In this episode of Next Gen Builders, Francois sits down with Damien Delautier, a seasoned product leader at CANAL+, a major player in the creation and distribution of content around the world. The duo unravel the complexities behind scaling tech platforms at a global level and their conversation covers M&A, the blending of data with people, and how teams can connect despite the distance between them.
In this episode of Next Gen Builders, Francois sits down with Damien Delautier, a seasoned product leader at CANAL+, a major player in the creation and distribution of content around the world.
The duo unravel the complexities behind scaling tech platforms at a global level and their conversation covers M&A, the blending of data with people, and how teams can connect despite the distance between them.
Drawing inspiration from Mike Tyson's memorable quote, 'Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,' Damien shares candid insights into navigating the unpredictable world of product management and constant adaptation. He sheds light on the team’s ambitious goal for CANAL+ to rank among the top five streaming platforms worldwide within five years and covers the intricate strategies involved in achieving this feat.
With a mix of humor and deep expertise, Damien dives into how tapping into local market nuances and fostering human connections can transform challenges into innovative solutions. Tune in to hear about the many facets of mergers and acquisitions, from balancing a myriad of technologies to integrating diverse teams while keeping everyone invested in a shared vision. Francois and Damien explore not just the technical hurdles, but the paramount importance of understanding the people behind the technology, making this episode a must-listen for any aspiring product leader looking to make their mark in the tech industry.
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Guest Bio
Damien Delautier serves as the Chief Product Officer at CANAL+, a prominent media and pay-TV operator with over 20 million subscribers globally. Under his leadership, CANAL+ has undergone a significant transformation in its product development approach, shifting from traditional methods to a more data-driven strategy. Delautier emphasizes the importance of understanding user behavior to enhance the myCANAL application, which has become a focal point for improving user retention and engagement. His initiatives have led to a threefold increase in conversion rates, showcasing the effectiveness of leveraging analytics and insights in product design and user experience.
At the VivaTech Paris conference, Delautier highlighted CANAL+'s advancements in automating video production and enhancing fan experiences through artificial intelligence. By collaborating with WSC Sports, CANAL+ has developed an innovative system for creating and distributing sports highlights across various platforms, including social media and their mobile app. This AI-driven technology not only streamlines content creation but also opens new avenues for revenue generation, reflecting Delautier's vision of integrating technology into the core of CANAL+'s operations.
Delautier's commitment to fostering a data-centric culture within CANAL+ has empowered cross-functional teams to make informed decisions based on real-time analytics. By promoting a collaborative environment where UX, engineering, and product teams work together, he has facilitated rapid prototyping and testing, which are crucial for adapting to the fast-paced media landscape. His leadership is pivotal in driving CANAL+'s ongoing efforts to innovate and enhance the overall user experience, ensuring the company remains competitive in the evolving digital market.
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Guest Quote
“Every success story that you hear, it's retro engineering. When you hear about success, nobody has planned to do it this way, but at the end it has worked.
It has been a game changer for me to understand that nobody knows what they're doing, and what makes the difference between something that's success or fail is just, they have tried and never given up.
It's all about building this path. Nothing will happen the way we have planned it. So we need to have this strong vision, and we want to have a great product. We don't know how we get there, but we need to build this journey.” – Damien Delautier
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Time Stamps
00:00 Episode Start
01:27 Damien's Background
02:18 The history of CANAL+
04:00 M&A as a core growth strategy
06:56 How to manage both the tech and people of new businesses
09:41 Why it's critical to focus on the human aspect
13:26 Building connections in a distributed world
15:59 Being comfortable with the unknown
19:23 How to blend data with creativity
22:12 Adapting features to specific cultures
27:56 Leveraging data to sift through all the noise
29:39 Aha moments from Damien's career
33:01 Damien's Oh Sh*t Moment
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Links
0:00:00.0 Damien Delautier: My favorite quote it's from Mike Tyson. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth or something like that. You don't know how, you don't know when, you don't know who, but nothing will go the way you've planned it. And it's just your ability to continue, to stay focused, and just try to do what you have in mind and then go with everything that goes on the way.
