My journey: from a penniless kid to a serial entrepreneur in Africa

This story was first published in late 2016 on stileex.xyz, where it reached thousands of readers and gathered more than a hundred testimonials. I am republishing it here, on my own site, as it was written (last period update: July 2020), followed by an epilogue. Originally written in French.

What a long way I have come since my childhood as a kid from a working-class immigrant family, without a penny in my pocket. But how did I end up running companies when I was destined for a career as a mathematics researcher? And how did I climb back up after hitting rock bottom, failing at my first attempt as a company founder?

Before you start reading my journey, I would like you to take this message with you:

Whoever you are: poor, rich, man, woman, unemployed, CEO, student... I will always give you at least 10 minutes of my time if you want to talk with me.

An academic background in mathematics

I obtained my French scientific baccalaureate in 1999 with honours, majoring in mathematics with a European option. Right after, I was admitted to the classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles (the intensive preparatory classes for France's top engineering schools) at the Janson de Sailly high school in Paris's 16th arrondissement, in the maths sup year. Class "Sup4", in case any former classmates recognise themselves ;)

I then moved up to MP* (maths spé), still at Janson de Sailly. In that class we were preparing for the most demanding schools: ENS, École Polytechnique, Centrale, les Mines, Supélec, and so on. My one and only dream at the time was to get into École Polytechnique; the other schools did not interest me at all.

But I failed the entrance exam a first time in 2001. So I repeated the MP* year at the Condorcet high school in Paris's 9th arrondissement. I failed the Polytechnique exam a second time in 2002.

My first home was a 9 m² maid's room in the 16th arrondissement of Paris... but with a view of the Eiffel Tower!

I then set course for a career as a mathematics researcher, following the magistère and master's track in pure mathematics at Paris XI University in Orsay, from 2002 to 2005. Life, however, had a very different destiny in store for me...

My first entrepreneurial steps

I did not wait until the end of my studies to start doing business. While I was in the preparatory class at Condorcet (in 2001), three of my classmates and I were appointed organisers of the school's annual party: the Soirée Condorcet. I was light years away from imagining that this experience would change my destiny as a maths student.

I absolutely loved organising that party: it was a challenge, I got my first taste of the business world, I met a huge number of people, I earned money (several thousand euros!!), and the result was exceptional, with nearly 1,200 people attending the event!

With the money I earned, I bought my very first PC. My first Internet connection followed immediately, with those famous free 56k dial-up CD-ROMs from AOL, Club Internet and the like. And since then, I have never disconnected from the web...

I built my first website in 2002, and in 2003 I joined the AdSense advertising programme to earn money online: the LeeX Network activity was born!

In parallel, I set up an association with the core group of friends who had been at my side during the Soirée Condorcet. And we did it again: organising events in Paris. It was a fantastic period. A few years later, in 2006, that association gave birth to my first real company, specialised in event marketing, a French SAS with €37,000 in capital: F Entreprise.

The fall...

In 2006 I was 25. Young, inexperienced but hungry, I fought alongside a few friends to launch F Entreprise. The business plan I had spent so much time crafting turned out to be very different from what actually happened.

Our first parties, which were supposed to get the business off the ground, were failures. That is when I became aware of the fundamental importance of cash flow in running a company. We were full of ideas, we had real potential, but no product or service that generated cash immediately.

In a last breath, we managed to climb back up by reselling printed products online to event organisers, a world whose needs we knew well. We started earning money on the web, but I made two fatal mistakes at that point: I increased our monthly fixed costs without waiting (renting bigger offices), and my business depended on one single supplier, who did not always deliver quality products...

Product returns poured in, what remained of my team lost heart, and it all ended with an empty bank account... Less than two years after its creation, F Entreprise closed down.

I found a lousy job (fries station and cashier at the McDonald's in Les Ulis, in the Paris suburbs) to pay my rent and repay my debts. I fell into depression. I felt like a nobody. I had hit rock bottom. It was late 2007.

