I hope this small story can be inspiring for people around asking themselves what to do next. This is the humble story of me quitting my job to create my startup.
Here's a bit of context so that you can understand my background. Back in April 2016, I was actually flying back from San Francisco where my contract with a startup as Ruby/Go API developer stopped. I decided to fly back to France to get back to a more "human centric" position (as opposed to being a developer and writing code, although being a developer can be very "human centric" too). To tell you the truth, I was kind of fed up with writing code, I was looking to quit my comfort zone and start a new challenge.
As I was on my way back to France, in Montpellier my home town, I was contacted by a young and very dynamic Tech Consulting company called Klanik.
After several interviews (7 to be exact 😅), I was hired as Director to lead and ramp up the new agency of Montpellier.
By that time my job was mainly being the N+1 of a single (though very talented and nice guy) Business Manager. My duties were threefold: find new customers and new projects, recruit skilled engineers to fill those missions, manage the overall mess.
I must admit I was rather junior for that gig, I didn't know the "Consulting" Industry.
Klanik's founder did a very bold bet by hiring me. I had to learn on the fly but hopefully my Tech skills were of great help on a daily basis (at least to understand customers needs and recruit the right engineers).
Klanik's a really cool company. They put a sincere focus on employee's happiness and they do it pretty well.
Things started to get better and better, we were hiring more and more great engineers, we had awesome customers and the internal staff was growing fast with great people joining the staff.
From 40, we got to 60 and nearly 70 including 10 managers, RH partners and all. Pretty cool. I had a more than decent salary including bonuses. Everything was fine, although very demanding (I mean very)…
Lastly, as I faced the difficult equation of managing my own ambitions and trying to find how to get them aligned and feasible within the company, I had what we call a "aha moment": what about creating my own company?
I had been thinking for months that we could do better, go further into "making people happy" within a consulting company.
I started to think about a new model. Having been both sides of the mirror helped me a lot (contractor and recruiter side).
This industry seems broken to me: society has changed, people has changed, work has changed (still changing); model has to adapt to effectively address people's needs today and, most important, prepare for tomorrow's needs.
I then recall Jeff Bezos' customer centric approach and think I may create a startup based solely on a true "consultant centric" approach.
In other words: disrupt this industry by putting the main goal into building a thriving and sustainable community of great Tech engineers.
Consulting companies (at least in France, probably worldwide too) have all the same speech:
"They brag about all the efforts they do to make consultants happy"
In facts, their speech is often words without acts. It's one of the reason consulting companies are considered "bad companies to work for". Some of them are even lying to both consultants and customers by making big profit on each end (buy low, sell high). Several engineers call those companies "butchers" (as if consultants were meat).
https://media.giphy.com/media/OgtsRB7MBjr6E/giphy.gif
This leads to a broken system and a broken industry; a bad image and definitely "not a better world" although being a flourishing industry making billions of dollars a year.
Their promises are at best marketing bullshit, a complete scam at worst.
I decided to create Flint.
Flint is a Tech Consulting company with a focus on creating a unique engaging community of Tech People, around the World.
What we're building is unique and every step that moves us forward is only driven by 2 main concerns:
Does it serve the community? Is it something our community would love?
Consultants mainly suffers from the lack of any belonging feeling. Working as an "external" within a customer's facility doesn't make you an "internal". Consultants often do not recognise themselves in their employer company neither. This is what Flint wants to fix: emphasize on Community.
What we believe at Flint is that we can achieve a very strong belonging feeling by creating truly innovative and genuine processes serving engineers. We want them to feel within a community where they can develop professionally, blossom and meet awesome people.
Here are some of the measures we provide to our consultants:
A connected Community
We ❤️ Slack. You are connected with other Flint peers everywhere in the World: never get stuck on a problem, help each others and get rewards.
Always learning
Flint wants you to always stay sharp and grow both professionally & Technically. Our experts are given a 24/7 account to a renowned MOOC.
Open Source & Community
As a community, We have our own Github and repos, we plan to give back to the Open Source ecosystem. Sharing is one of Flint foremost Value.
Everybody win
You are part of an experience! Flint offers financial benefits to her employees. We forecast an hyper growth and we want to share with our people.
Remote working
Flint provides you with at least 1 day per month remote working.
Side projects
We offer 1/2 day per month free time dedicated to side projects. We strongly believe innovation is likely to sparkle while working on side projects.
Invested within the ecosystems
Flint is very active within local Tech ecosystems, we organize or participate in Hackathons, Meetups, Tech Conferences as well as afterworks and frequent parties.
Stay in good health
We have a very solid healthcare plan.
Expose your love
Flint offers a great onboarding package and process (Polo Shirt, notebook, Stickers to pimp your laptop).
+… many other ideas which would make sense and make Flint an awesome community.
My personal story's sprinkled with entrepreneurial failures. I've learned from these failures and they made me a better/ready entrepreneur. I know in my guts Flint is an answer to a real problem in this Industry.
Keeping people happy, making them live a strong belonging feeling, caring about their personal and professional development, making them feel a societal impact: those are today's major stakes that Flint will address.