About me

I'm Matthieu. Still a kid, with a backpack filled with experiences, awed by the beautiful place that the world is.

I've spent 20+ years building companies, some my own, most for others. I've had wins, plenty of failures, and learned something from all of it.

The long version:

• Started as an engineer, designing and building petrochemical plants. Loved seeing the designs come to reality. Still remember how small I felt between these huge towers, that started with a simple calculation and a drawing.
• Honed my skills at McKinsey. Loved the high stakes and feeling important. Learned how to communicate. At the end I missed doing. Making slides is not my thing.
• Then I started building for myself. (Co-)founded 3 companies. Crazy period. Many highs and lows. Still love my co-founders and proud of that.
  • My first one was in solar energy. Booming sector. 1M turnover in less than a year. Building the first installation while still doing a course on the basics. Sending order for large sums to China, praying they would arrive. Running around construction sites like crazy.
  • The second one was in urban farming, growing greens with artificial light an no soil, in low value real estate in the city center. Lots of experiments and build it yourself. Learned a lot from weed growers, who were the experts. But wrong place and wrong time. Spain has too much sun and agriculture to make this work. Scandinavia or the Middle Wast would be better, but was not ready to move there.
  • Crowdlending was my last venture. Build a peer to peer lending platform for impact projects from scratch. Learned the basics of the financial sector, had to regulate ourselves and talk to the financial authority. Learned programming out of pure desperation with the quality of the devs for the budget we had. Grew it to millions in assets under management. Until life hit and needed to take a step back.
• I never thought I could work for a boss again, but then came Stryber and their amazing cofounders. It started as a "I have nothing to loose" option just to try it out. This became 6 years, leading 100+ venture builds across Europe, Middle East, and Asia. I started as and entrepreneur in residence, but quickly became the operating officer for the whole company. Managed quick expansion to the Middle East, hiring a whole new team, and worked with fantastic clients. I still believe the team we built was the best kick-ass team in the world.
• But once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. The call to build for myself became too strong. I'm on a quest to build a small portfolio of SaaS business, and indypreneur. Not for the the money, not for the glory, just for the fun. Able to manage it either alone, or a small group of collaborators, from anywhere in the world.

Where I'm at now

Based between Switzerland and Dubai. Building indie products, writing about what I'm learning, and going deep on health and longevity. Running n=1 experiments on myself (keto, fasting, cryo) to learn and understand.

Why "The Long Play"?

Because most things that matter take time. Compounding beats hacking. Patience beats hustle. And the best work happens when you're playing, not grinding.