0:00:27.1 Francois Ajenstat: This is Next Gen Builders, the show for the growth and product leaders of tomorrow. There's different ways to build a product and one of them is M&A or buying other companies. You can scale through acquisitions, but it's not always as easy as it may seem. How do you make one product out of many? How do you actually make an acquisition work? How do you combine the teams or enter new territories and serve different cultures? It's pretty complicated, but it's extremely powerful. With us today is someone who's not only scaling, but doing it at a global level. Damien Delautier is a product leader at CANAL+. Damien, welcome to the show.
0:01:13.4 Damien Delautier: Hi, Francois. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
0:01:16.3 Francois Ajenstat: So great to have you here.
0:01:17.0 Damien Delautier: Me too.
0:01:19.1 Francois Ajenstat: Now, maybe as we start, can you tell us a little bit about your background, how did you end up at CANAL+?
0:01:25.5 Damien Delautier: So I ended up at Canal+, five years ago, but I've done many things before that. Basically, I work in the product management field since, I would say, 15 plus years now. I had a position in startups, big corporates, but I am in the video streaming product industry since more than eight years now, because before CANAL+, that I've joined five years ago, as mentioned, I worked for a company called Molotov TV. I don't know if you heard about it, but it has made quite some noise in France when it has been launched for three years. So basically, Molotov plus Canal+, makes more than eight years in the streaming industry.
0:02:02.9 Francois Ajenstat: That's amazing. Now, not everybody may know who Canal+ is, and you have to say Canal+.
0:02:10.3 Damien Delautier: Canal+, yes. This is the way I will say it.
0:02:14.5 Francois Ajenstat: Yes. Tell us a little bit about the company.
0:02:16.5 Damien Delautier: CANAL+, as you have to say, it has been created in 1984. So it's a 14 years old company. I mentioned that because since 1994, we are Canal+, with the plus. So we'll say that we are the first one to have used the plus, the streaming platform. But yes, when it has been created in 1984, of course, it was not a streaming platform. It was a TV channel. It was the first paying channel available in France, even in Europe, I think, but at least in France. It has become pretty quickly, very big, very famous in France because it has created some very iconic programs. Some of the programs that has been created 20, 30 years ago are considered as part of the French pop culture. There is a very big program that's been created by Canal+. Since 1994, of course, CANAL+, has had many lives. But now we can say that we are a producer, a broadcaster, a distributor, and an aggregator of content. I can explain every aspect. But basically, we have a streaming platform that we try to have something very extensive. And so we provide live, on demand, paying content. And we have many offers that package everything you can imagine on the market.
0:03:29.4 Francois Ajenstat: That's fascinating 'cause I think there's a lot of interesting facets here going from being known for doing one thing and then expanding into these categories. So there's category expansion or portfolio management. And then you guys are also going beyond just the French market and expanding to other countries. Can you tell us a little bit, like think about all of that? How do you think about how CANAL is actually growing and what is that growth strategy?
0:03:58.7 Damien Delautier: We are, I would say, at a very pivotal moment of the company. So I joined the company five years ago, and I have to manage a product that was, I would say, mainly done for France, basically. And since then, the idea was to provide this product to other countries that were part of CANAL+. And we are in a new moment of the company where actually we have a very ambitious CEO that says that in the five next years, he wants us to be in the top five, world top five of the streaming platforms with roughly, it means like 100 million users on three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia. And the idea to get there is to grow by acquiring companies. So we are, I would say, developing a model that is quite different from our competitors. We have started buying companies. Some of them, maybe you know them, but basically we are about to purchase or we have already done it companies in Europe, in Asia, in Africa. And it's already companies that perform a streaming service. So this is what you were mentioning, actually. The idea now is to, how do we make one single product that is distributed all over the world? And this product has to be made out of all those companies.
