The publication
Notes on buying, building and backing private companies. For readers who want to understand what sits beneath the headline.
A reading room for founder stories
Investors spend a great deal of time trying to tell a founder from someone who would like to be one. A plan and a forecast say little. What a person did before anyone was watching, with no money and no permission, usually says more. These profiles look at that early record.
Each story is written by the editorial team from the subject’s own account and from material they have shared with us. Where a figure or a claim rests only on their word, we say so. We do not verify private transactions and we do not name counterparties who have not agreed to be named.
Read them as case studies in judgement: how a gap was noticed, how a first version was put in front of real customers, how the model changed when the facts did, and when the founder chose to sell. A profile is a story about a person. It is not a recommendation of any business they are involved in, past or present.
Founder stories
Before the books and the software, Mohamed El Hadri was an engineering student in Perpignan with a car, a web form and a problem every student in the city shared. This is the story of Plansam, the company he built from it and sold to Heetch.