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Building a Startup in MENA: A Female Founder's Path to VC. Success with Julie Barbier

Key Takeaways:

Julie Barbier-Leblan started her entrepreneurship journey in the Middle East as a finance lawyer and later founded Merit, a global engagement technology company. Merit helps enterprise clients engage internally with their employees and externally with customers using a suite of SaaS solutions and rewards. Building a strong network and partnerships is crucial for scaling a business in the MENA region. Julie decided to raise VC funding to support the growth and scalability of Merit, and she believes in having local and regional investors to educate the ecosystem. The Saudi 2030 vision and the shift towards a digital economy in the region present exciting opportunities for tech entrepreneurs. Transitioning from a founder to a leader requires adjusting and adapting to new roles and responsibilities. Choosing the right co-founder is crucial for scaling a company, but it's important to be cautious and ensure alignment of values and complementary skills. As a female founder, Julie faced resistance and bias, but she learned to stand up for herself and set boundaries. Self-awareness, embracing the journey, and not listening to those who tell you to slow down are key to success as an entrepreneur.

With Guest

Julie Barbier

Released on

October 29, 2024

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I worked with Mike and I learned a lot from him. He is a great advisor and a very good coach. He is not only an effective leader, he builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. He knows how to make the difference between good and great. You always want and need Mike on your team!

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VP of Engineering at Cobee

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Lasse Mejling

VP of Strategy & Finance at Leapwork

It has been great having Mike's advice on ForceManager. He always provides out of the ordinary insights, specially related to people and talent management, which is core for a company to scale up. Mike is persistent and patient to help get the organization and its strategy and team ready for the scale up phase.

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COO at ForceManager

We have been collaborating with Mike since summer of 2022, and he has expertly guided the LMS365 executive team and leadership groups in our departments on how to better leverage the Objectives and Key Results framework (OKR). We use the OKRs to decompose the strategic steps we need to take across our organization, to effectively move us towards our big strategic ambition. Mike is a good, empathic and pragmatic leadership coach who combines solid knowledge of the OKR framework with experience from working with leadership coaching in many SaaS scale-ups. He is good at spotting the areas for improvement on each individual leader's level, and very clear and direct in how we can establish clarity of vision and world class execution. I can recommend Mike for both OKR executive group leadership coaching as well as OKR coaching on an individual leader level.

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Product and Technology Leader

Mike has played the scaleup movie several times now. He is one of the few people on the planet that gets how CEOs feel, think and he really cares about you, the team and the business. He has the patience to listen and the courage to challenge our deeper beliefs. I have also been impressed by his flexibility and discipline of being able to play multiple roles simultaneously as CEO Advisor, Leadership Team Advisor/Coach, COO as a Service... The feedback from the Leadership Team about his impact was that his impact on them has been life changing. I strongly recommend Mike, if you want to have a "partner in crime" to scale your company.

Oscar Macia

CEO at ForceManager

I worked with Mike for the last 1.5 years. Mike is a superb consultant who always challenged the team and myself to be better with goals and outcome. The best thing about having Mike on the team is his outside in view about all objectives/goals and KRs. His rich experience of working with other companies gives you insights on how world class teams are doing things in the industry. Mike has a charming personality, it feels like talking to friends instead of a coworker. Mike always pushes you out of your comfort zone and keeps you on your toes which ultimately helps you in building a better company. I strongly recommend Mike as part of the management team due to his rich experience and the value he brings with his expert advice.

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VP Customer Experience

Mike es el coach ideal para cualquier compañía que quiera tener éxito en sus planes de crecimiento y expansión. No sólo es capaz de crear una nueva visión conjunta, sino que define los pasos de ejecución y seguimiento de una manera detallada y realizable. Además tiene habilidades personales que permiten alinear complejas relaciones personales dentro de los equipos de trabajo. Recomendaría a Mike a cualquier compañía que desee dar el siguiente paso para "Scaling up".

Agapito González Pujol

COO at WAM Global

We have worked with Mike during our growth journey. He has excelled as a great facilitator drawing on his vast experience with scale-up companies, and he has been an absolute pleasure to work with throughout our journey. More than happy to recommend Mike in the context of SaaS leadership teams.

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

“It has been great having Mike's advice on ForceManager. He always provides out of the ordinary insights, specially related to people and talent management, which is core for a company to scale up. Mike is persistent and patient to help get the organization and its strategy and team ready for the scale up phase.”

Mònica Comalrena

COO, ForceManager

“We have worked with Mike during our growth journey. He has excelled as a great facilitator drawing on his vast experience with scale-up companies, and he has been an absolute pleasure to work with throughout our journey. More than happy to recommend Mike in the context of SaaS leadership teams”

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Mònica Comalrena

COO, ForceManager

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

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FAQs

Find out more about our frequently asked questions from our framework, our specialization, program duration, pricing structure and more.

What is your leadership framework?

It is the combination of team and individual coaching with three critical pillars to achieve scale and profitability:
1. Reverse Engineering Vision Narrative
2. OKRs
3. Meeting Cadence

Mike Dias scaled 18+ businesses to 100M+ and we are happy to disclose more about his framework. Please feel free to reach out. Have in mind that each coach only works with a maximum of 4 companies at a time. We are very selective.

How long is the coaching program?

We want to make our Leadership Teams independent and let them fly alone when they are ready. Usually the time to leave home is after 18-24 months. Though in some cases we are still involved on a quarterly basis for a longer period of time.

What is your success rate?

We are incredibly grateful to be able to have much better odds than the market. Only .04% of the businesses get to $100M. We have an average higher than 1 in each 2 companies we work with.

Do you offer coaching services?

Yes, when we believe in a CEO, we are happy to offer a tailor made solution of 1:1 Coaching, starting with a 2h workshop with coaching sessions every 14 days. This is very exclusive as our coaches have limited capacity.

What industries do you specialize in?

We have started in tech, more specifically, with SaaS and VC backed businesses. Today we have experience in tech (VC and non VC backed ventures) and we are sector agnostic as our methodology has been providing results to multiple clients in multiple industries. Recently we have expanded to HVAC as an example.

Can you help with fundraising?

We help you achieve the numbers of revenue and profitability that allow you to have interest from the best investor. Though we don’t provide those services. Happy to do informal intros to the companies we work with as we know them and we believe that they are investable.

What sets you apart?

We are at your side every single week, facilitating the weekly Executive meetings and having 1:1s with every single member of the Leadership Team. The majority share advice, but let you execute and go away. We are there to be accountable for the financial results with you.

What is your pricing model?

Our Premium ScaleUp Program starts at $30k per quarter and we expect to work together for at least 4-6 quarters. We are happy to have the option to decide if we want to continue until the end of the first 90 days.

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