Discovering sales, or how to succeed at everything in life

After spending several months unable to get out of bed, letting myself waste away, I said to myself: "Simon, it cannot end like this." I switched on my computer and went straight for the first job offer that required no degree and no experience, yet still offered a decent salary and benefits... And so I became a field sales rep for Securitas Direct (Verisure). In plain terms, I started selling alarms door to door :D

At first glance, that may seem demeaning for someone with a five-year university degree in mathematics, who on top of that went through maths sup / maths spé. But it was the MOST USEFUL experience of my entire life.

For a start, it helped me resocialise (I had cut off all contact with human beings for months). But above all, I was taught the secret to succeeding in life: knowing how to sell.

To tell the truth, it was not my first experience as a salesman: as a student, I worked on weekends and holidays selling Nespresso machines. I was paid a pittance, but enough to cover my rent and a few leisures (I have lived on my own and provided for myself since I was 17). Even back then I loved selling; what I loved most was the contact with customers and the satisfaction of solving a problem with my product.

I will never know how to thank enough the instructors who taught me the art of selling at Securitas Direct. They gave me a superpower: being able to sell anything to anyone, immediately.

I realised that a multinational like Securitas Direct built its success on door-to-door sales. I understood that it is far better to be a good salesman than to have a good product; that no marketing strategy, however clever, will ever replace the effectiveness of a personal approach and direct selling. I had now mastered the tool that would make me succeed: sales.

After Securitas, I worked for two property developers and for the Alter Eco brand, always in sales (area manager for the west of France).

Back on the road of entrepreneurship!

You cannot change who you are... I was born an entrepreneur, I will die an entrepreneur. In late 2009 I let everything go: I resigned from my comfortably paid area manager position, with its nice company car, unlimited fuel card, unlimited phone, unlimited toll card, meal vouchers and all the rest, to work for myself again.

I picked up an old activity: LeeX Network. In truth, I had never really stopped looking after my websites; I maintained them regularly, created new ones from time to time, and they brought me a few hundred euros a month.

I also decided to fulfil a dream: leaving France to settle in an Eastern European country. The LeeX Network activity does not require me to be in France; all I need is an Internet connection. I set my sights on the Czech Republic (fine, purists will say it is in Central Europe...). So I arrived in Prague at the very beginning of January 2010.

I lived two extraordinary, unforgettable years there. I met people from all walks of life (there are many expats in Prague), I learned Czech, I lived in a beautiful duplex right in the city centre, I spent my days strolling around, eating out, shopping, and partying at night!

A few hours a day (two to three hours at the very most), I worked on my websites. French journalists wrote articles that I published online. That was all the work I did.

But after two years, I grew tired of that life. What is more, I felt completely useless to society. I was earning money with a few websites, more through technique than through quality. And most of the time I was nothing but a consumer. I wanted to build a real company, and I wanted adventure. I also had the feeling that I would not be able to live off those websites forever (and what followed proved me right).

Surfing the Internet, I came across the interview of a man who had left for a remote island and become rich there. That settled it: I too was leaving for an exotic country. In November 2011, I boarded a plane to...

Madagascar

Culture shock. What is this country?! No street names, people crossing anywhere, cars that never let a pedestrian through, street vendors EVERYWHERE, heat, torrential downpours turning roads into rivers within seconds, extreme poverty, vans serving as buses that passengers board from the back, 2CV or Renault 4L taxis, furious mosquitoes, potholes in the middle of the streets, never-ending traffic jams...

But I did not let it discourage me. I had a mere 3-month tourist visa to create and launch a company. So I had to get moving. In January 2012 I founded the company Euclide Premier Sarlu. I recruited and trained three employees before flying back to Prague in February 2012. That alone was a fine victory.

I thought I could manage my employees remotely and would only need to travel to Madagascar three or four times a year. I was wrong. I quickly understood that unless I lived in Madagascar around the clock, my company would not stand a chance.

A dilemma: I had to make a choice and leave one of the two countries for good, the Czech Republic or Madagascar. Staying in Prague meant another entrepreneurial failure. And that was out of the question. I sold my furniture, gave up my superb duplex, said farewell to my friends and took a flight to Antananarivo in May 2012.