0:05:14.1 Damien Delautier: So by companies, I mean the people inside, the technology inside also those companies. And this is where we are now. We are trying to get there. So we are at the very beginning of the journey. We have the vision. We know what we want to do. And now we are just trying to get there. So I think it will take a few years to get there because it's a very ambitious one. And it's not that easy actually when you start to work with a new company. Because acquiring a company means that there is already something existing. The people are already working on the platform. The customer are already also using this platform. So the idea is how do you manage that? How do you not break what already works? And how do you try to create something that is better, actually? That's the only way to succeed, basically. It should be better at the end. Because this is what I already see at the moment is that when you have already a product, some of them are already very good.
0:06:03.8 Damien Delautier: I mean, when you see some of the products of the company we are purchasing, there is nothing to change. I mean, it works. So how do you convince people that with providing a new product and working together, we will do at the end something better? And that's not easy. No its not. But this is what we are trying to do at the moment.
0:06:20.6 Francois Ajenstat: Do you mind double clicking on that? So you are acquiring a company that has an existing product that probably duplicates some of the same functionality that you have in another market. But let's start on the technology side and we will talk about the people side next. But on the technology side, how do you go about choosing? Do you choose? Do you keep multiple similar technologies going and how do you make that choice of which one will become standard versus more having a constellation or a mosaic of technologies that you bring together?
0:06:54.8 Damien Delautier: We went through several thinking and we are still learning about what to do. The original version was very simple and saying that one product, one tech stack and then we need to select which one and just go with that. It's not that easy. It's not that feasible actually. So the idea is more to understand what are the strengths and weaknesses of every platform. You said we will discuss about people after, but I will do it now actually because tech is not the issue. It's more about which skills do we have and we identify everywhere in the world and how do we distribute, I would say, the product. Streaming platform is not... You can still innovate, but the big innovation has already made. It was the streaming itself. That was the innovation. Now it's more about just maintaining a topic and we know how to grow.
0:07:57.3 Damien Delautier: We know how to make people watch their content. That's not... Well, we know how to do it and we are not the only one. The company that we are purchasing, they know how to do it also. So it's more about finding who is the best at what and trying to distribute, as I mentioned, the products and to build a team like that because for sure it takes a lot of resources to make a streaming platform works in the world. Yeah, it's about identifying who's the best in what and distribute this tech. The tech, we are building it actually. We are just... It's not the same technology, sometimes are different, but basically we are doing the same thing. So it's more about how to distribute things and to make things work globally.
0:08:30.3 Francois Ajenstat: That's interesting because instead of saying what is the right technology to bring together, you're actually thinking of what is the right people and how do you leverage the best of their skills versus just what is the best technology at hand?
0:08:43.3 Francois Ajenstat: Yeah, because when you look at iOS developers, they are as good in France as everywhere, somewhere else in the world. They are all skilled. So it's more, who is the best at iOS, for instance? And you may say, okay, iOS will be done here because we have the best people. And how do we can deploy the other resources somewhere else? That's the easiest thing to understand, but we have already on the back end side, we have very specific technologies, things that are very difficult to manage. And yeah, it's about finding who the best here and what makes more sense actually.
0:09:27.4 Francois Ajenstat: When you think about the people, change management, especially in an acquisition is always complicated. How do you enlist them in the new mission and get them motivated to work maybe where they were working on a local scale? Now they're going to be working on a global scale and impacting a different level of both complexity and impact.
0:09:39.5 Damien Delautier: Maybe we should schedule a new podcast in one year so that I will be able to tell you what happened, because this is what I'm trying to do now. I'm at the very beginning of the journey. I have some convictions. It starts by just meeting the people, knowing them, understanding who they are, what they want to do, what they are good at, and trying to build a vision on that. The vision actually is quite easy. We own the same product everywhere. We are all convinced by that, but it's how do we get there that it's very difficult, especially when you're working on a global scale. As you can imagine, we have as many product teams as the company that we are acquiring. Some of them I've met them, some of them I haven't met them yet because we are dealing with them and I'm not allowed to discuss with them. The thing is just trying to understand everybody, understanding what it means having a product in Asia, in Africa, but even in Europe. In France, I know Europe, but actually there are as many cultures and differences depending on the country of Europe. That's the same everywhere actually, Africa, Asia, each country is different.
