Sebastien Toupy is the head of startup relations The Next Web, or as he calls himself - The Startup Guy.

We met in Tbilisi, where Sebastien was a Jury member at the Touch Summit, and surprisingly enough I was pitching on the stage.

We share a common passion for startups, entrepreneurship and social impact, and sat down later to talk, share ideas and know more about TNW, it's numerous projects and Sebastien’s inspiring journey.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Thanks for being here, Sebastien, when you were 16 years old, you chose innovation as your life path and haven’t turned off that road since, why?

Sebastien Toupy: There were a few drivers for that decision, I grew up in Belgium, and realised in my high school years that I did not want to work in this country, as the mentality seemed too narrow minded for my liking. My uncle was a businessman, who traveled a lot and managed to bring together his passion for travel and business, and he became sort of a role model to me. After a number of conversations, I decided to leave Belgium for the UK to improve my English - if I wanted to work internationally, England would be a good place to start. After studying business for a while, I fell into it. One thing led to another after spending 3 years in the UK, meeting more and more entrepreneurs and startup founders, I started thinking about launching my own startup and learning more about the tech ecosystem. Shortly after, I moved to the Netherlands, and that's where I started my first company.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Would you consider the UK as an innovation hub?

Sebastien Toupy: Most definitely yes, i think the UK has been a great place for entrepreneurship and innovation that over the past few years has become a global hub for Fintech Companies (amongst other industries). I feel sad that the current political climate isn’t currently helping the development of the local tech ecosystem, however, the UK and specifically London remains a very strong innovation hub with incredible talent and innovative companies. (Hopefully that won’t change).

Ashot Khudgaryan:  A few years ago you wouldn’t call Europe a cutting-edge software hub, but in recent years that has drastically changed. How did this happen?

Sebastien Toupy: Indeed, there are a few reasons for that. I think it's A: a lot easier to scale in Europe now than it was 5 years ago. The access to knowledge is increasing, the cost of starting companies has plummeted and the availability of both talent and capital has  never been so high. For example, the number of developers coming out of Europe is at an all time high. Back in the days a lot of people were only looking at Silicon Valley when considering building a tech company this for a variety of reasons). But nowadays, more and more startups are considering having their HQ in Europe in a market that is growing fast. There is a report that was published 3 weeks ago on the state of European tech that has been written by a number of different parties, including the VCs. It shows that Europe is slowly but surely becoming a key location to build a startup.

Ashot Khudgaryan:  You talk about social impact and social entrepreneurship, and then we switch to cheap prototyping, scalability, profit and growth, which are more commercial standpoints. What's your vision on  social impact vs. profit generation?

Sebastien Toupy: My optimistic long-term vision is that social impact and business will merge into one flow. Despite being optimistic, I truly think we are moving towards a situation where most companies realise that they have to pay attention to their social and environmental impact (May it be for CSR programs or employee led initiatives (E.g Patagonia, Lush,  etc) At the moment we’re not there yet, and it’s gonna get some time to adjust, but I see more and more companies building products and services being developed with their footprint in mind and I hope that in the future more and more organisations (both public and private) will follow.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Recently, in Armenia, we had a big tech congress (WCIT) where one of the keynote speakers said a phrase that striked me - “You cannot save the world without making a profit''.

Sebastien Toupy: 

I think that this statement is interesting as it can be interpreted in different ways. First of all I’d like to take a look at the work of the organisations that are currently making the most impact (NGO’s and Charities) I believe that their work is essential, and extremely complicated as they heavily rely on donations to operate. I want to be honest, as much as I appreciate what these organisations are doing, they are not always the right fit to solve certain issues. (Without diving into details, they are instrumental in conflict areas, disaster relief, education etc) however when it comes to products and services + access to work, I believe that we need to help charities and NGO’s to create more sustainable revenue streams that will allow them to become truly financially sustainable in order to grow their impact (And yes I know that it is easier said then done). I believe that a new generation of social impact entrepreneurs are going in the right direction, and are building solutions that will both make a large impact, while turning a profit.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Do you think public and international organisations have a role in this?

Sebastien Toupy: Certainly. I believe that government and public institutions have a crucial role to play in the development of the tech ecosystem and in solving some of humanity’s biggest challenges. At the TNW Conference, we are taking this very much at heart as we recently brought  together 240 government representatives from 60 different countries, to discuss ways in which technology can help solve these issues and share ideas when it comes to policy making on the topic. I believe it’s incredibly important that these issues are being discussed openly and that best practices are shared in order to be implemented across the globe.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Do you have startup ideas?

