure. So I would say, first of all, for many people who like me grow from being very good engineer to becoming a leader, you have to remember, Leading with the girls is leading yourself first. That means you need to add some point. Really sit down and understand your own character. How you regulate emotions would behaviors? You have how you communicate this Behavior River. There's how you handle difficult, conversation and
difficult decisions. That's a very big work of self-awareness and you should always do that. The second one is really as a leader, everything you do impacts the company and if you are not careful, too. Keep bad behaviors in check. It will actually have an effect that he puts down all the way to everywhere. So, basically, anything you do creates the company culture. It has to be very, very intentional and less.
Right? Would be never hire out of desperation, never high, or just because you've been looking for somebody for so long that now you have lost in the patience of looking for a great candidate. You should never do that. You should always have the highest standards and pressure on be hire somebody you are smart. When you want to never be the smartest person in the room, you want to be buying smarter people and learn from them.
Those three are really insightful coming from all your various experience around the industry. So how can people find and connect with you on the internet Jerome? The best way is LinkedIn, this is where I have the most activity. So you can just search for my name on LinkedIn. It's actually a very uncommon French so name, so you won't find many Jerome between and find me and connects and me a message and then we can start discussing. Wonderful. Thank you so much Jerome for
joining us for this episode. It's always a pleasure having this conversation with you. Thanks. It's been fun for me, too. I love meeting you. I had a great time. Thank you for listening to this episode. And I hope that you learned something from this conversation. If you find this valuable, please do me a big favor and share this with your friends and colleagues. Also, if you haven't, please subscribe, and follow this. Show on your favorite podcast app pack.
Lit Journal is available on all major podcast apps such as Apple podcast Google podcasts and Spotify and please leave your rating and review so that more people can find this podcast. And learn from the available episodes. Thank you again, and I'll see you next time.