0:09:54.7 Damien Delautier: You have to understand that, to meet them, and to try to understand what they want to do, how they envision themselves. Sometimes you can find people that you see that they will fit in what you want to build. Sometimes you see that they are just afraid of what will happen, and I can totally understand that because I know that I'm on the right side of the barrier. I'm the one who has to create the products and identify who can be there or not, and the idea is to try to understand all of that. Also you meet some people, they have their own personal agenda I would say, they have their career, the things that they want to do, they don't want to do anymore.
0:10:57.9 Damien Delautier: I see also it in my team actually, we are talking about the others, but in my team, so when I joined the company, we were building a product for France basically, one country, and I see now that some people they just don't see it, they just don't want to do it. I'm not criticizing them, that's okay, you may want another project, but you can see that people were very good at something and now they don't see themselves in this vision. I would say it's about understanding all of that. Yeah, it's just about human I would say. Everybody is skilled, everybody knows how to, especially a product like Streaming Platform, we know what we want to do, how to do it. It's just about finding the right people and trying to build something that makes sense. One last point on that, I say something that makes sense because to be honest, the way my team will grow, it's because I will have, for instance, product managers in Poland, in Luxembourg or in Asia or whatever. I don't know if it makes sense, I don't know if it's the right way to do it, I will try.
0:12:19.8 Damien Delautier: I'm used today, for instance, to have all the product managers in the same office in Paris. Tomorrow, we'll have product managers in Poland, in Vietnam. Does it make sense? Is it feasible? Let's talk about it in one year. But for sure, this is what we will do, this is what we will try to do to make something that makes sense and where people seem okay with it and yeah, let's try it.
0:12:53.0 Francois Ajenstat: Yeah, and you learn. But this is one of the things I really appreciate about you is you start always with the human connection. You think about the people and what's the impact on culture, their skills, but also how do you lead now a distributed team? People are all over the place, right? And it is a different way of managing and leading when you do have people all over the place. How do you actually bring that human connection in a distributed world? Have you found kind of like some techniques to make that easier to happen?
0:13:26.2 Damien Delautier: There is one very easy one, I would say, but expensive. It's just to meet people, to see them, to just travel. So I'm traveling quite a lot since a few months now, and there is yeah. It makes all the difference, like to just meet the people, to just see them, have some meetings with them, and just maybe having a drink or whatever, a dinner with them, that makes all the difference because after when you come back, you you know them. You so having a team meeting, a teams meeting is totally different once you have already met them. And, so, yeah, that's my manager actually, that's... I didn't knew how to to make great connections.
0:14:05.1 Damien Delautier: And my manager actually told me that we will go there and we will meet them. He's he's really used to work with international teams, and, he told me that was the best way to create connections because that makes all the difference after, because we know that at some point, difficult things will happen. It makes all the difference when you know the people and you already lived, even if it's small things, you have already lived something with them.
0:14:27.3 Francois Ajenstat: Yeah. It's totally true. I mean, that's how you build trust. That's how you build relationships. It's how you build rapport. And I think it's not an either or it's an end.
0:14:38.9 Damien Delautier: Exactly. And so the end also is that I try to show that and I'm very sincere when I do that, is that I have a very open view, or by open view I mean I really want people to be involved in the in the product. My aim is not to say that, okay, product will be managed and everything, all the fun stuff will be done in Paris. I really, really think, and this is what I try to to show and to to say that we will share the cake, basically. So I'm pretty sure that, yeah, it's the best way to do it to show that we will build this product together. It's not because this product was done in France first that it would stay like that, and that now we need to distribute the things. And, yeah, this is the two connections and also sharing a vision that involves everybody.
0:15:31.3 Francois Ajenstat: That's great. Now you're on a pretty aggressive growth trajectory. You're taking on new initiatives with new people in new countries, knew everything.
0:15:42.8 Damien Delautier: Yeah.