Sebastien Toupy: It’s a good question. I have 2 reasons why I haven’t engaged in launching a new company yet. On the one hand I’m very passionate about a lot of things and not focused into one specific area, so I find it hard to dedicate my time to one single thing. The second reason is that I’m currently looking into ways I can leverage my knowledge to create more social and environmental impact and that is still in the making currently.

Ashot Khudgaryan: But you think that when you eventually do your own thing, it’s going to be targeted at impact.

Sebastien Toupy: Definitely, it’s what matters most to me and I hope that many more people will join the journey.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Terrific. Tell me about The Next Web. It Launched as a media platform, and it turned into a big startup organisation. How did this evolution happen?

Sebastien Toupy: It’s a very good question. I think what is interesting in that question is that only a few are aware that it actually started as a conference. 15 years ago, when the founders both had a small technology company, and wanted to find exposure for their businesses here in the Netherlands. They realised that there was no event for them to showcase what they were doing. So, they decided to create their own. They set up a small conference with 200 people in Amsterdam and then every year it grew by a few extra hundred people, in 2015 it was 3.500 and then In 2016 the attendance went from 3.500 to 10.000, and then this year we are going to host over 20.000 people. A few years later they realised that if they wanted to have reach, the conference had to actually leverage the internet to be able to spread their ideas online. And that’s when thenextweb.com was created. And then a few years down the line we also realised that all the data we’d been gathering using the conference and the media was very valuable. That’s when they decided to launch index.co, and then, 3 years ago, we thought “Hey! You know, we’re gathering so many interesting people around us with our events, our media, our data platform”. But there was no physical space for them to gather together. And then they created TQ, which is our tech hub in the center of Amsterdam. We’ve got 2 of them now, launched one three years ago and one in 2019. And we have about a thousand people in the Hub, 57 international companies. Now we approach TNWX, and this part is very much focused on innovation and co-creation, we realised that the equation wouldn’t be complete without the corporates. And even though we have been working with the media, startups, investors, speakers in the last few years, corporations are incredibly important, and they played a big role in the innovation landscape in 2019. And so we started working with corporates on helping them solve innovation challenges by connecting them with technological start-ups. We’ve been doing that with 150 big names in the last 3 years. Together with 3 colleagues we began what has now grown into a 30 people that is growing incredibly fast and operating all over the globe. 

Ashot Khudgaryan:  Wow! That’s impressive. So the logical question comes by: do you guys have an investment arm?

Sebastien Toupy: It is indeed the next logical question. At the moment we don’t have a fund, and it is not in the plans for the near future. It might make sense to have one in the long run, however, at the moment we’re working with a large network of investors, angels, VCs, etc. I think that one of the main reasons why we haven’t decided to launch a fund is that it allows us to keep our neutrality, and actually ensures that we are presenting the best companies, without having any biases for a particular portfolio company.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Recently Financial Times acquired a majority stake in TNW. Tell me about that.

Sebastien Toupy: It was a very strategic move. Raising from a VC was not really an ideal option, since we are not a fast growing software company and can’t ensure 10X returns. What we truly needed was a powerful partner that could understand our business, support our growth and help us to achieve our full potential. In joining forces with the FT, they made a strategic move to stay ahead of the curve in the long run and we gained a strong partner to help us grow. They also understand that they are there to support Boris and Patrick in shaping the strategic vision of the company without being involved in the day to day and thus have very little interest in operational involvement.

Ashot Khudgaryan:  What’s your attitude towards TNW as a media company? And what do you think of media startups these days?

Sebastien Toupy: I would say that it's important for us to position ourselves as a unified company (doing media, events, data, tech-hub & advisory/consultancy). Thus we are restructuring our website design so that the media isn’t the only visible part of TNW anymore. And we want to really show the rest of the ecosystem that what makes us a very strong brand is that we aren’t just a media company. We are also a database, we are also a powerful event-player, one of the largest in Europe. We also have connections to the investors and corporates. And when people work with us, they get to reap the benefits of all of our business units. On the other hand we also realize that startups barely get exposure on media-platforms across the world these days and that directly links to your question. I think that startup news is broken and that aside from a few lucky companies that get coverage on TechCrunch or Tech.eu, it’s very hard for startup stories to spread (often due to the fact that startups are trying to push out press releases that nobody wants to read).  Thus, we need to find a different way to allow startups to share interesting news/stories with the rest of the world. And we’re looking at launching a few new sub-brands in 2020, that will allow startups to get exposure in the right way. (Check our Growth Quarters for more info)

Ashot Khudgaryan: Who do you consider as your top competitors?

