Preserve start-up spirit at scale: Techstars’ Maëlle Gavet
Apr 23, 2024
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Maëlle Gavet, CEO of Techstars, shares insights on entrepreneurship, gratitude, and balancing personal values with company needs. She discusses her career journey, the transformation of Ozon in Russia, and the importance of founder autonomy. The podcast explores lessons from her international career and the impact of family values on entrepreneurial decisions.
Techstars CEO emphasizes gratitude, hard work, and questioning nature as key entrepreneurial qualities.
Balancing personal values with company needs is crucial for founder success, according to Techstars' CEO Maëlle Gavet.
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Maëlle Gavet is the CEO of Techstars, a pre-seed investor focused on early-stage entrepreneurs. It boasts a market cap of $111.6 billion, and supports founders in programs that span from Tokyo to Lagos to Alabama. Maëlle champions hard work, gratitude, and a questioning nature, qualities her grandfather imparted while she was growing up in France. She has carried her curiosity through a wide-ranging international career, in start-ups and scaled corporations. We hear lessons drawn from her vast experience, including the transformation of Ozon — the "Amazon of Russia" — in the early 2010s, to leadership roles in global travel and real estate. And we get a sample of the advice she often shares with Techstars’ founders, about how to balance their values and the needs of their company, always with an optimism about entrepreneurship as a force for good.