0:15:43.6 Francois Ajenstat: And there's a lot of things that are unknown in that journey. How do you build conviction on the pets that were you're building and how do you actually drive clarity that you're on the right path? 'Cause there's so much unknowns.
0:15:57.6 Damien Delautier: This is what I say, like every time I can to my team actually is that I have no idea on how we will, what we will do, but I know where we need to land. And so it's all about building this path. So I have some experience now, I know that nothing will be will happen the the way we have planned it, so we need to have this strong vision this and the vision is quite easy actually to understand is to adjust we need to have the same product everywhere and we want to have a great product. That's pretty basic, but how do we get there? I have no idea. But this is why also this is how I try to build and and shape my team is to to with people that are comfortable with that. I'm totally honest every time I speak to because to be honest with you, I see a lot of people of my team at the moment because they all ask me, "What are we gonna do? What is the future for us? What you how we will what will happen to us?"
0:16:49.3 Damien Delautier: And I'm totally open to that. And I keep on saying that I have no idea. I know where we need to go, but we will build this this path together. And because I know that on my own, I won't be able to do nothing. It's all about you. But for sure that I know that you need to have this in mind that it's just it's a journey. We don't know how do we get there, but we we need to build this journey. I see millions of reasons on how we could fail, but just just try it. As I was mentioning my team, I don't know if it's a good idea to have product managers distributed everywhere. Just try it and we will adapt and adjust if needed. But try. We don't have time to just think too much.
0:17:33.4 Francois Ajenstat: You have to definitely try. I would say you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
0:17:38.6 Damien Delautier: Yeah.
0:17:39.1 Francois Ajenstat: It's hard. It's pretty hard. Necessary.
0:17:41.3 Damien Delautier: Totally agree. But you have to also know that CANAL+ we used to be creative people, but used to we are still creative people. I mean, it was a TV channel in 1984, so it was a long time ago. But this company has been created by just crazy minds, people that were just trying crazy things. It has worked very well, and we still have, I would say, this DNA. We just try. It's so this is great. I love my company. There are so many amazing things that can happen at this company. I would say the other side, the darker side of this creativity is that we are not always driven by data or KPI, which is good at some point, but we need to, I would say to make progress here.
0:18:29.0 Damien Delautier: We have already made a lot of progress and especially in the product team we have made amazing progress on that, but you can still feel in the company that sometimes it's just okay the data tells us that not doing something but we will try anyway because we just want to try it and so it's very funny. So I'm saying that because we are not always driven by the KPIs and we just want to try things. Our CEO is like that, it's very funny to see it. It's just sometimes you just say, "Yeah, go for it. Just try it. Let's be crazy."
0:19:00.4 Francois Ajenstat: Good feel works. Embrace the crazy.
0:19:00.7 Damien Delautier: Yeah.
0:19:04.1 Francois Ajenstat: So how do you leverage data? If, you know, you do wanna have a mix of creativity, freedom, experimentation, but you also want to make sure you're heading on the right path. Like how does data play a role in making sure you build the right things and are serving your users in the right way?
0:19:21.2 Damien Delautier: So we have included data in our process in our framework. I'm talking about products. So, yeah, now product managers, they have access to all the data they need. We have also a product analyst team, they work very close together. So anytime we we think about new things, or we have to to solve a new problem, data is part of the process. I said part of the process because it's also important. I'm referring to this craziness made in fact that is the the kind of process thing? It's not only about data. It's also about just like, not feeling but discussing with people, having this qualitative more qualitative insights. And it's also about, I think, when you want to have real innovation, things that has never been done.
0:20:10.6 Damien Delautier: You can only rely on data. So for me it's about finding the right balance between your guts, by it's not my guts, I mean the guts of the field of the team, sorry. The guts, the the data, what do they say, what do the people say also, but what we understood also about when we have discussed with people, because sometimes you say something, but you understand that it's not really what they said. It's something behind that. So for me, this is what I always try.
