In 3 years, the startups we have co-founded reached a total of 20 million € in Annual Recurring Revenue.
SaaS, marketplaces, consumer apps, Web3 platforms, brands…
The founders of three of them testify.
THE QUEST is a unique 12-18 months startup creation program, with levels, checkpoints (trips), rewards to unlock... Yes, designed like a video game.
THE QUEST is the homemade creation of The Secret Company :
a collective of entrepreneurs whose startups have reached
20 million € in Annual Recurring Revenue in just 3 years.
THE QUEST, it's...
You get it, THE QUEST is a one-of-a-kind life experience, specially designed for ambitious internet kids.
We have identified dozens of growing, not fully resolved problems.
So, market opportunities. Potential startup ideas with strong intuitions regarding the product, positioning, branding and go-to-market to solve them.
We are looking for ambitious, hardworking, singular young minds to become their CEO, CTO or CMO.
You are looking to work fulltime over the next 12-18 months on a startup idea or problem you have already identified?
A side project that deserves to be pushed with more ambition?
If we are passionate enough about it and about you, we might be tempted to attack it with you.
You want to play the game to be interviewed in depth by our team, about your story, your skills, your hidden desires...
To maybe extract what we call "your secret superpower"?
If we manage to, the game will be to co-create with you an ambitious venture based on it.
...And what’s next?
Here is the navigation plan.
🎮 HERE START YOUR QUEST: Introduction & first advice.
LEVEL 0
Let’s identify your secret superpower and imagine with it your life enterprise project idea 🧙
LEVEL 1
Feed your 🧠 to conquer the 🌐
🕹️ The Corporate Finance Bible for starting entrepreneurs
🌟 The Personal Branding & Build in Public Bible for starting entrepreneurs
🍼 What you eat is what you are. What your brain consume is what you’ll become
🚴 Build yourself a top athlete-like productivity routine through calendar
🎯 How to Kickstart a project the good best way
🚿 Create yourself a powerful learning routine
🥘 How to be a good great CEO (inspired from the best Cooking Chefs and Athletes Trainers)
🛠️ The Perfect Startup Kickstart Tools Stack
📼 Paid training is the best career gas pedal
🎨 Our favorite providers for startups: freelancers, agencies, magicians...
✨ The best tools we've sourced and tested to enhance your productivity
📖 Our Lost Grimoire of Frugal Entrepreneurship
📎 The Art of Storytelling: the ultimate exercise to understand it profoundly
📧 Great email templates for ambitious CEOs (+ how to write great ones)
LEVEL 2
Master your topic, your problem, your market and its dynamics 🧳🌪️
👾 BONUS LEVEL: How to win. 🏆
🍦 BONUS LEVEL: MAKE SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT. 😋
🛠️ BONUS LEVEL: Do Things That Don’t Scale.
👛 BONUS LEVEL: How (and why) being frugal while growing your project
🏖️ OFFSITE: Sprint week of work + good times in an exotic place 🌴🌞
LEVEL 3
Design a product that solution deeply (and if possible with fun) your problem ⛩️🥋🧱
LEVEL 4
You need a crew to conquer the world 🧙👩🎨🦹🏻👷💃👨🏾🤠👨🏭👩🔬🕺
🤖 How to find a technical co-founder the smart way
🔌 How to find a marketing co-founder the smart way
🗝️ How to build a powerful and healthy crew culture the easy way
🌽 How to structure your teams, incentivize them the good way and create an environment conducive to evolution over time
LEVEL 5
Build an healthy & strong company culture to manage the chaos of growth coming ⚔️⚡🌪️
👨💻 BONUS LEVEL: About managing the Remote condition when building a company
🏖️ OFFSITE: Sprint week of work + good times in an exotic place 🌴🌞
LEVEL 6
Find your Product-Market Fit (PMF) plus unlock Traction 📈🦘
🧲 BONUS LEVEL: Basis of Sales & the Art of a great, mind blowing one
🎡 BONUS LEVEL: Basis of Marketing & the Art of a great, creative one
⛲ WISE WORDS CHECKPOINT: About adapting permanently to the new rules of the game ⚡
LEVEL 7
Moving from brilliant Artist for finding a Product-Market Fit 🎸 to consistent High Level Athlete for managing Expansion/Scale 🏆: why and how to?