Sebastien Toupy: If we talk about the media, I would say the obvious, Wired, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Verge, would be the main media-competitors. On the conference side, WebSummit, Slush, Startup Grind, On the advisory side, Techstars, Plug n Play, might be closest to us as they run global innovation programs. And if you’re thinking about our Tech hub, of course companies like We Work, Mindspace, Spaces and others around the world. Despite that, I also think that for entrepreneurs we have our own specific niche and differentiators that make us unique in the market. The interesting thing is that there is no other player that is doing all of the things that we do and that’s often what allows us to serve our clients best, we leverage all the parts of our businesses to make their experience better.

Ashot Khudgaryan:  Today, new markets create space for new startups, but not necessarily new ideas. And we see the copies of Uber becoming unicorns every now and then.

How do you treat these “replica” startups?

Sebastien Toupy: It’s quite hard to answer that one I think. We have seen a lot of companies, particularly in Asia, becoming massive and turning huge profits by simply copying solutions from Europe and the US. I would say good for them, but I believe that the future lies with companies who are solving a particular problem and as every market is different it’s important to focus on scalable solutions that fit the right markets. That being said, Asia is a MASSIVE market and I am convinced that the tech giants of tomorrow are likely to come from innovative startups that are solving issues faced by the most populated region on earth.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Do you consider doing something in Armenia in the future?

Sebastien Toupy: We are certainly open to experimenting with new market players. We have had partnerships with South America and Asia. We ran events in Sao Paulo for three years, we ran one in New York  for 5 and also London. But we see that it’s very hard to enter other markets and utilise support from all sides, be it media, investors, corporates or the government, thus we are being cautious and wait to have the right parties in place before launching services in a new market.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Here comes a “that’s what she said” phrase -> Aren’t you tired of those 3 minutes?

Sebastien Toupy: (laughs) Let me tell you a story. I was invited to an accelerator program that was launched by SeedStars focused on impact companies and I sat there listening to all those 3-minute pitches. You can imagine that I have heard hundreds of pitches like that, so there didn’t seem to be anything new. That was until I sat down with the entrepreneurs for our actual one-on-one meetings. There I realised that their solutions were VERY different and pretty remarkable for some. So on the one hand, Yes. I’m tired of hearing the same stories over and over, but on the other, I have learned that you can never predict who will be delivering the right pitch and build a company worth investing in. Often times it will come from someone who has a different take on a problem that has been pitched to me many times before. And then I realise that there are people making a difference out there. So despite sometimes getting annoyed by hearing repetitive pitches, I remind myself that there are also amazing ones  out there, that made me think “Yes! This is why I still work in this industry. This is still why I care so much about startups.”

Ashot Khudgaryan: Last question, my personal interest.

What’s the importance of storytelling, pitching and communication in general for you?

Sebastien Toupy: I think that it makes all the difference. Most startups seem to forget that pitching and storytelling aren’t so different and that for the most part they require very similar skills. Being someone who is listening to over a thousand startup pitches every year. The ones who can tell the best stories are often the ones that catch my attention. And I believe with all of these pitches being delivered, it’s still wildly underestimated just how important storytelling really is.

Ashot Khudgaryan: Adding to that, a lot of techy-people, although they have great products, are unable to communicate with them.

Sebastien Toupy: Yes, I agree. And I think that it is important to help startups with their communication skills, especially for early-stage companies that have little traction. So, if they don’t have a great story and don’t have great numbers, then, in my mind, they have very little chance of success. Some founders believe that showing their pitch decks, I think that this is far from the truth. Sometimes, companies who have very impressive numbers can offer to “ let the numbers do the talking ” which is a great situation to be in. However in the majority of cases it’s a little more complicated than that, and for the early stage entrepreneurs out there, if you don’t have great numbers to show just yet (you’re not alone), at least you have to make sure that you have a great story!

Ashot Khudgaryan - helps companies crystallize their vision, create stories, messages and campaigns that deliver core values and brand culture. Co-Founder of an educational project for people who want to build a career in IT.  

Photo: Sebastien Toupy