0:20:34.1 Damien Delautier: So when I see, an product manager that is pitching a new a new idea or something, I just want to be sure that I see data in it. But I'm totally fine also to understand that sometimes the data doesn't say anything or we we say that it says something that we want to try a new approach. And so this is how I would say. I don't know if it's leveraging data but for me it's having data always here and to know how to use it. It's not, so I love to say that we are not data driven. We are data informed. I see the, I make a difference.
0:21:09.5 Francois Ajenstat: It's a very important distinction. It's almost like you're saying you're guided by data, but you're not blinded by data.
0:21:15.3 Damien Delautier: Yep.
0:21:15.4 Francois Ajenstat: Data helps you figure out where to go, but it also doesn't limit what you can do. So another interesting aspect of what you're working on is this global mindset. We we talked about global in terms of the people and who's building, but you're serving now customers in different markets, different geographies, that have different cultures, that's pretty complex. How do you think through? How you build, considering that you have people in probably like 50 different markets with different needs, that probably need a different experience, that's appropriate for, that particular culture?
0:22:01.4 Damien Delautier: So again, I think that we definitely should discuss in one year just to be sure that to do what I would say was right or not. If you listen to all the the people that are already in the country, they say that we need different things. We are different. And it's true that when you think about a Polish customer, it's probably different from the customer from Ivory Coast. It's not probably it is different. There is a lot of things that are different. Same thing for Vietnam. So there is things to, for me there is two differences. There are the the business that is probably different, the way you purchase, the way you what you are interested in, but that's different from the UX, the experience, the product experience. The connection I have now, because we have met testing, I will explain you how after, is that a good product, so I'm talking about UX only, experience. A good product is good everywhere. So if you have done the right work and you have crafted your product the right way in France or in Vietnam, whatever, it works. And I've seen that.
0:23:04.0 Damien Delautier: So we've made we we have done some testing for instance in Ivory Coast. We just took our products and we show it to people in Ivory Coast, and the issues that we have seen in our product were the same that we had in France. And what was working fine was the same also that was working fine in in France. Same thing in each country. So that's that was a relief I would say, to say that good UX is good everywhere. After, for me it's more about understanding the local differences that can be here. For instance in Africa, the data plans are very expensive and you can maybe we've got complained of customer that in one day they can just use their entire data plan without thinking about it. So on these kind of specific elements we have to think about something that are made only for specific countries. Another example that we so we went in Vietnam a few weeks ago, one of the most important issues we have in Vietnam is based on the fact that you cannot rotate the screen the way you want. Today you have to You have to use the settings of your phone. If you are in portrait mode, the player stay in portrait mode.
0:24:18.0 Damien Delautier: In Vietnam, they are crazy about that. They they just want to be able to to have the the full screen, and they don't have to select any settings for that. So it's something like when you're in France you have no idea of this kind of thing. And actually when we were in Vietnam a few weeks ago, we went... We were in the streets and to go in a restaurant, and actually someone of the team showed me that look at how people are using their phone. And it's true that outside they are just... So it's totally different from from what we do.
0:24:51.6 Damien Delautier: So it's something you cannot know. So that's important to have some relay in the countries. So even if the UX is good, it's really, really important to have people that are able to tell you this is how things work. This is what people want. We tend to think very globally, and we try to do something that works for everybody. But sometimes you need to have someone that tells you, "Nope, in Poland this is different." or, I don't know, "In Vietnam this is not how things are working." And the only way to know that is to have people based in the in in the country. So this is what we are trying to do now is how we can build this network of people that will help shape the the product.
0:25:32.7 Francois Ajenstat: Interesting. And are these employees? Are they customers? Are they market researchers?
0:25:40.5 Damien Delautier: So I have a plan. So I would love to have, this kind of skill to have researchers and analysts also based locally. I will see what I can do, because I don't have a unlimited budget. So I will see. Yeah. But ideally, yeah, we'll have people that are UX researcher and data analysts also in, at least in areas, not in each country, but, Europe, Africa, and Asia would be great to have those kinds of skills based locally. And we would try to build that.