I went through another rough patch: my company was not taking off, my websites were no longer earning, my first employees let me down, my family gave up on me, and I wondered how I would make ends meet. I told my partner we should eat nothing but vegetables, as meat was too expensive. I dreaded becoming one of those penniless Frenchmen wandering around the Great Island, a "vazaha reraka". That was at the end of the first half of 2013.

One more push

All my employees had abandoned me; one of them even tried to extort money from me. I did not give up.

I had sold several websites in France and in Madagascar. The problem with a website is that it only brings money once. Afterwards, you have to find another client and start the whole process again. On the other hand, I had noticed that the web host collected a yearly rent for every new website put online.

I also noticed that there were very few web hosts actually located in Madagascar, and that the one that seemed most serious was outrageously expensive. That settled it: I was launching my web hosting business.

I spent more than a full month working night AND day, in the literal sense. I slept little and worked non-stop. I set everything up: a server for shared hosting, a billing system, a website, commercial offers, and so on. I started advertising on Facebook and got my first clients.

But it was not going fast enough. Before buying web hosting, a client first needs to build a website... So I decided to sell websites again, but with a genuinely innovative concept: instead of paying a hefty one-off sum to buy the site, the client pays an annual subscription that includes the creation of the site, its hosting, the domain name and support.

My sales took off, and it also allowed me to meet many business owners who, one thing leading to another, bought other services from me (IT maintenance, consulting, etc.).

And then, at last...

Today that web hosting company, renamed Simafri, holds a portfolio of more than 1,000 active subscription clients, including prestigious Malagasy companies.

LeeX Network once again has a team of several dozen collaborators managing beautiful websites, including Annuaire.mg.

I created another company, Atout Persona, specialised in information systems (ERP, CRM), which at the time was my largest activity, with several dozen active subscription clients including major accounts, and a magnificent team of around twenty hand-picked employees.

I even hosted a TV show on a Malagasy national channel! (The Webactus show on RTA, for those who remember ;)

It is November 2016 and I have just turned 35. I know the future still holds hard blows for me, but I will know how to get through them; I am ready and waiting ;) And that is what life is about!

The first training conference

I am writing this new paragraph several months after publishing my journey online. To be precise, it is 28 May 2017.

I never imagined this article would have such an impact. There were of course the many comments, private messages and emails; but this story even led to numerous IRL encounters (In Real Life, as the young people say). You, my dear readers, told me that my story inspired you, motivated you and encouraged you to overcome your own ordeals. Many of you asked me to become your coach and to give training sessions and talks.

At first I declined those requests, mainly for lack of time. But in early March 2017 I said to myself: "Simon, in life you must do extraordinary things, and if on top of that it can help others, then I will have been useful down here." So I decided to give my first training conference at the end of April. For the occasion I chose a topic I master thoroughly and that can help anyone succeed in life, both personal and professional: sales.

The date was set: the "Become a Better Salesman" training conference, on 26 April 2017 at the IKM (Malagasy Cultural Institute) in the Antsahavola district of Antananarivo. I must confess I was afraid the room would be empty. But I kept the faith. And it was a total success! Nearly 350 people turned up, the room was packed, and some even agreed to stand because there were no seats left!

My audience came from all walks of life: professional salespeople of course, but also entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, students, civil servants, teachers... A second training conference followed: "Perseverance, the key to success".

I love you, Malagasy people, thank you for accepting me among you! In return, I wish to share with you what I hold dearest: perseverance!

Launching a company in Mauritius!

In May 2017 I announced my intention to expand beyond Madagascar. As of this month of December 2017, it is done! I have just created a company in Mauritius to develop my flagship product across the Indian Ocean and Africa. A new adventure begins, a new challenge I am taking on :)

Epilogue (2026)

Paragraph added when this story was republished on my personal site, in June 2026.

Nearly ten years after writing these lines, the adventure continues. The model I invented in 2013, the all-inclusive subscription website, has become Serenity by Simafri: the same promise, now industrialised by artificial intelligence. LeeX Network, born in 2003 from an AOL CD-ROM and an AdSense account, is going international again. And the project that matters most to me is no longer a company: JesusBYS, a multilingual online Christian community. To place myself, quite simply, in the service of Jesus.

The next chapter is being written right now. Back to the home page →