🛠️ BONUS LEVEL: Structure + automate your work, your processes, and thus your company (Discord, Airtable, Notion, Zapier, Make...)
🏖️ OFFSITE: Sprint week of work + good times in an exotic place 🌴🌞
FINAL BOSS
Become fully independent from The Secret Company 🦅
🏦 BONUS LEVEL: Raising funds in the best conditions (why, how and when to?)
💸 BONUS LEVEL: Failed to grow? Here are the best ways is to sell (at discount) your project.
🧿 A few words for the road…
PS: 21 principles to build a successful startup adventure 🧩
Internet kids.
Those who learned everything on YouTube.
Those who played multiplayer online games.
The drop out ones as well as those who are seriously thinking about it and would need a springboard for the next 12-18 months.
Technical profiles as well as business ones.
Both are welcome within our community.
In short, THE QUEST was designed for young, self-taught, ambitious, determined minds.
The singular ones.
1
You will do everything in your power to be available within 3 months to start working full time on the startup project we will co-found together. No side projects. We want 100% skin in the game players.
2
You really ambition to build an international, global venture
(it can takes from 5 to 15 years…)
3
Are you ready to build in public? Are you ready to personal brand yourself on social media ? We are looking for skin in the game players. And building in public is so much an unfair advantage.
4
You are ready to learn to learn everyday.
You are eager to do what it takes to win.
SaaS, marketplaces, consumer apps, Web3 platforms, brands…
The founders of three of them testify.
Ambition: Create a crypto data aggregator that investors can finally TRUST, and invest with frictionless
Milestone: From 0 to 10 000 daily active users, in 5 months
Ambition: Create the N°1 worldwide group of online schools that train for the jobs of future
Milestone: 1280 students trained and 2 million € turnover in the first year
Ambition: Build THE supertool to help e-merchants make better marketing decisions
Milestone: From 0 to 200 000€ MRR in 24 months
Here is The Secret Company: a collective of passionate entrepreneurs, builders and hackers, by your side in this upcoming adventure.
MAXIME
BLONDEL
27 y.o
aka Blondy
CEO
💪
Strength 1
Creativity
🧙
Secret Superpower
6th sens
💪
Strength 2
Strategy & Tactics
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Starred restaurants
🥺
Weakness
Process
🔥
Has an obsession with
How to win
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JULIAN
IVALDY
22 y.o
aka Ju
Co-founder
💪
Strength 1
Web3
🧙
Secret Superpower
Unlimited energy
💪
Strength 2
Growth
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Money
🥺
Weakness
Storytelling
🔥
Has an obsession with
As fast as possible
ADAMS
SALAHOU
26 y.o
aka Douss
Co-founder
💪
Strength 1
Management
🧙
Secret Superpower
Consistency in effort
💪
Strength 2
Google SEO
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Gnocchi and chicken strips
🥺
Weakness
Becomes bitter if he loses
🔥
Has an obsession with
Attention to detail
ROBIN
SELIGMANN
26 y.o
aka Robiñho
Co-founder
💪
Strength 1
Hiring
🧙
Secret Superpower
Drill down on people
💪
Strength 2
Sales
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Reading Philosophy
🥺
Weakness
Structuration
🔥
Has an obsession with
Enjoy the journey
PIERRE
PARIS
27 y.o
aka Paname
Co-founder
💪
Strength 1
Structuration
🧙
Secret Superpower
Productivity booster
💪
Strength 2
Automation
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Partying (hard)
🥺
Weakness
Chaos
🔥
Has an obsession with
Secure things quickly
MÉDOUNE
DIACK
28 y.o
aka Dounmé
Core Team
💪
Strength 1
Ops
🧙
Secret Superpower
Federates like no one else
💪
Strength 2
Joy of living
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Muscles
🥺
Weakness
Needs to be fed on time
🔥
Has an obsession with
Trust the process
Lucas
Chantreau
21 y.o
aka Cryptomatique
Core Team
💪
Strength 1
Investment
🧙
Secret Superpower
Analytical mind
💪
Strength 2
Skin in the game
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Sex on the Beach
🥺
Weakness
Impatient
🔥
Has an obsession with
Beat The Market
KENZA
BELLOUT
33 y.o
aka Kenzavocate
Core Team
💪
Strength 1
Tactics
🧙
Secret Superpower
Solar
💪
Strength 2
Communication
🤭
Guilty pleasure
Her children
🥺
Weakness
Susceptible
🔥
Has an obsession with
Winning
In this adventure, The Secret Company will be by your side 7/7 days, 24/24 hours.
