The camera turns on, and suddenly, here he is. Healthy looks, lynx eyes, and hair turning gray that never seems to go out of style: Matthieu Stefani is online. In the microcosm (which is no longer really one, to tell the truth) of the French start-up, the man is a kind of genius. Everything he touches turns to gold, you would say: Citizen Side for the image then CosaVostra for the advice and now the famous program "Génération Do It Yourself" for the podcast. A unicorn all by himself, he tells his story here, for Hast. Having taken the trouble, for the occasion, to set up in the recording studio of his offices, among the microphones and cables.
They say you're a "serial entrepreneur." You never seem satisfied, always ready to come up with a new business idea. So, what's your problem, Matthieu Stefani?
In life, there are people who like their comfort zone, when things float. I don't know how to do that. I hate it when things skid. Inertia, that fluffy thing, doesn't suit me at all. I have to move forward, even if it means getting punched in the face, or failing. I'm always on the move. I associate lots of ideas, I write them down somewhere, and then I see what I do with them. When something hits me really hard in my head, I absolutely have to do something with it. I can't help it. I have to get started. That's how I started the "Villa Maria" project, for example, which is a collective office space in Bordeaux. I had finished building my Parisian offices, and I wanted to do the same thing in Bordeaux. I talked about it in my podcast. Some time later, a local entrepreneur who was in real estate contacted me to tell me he wanted to be part of it. We bought an office together, and Villa Maria was born. I'm always launching things, between start-ups and real estate.
How do you think this hyperactivity was created?
There is something of my mother in there. I love her, but she is hyperactive, precisely. With her, there is never any rest, she is always jumping on you, organizing an activity. And then, deep down, without being too presumptuous either, I think I want to mark the world. At least, my world. I want to launch stories that have an impact, that can create jobs and make people happy. I am enthusiastic, positive. It is still terribly exciting to live in this moment, in this era. Tech, as they say, is exploding. I would have loved to live in the time when we discovered the wheel or printing and the steam engine. These are things that changed the world. But the extraordinary thing about the Internet is that, if you are a bit resourceful, you can do what you want. You can take a project to crazy levels with next to nothing. I started my podcast, "Génération Do It Yourself", with 400 euros worth of equipment - with second-hand equipment, it costs even less. And today, it makes more than 300,000 euros in turnover per year. I started it when I already had a lot of work, a wife, children. But I got organized. I organized my time, and I continue to see my family without being overwhelmed. This podcast, it changed my life, I think. Thanks to it, I am a better person, a better boss, a better husband and father. You know, when I was younger, I dreamed of going surfing on the other side of the world. With friends, I tried to organize trips like this, but each time, we ended up in the Landes, in Hossegor. My friends were always too lazy to buy their ticket to somewhere else. And then one day, I did it the other way. Without telling anyone, I booked a trip to Bali. Of course, no one followed me. I found myself all alone. I'm not a big loner. This trip didn't make me anxious, but I was still a little apprehensive. But in the end, I loved it. I realized that you have to accept being the spark, the one who gets moving. If the others don't get moving, that doesn't stop anything. You have to move forward.
The first real project you launched was Citizen Side, in 2005. It was a kind of participatory press agency that allowed the dissemination of videos and photos taken by amateurs. What is the story behind Citizenside?
At that time, you couldn't suddenly declare yourself a producer, like you do today. Especially when you wanted to work in digital. It was a field that hadn't been explored yet. YouTube didn't exist. So I found myself hired at Metro, which had just launched its free daily newspaper in France. But deep down, I really wanted to create something. And then, I didn't get along at all with my bosses at the time. I had trouble with their authority. I was a free electron, and they didn't like it. In my corner, I began to understand that the photos we took with our smartphones were going to become a kind of tsunami. I ended up dropping everything to launch Citizen Side. I knew nothing about digital, I had never created a company, but too bad, I went for it. Two years later, we raised funds with my partners. In France, we were the first to broadcast images of Jérôme Kerviel, the famous trader who caused Société Générale to lose nearly 50 billion euros in 2007. Until then, the press only had his bank canteen badge to go on. For our part, one of the members of Citizen Side sent us a video of a few minutes in which we could see Jérôme Kerviel being questioned by the financial brigade. These images went around the world. We also managed to obtain a video of the famous designer John Galliano while he was making anti-Semitic statements on the terrace of a Parisian café. These images led to his dismissal from his job at Dior. But at Citizen Side, we weren't just creating buzz. We made available to the major a huge amount of images of the Arab Spring revolutions, for example. Every day, people who were risking their lives on the streets sent us content that we relayed for them. In a way, we were helping to change the world.
You left Cizen Side in 2011 and shortly after that you set up Cosa Vostra, an agency that you still run today. What is its concept, exactly? Things seem to have changed over the years…
I was 30, I knew how to create websites, produce things and distribute them. I could be a kind of multinational all by myself, with my computer. I looked for businesses to do. I realized that every time I met people, they asked me for a business card. Mine was metal, and people remembered it. So I decided to make a business out of it. As soon as I put them online, I had orders. It was crazy. I sold 500 at one euro each, per order. Sometimes, I had orders for 50,000 euros. I also started making rubber bracelets and disguises. I received orders, had them produced and sent them. That was CosaVostra. But hey, it was boring as hell. I had a few hiccups, too. One day, I made a mistake about the dimensions of the cards I wanted to have made for my father-in-law. I ended up with cards that were a few millimeters, like when in The Truth If I Lie 2, they receive children's clothes. When I told my supplier that he had made a mistake, he replied that he had only followed my instructions. He was right... I was the only one responsible. Today, we no longer do that at all at Cosa Vostra. We are a consulting firm that supports several clients, such as TF1 or Google, to help them implement their online services. Very recently, we have just developed a platform for a famous Swiss watchmaker so that its customers can easily resell their old watches.
For a few years now, you have been known mainly because you are the producer and host of the famous podcast "Génération Do It Yourself", in which you talk with entrepreneurs of all kinds. As it is so successful, you are becoming a outlet in your own right, don't you think?
I didn't think I was going to be a person. I did things in a very natural and at the same time pragmatic way. I bought two microphones and told people I liked that I wanted to interview them to get to know them, to learn something from them. The first episodes took place on a table in a corner of the Cosa Vostra offices. Today, we have a kind of studio, with good equipment and soundproofing panels on the ceiling. But it remains very artisanal. I do little editing. I have a very direct, simple approach, in live conditions. Recently, we launched Orso Média, which is a label for podcasters. We help them develop their projects and, above all, monetize them, like what Cyprien and Squeezie do with Talent Web, for example, for YouTubers. For a long time, I dreamed of being a digital nomad. I wanted to work from anywhere, on the road, with my computer and that's it. I kind of messed up on that. Today, to make good podcasts, I have to be in an office. Above all, I'm a team leader, I work with people, and I like that. At Cosa Vostra, I'm a sedentary person. Ultimately, I don't want to be alone. I'd be unhappy otherwise. Except when you're a hermit, it's hard to be alone. I say that because everything I do, in fact, is to be happy, to feel good about myself. That's all that matters.