We will play the role of a more experienced, secret, skin in the game co-founder.
And provide with 9 unfair advantages...
We have identified dozens of growing, not fully resolved problems.
So we have bold startup ideas in our chest.
But our favorite game remains to interview you in depth, to help you extract from your story a project idea that suits you 1000%.
What we call: your secret superpower.
A singularity that we will use to create together a company that will become your life project.
The best way to create an unstoppable "founder-market fit".
We will help you find complementary co-founders.
Who matches your values.
From your past, on the road or from our network.
Cherry on the cake: we will help you manage the crisis with them.
Because there will be.
Money makes entrepreneurs stupid: less creative, less thoughtful… This kills the "survival mode" so necessary to start a project as difficult as a startup.
That's why we will make sure you don't run out of it, but don't have too much either, to iterate intelligently during the first months of your project.
To do so, we will provide you with a starting envelope of money to survive 12 months, plus negotiated discounts & freebies on key tools such as Amazon Web Services ($100 000 in free credits).
From clarifying and understanding intimately the problem we attack.
To designing the product to solve it deeply.
Through finding the first fanatic customers.
We will put our hands dirty with you to find your product-market fit and unlock traction.
Our years of experience have made us realize 2 very important things:
1) The first 10 recruits of a startup are the cornerstones of its success.
2) By extension, the most iconic companies benefit from an incredible company culture.
We will help you hire these 10 first talents, and craft from the very first days that special atmosphere plus those natural reflexes the best teams develop, that save a company when it passes a storm.
A powerful brand identity changes your life, believe us.
And it's a good thing it's our second favorite game.
Together, we'll create something you'll be proud of, and that will make your daily life easier to hire talents, convince customers…
We see the entrepreneurs we work with as top athletes.
Just like in eSports.
We provide them with a psychological support, because being an ambitious entrepreneur is so much hard.
Also with a physical follow-up (food, sport...) worthy of the name, so that they can reach their goals.
Overcome the tests.
Achieve their dreams.
You are your first major project.
If after 12-18 months of frugal and resilient execution, you have reached a level of structuring, growth and profitability that we believe is healthy, we will help you raise funds to accelerate internationally.
The advantage of our approach?
Our startups skip the Seed round, and go straight to Series A.
No premature scaling with us.
The fundraising tool should only be activated if you are in optimal position and conditions.
We have verified it many times: you are the average of the persons you interact with the most.
The Secret Company is a young but growing collective of ambitious, hardworking, fast learning internet kids.
Because we pay close attention to who we accept into, but more importantly who we reject, and why.
The Secret: (good) company.
JOIN US
In summary, our team will do what it takes to make sure that you win.
(and we LOVE to win)
Building a startup with The Secret Company is not only accessing a more experienced co-founder.
It’s joining a community & adventure for life.
Girls <3
Working from Greece does not taste the same
Visiting the Sparkmate factory
Partners
Offsite week in Morocco
A life-changing experience
It is called KerMESS for a reason....
Don't mess with our crew
After the storm :)
A candlelight dinner is sometimes necessary
Sharing is Caring
A banquet to celebrate the end of the year!
Each year, we organize a 7-days skydiving offsite, a summer remote working week, a 3 days festival in a castle, and weekends in European capitals with you only when we feel we need to do a sprint of work, or just because meeting in real life is so good and so much important
Find the Golden Octopus.
The equivalent of unicorns when it comes to frugal startups.
That is to say: build a company valued at over $1 billion,
but for those who want to stay self-funded as long as possible.