0:26:13.8 Francois Ajenstat: I mean, that's definitely one of the concerns as you're scaling is you can't just multiply all your people in every market. You have to find mechanisms that work well and can work where your customers are.
0:26:29.1 Damien Delautier: Yeah. And there is also something I'm not gonna say something very brutal, but we can't listen to everybody. Basically too many insights is, well, you can't do anything about it. So we need to find a way to be sure to understand what's different in in Vietnam or in Poland or whatever, but not to have the, each very little specificity, because I think also we have to drive something. By we, I mean, sometimes, yeah, we know that maybe it will be better for Polish people to have a button on the left, but it will work also if it's on the right. And at the end, it's just trying to find what is important and to have people that are able to just make the filter, and to tell you what you really need to take into account and what can just be left apart.
0:27:22.0 Francois Ajenstat: It's an interesting parallel, whether you're working on B2C, where your end customer is a person, or you're working on B2B, enterprise, small business. You have customers that keep giving you feedback and how do you really figure out what are they trying to achieve, what is important versus what is not important and where you should prioritize? And a lot of that is making good decisions and having the ability to really have conviction over what you do and why.
0:27:55.1 Damien Delautier: And maybe I will say, not the contrary, but almost the contrary to what I've said before, this is what data actually comes in for me. We know that there is a direct correlation between the amount of time you spend watching the content in the app and the jump. So basically the more you watch, the less you jump. Very basic, but that's how it works. That works everywhere. The same in Asia, in Africa, and in Europe. That sounds obvious, but when you have the data to see that that makes a lot of sense. So for me, this is why data is really important. It's to have those big things that you need to keep in mind, and that everything you need to do, is about making people consume more and more and more, and that works everywhere.
0:28:40.0 Damien Delautier: And then after, it's about just finding the little details or finding the little things that maybe eventually locally will make the difference to make you consume more. But the main insights, the main thing that you need to follow and to be sure that everything you're doing is made toward this objective, which are the same. It's about data. There is nothing to to say about it even if you are in Africa, in Europe, or in Asia. How many time you spend in the app, we know that it's important. Whatever you watch, how many time you see in the app is very important. And this is, yeah, based on data.
0:29:11.5 Francois Ajenstat: That's great. That's a good, I'll call it an aha moment, of being clear as to what drives the behaviors that you want and having that clarity.
0:29:20.4 Damien Delautier: Exactly.
0:29:21.2 Francois Ajenstat: Do you have any other good aha moments like this elimination that has guided your career or your focus?
0:29:31.1 Damien Delautier: I would say, yeah, the things have changed a lot for me. So it's more personal. It's not about, CANAL+ or whatever. It's when I realized actually that no one knew what he was doing, basically. It's just about trying, staying focused and adapting and never giving up. But actually when I had the chance to discuss with like top managers or big entrepreneurs and nobody know what he's doing. It doesn't mean that he has skills, he don't have skills and he's doing random stuff, they don't know. They just have a plan, they try. Sometimes it works, most of the time it fails, but they don't know. And this is something for me that has been game changer, because once I have realized that, for me, this is when I've started being confident, because I've just realized that actually it's just about trying.
0:30:25.0 Damien Delautier: You won't die if you fail. You just try and you adapt eventually. But yeah, I thought at the beginning that people like the best one they know where they were going and why they were doing things. But actually it's not the case. Every, I would say success story that you hear, it's retro engineering, I would say. So, when you hear about success, nobody has planned to do it this way, just the way it happens. Because it was just the way it happens, but at the end it has worked. So you try to analyze how things have worked. But when you speak with the people that were there, this is not how they have envisioned the thing. They just live the moment. They just try to do things. So it has been a game changer for me to understand that actually nobody know what he's doing. And what makes a difference between something that's success or fail is just yes, try and never giving up.
0:31:18.3 Francois Ajenstat: That's amazing. I'm gonna put that in my next performance review. I have no idea what I'm doing. I should be promoted.
0:31:24.7 Damien Delautier: Yeah. But at the end, yeah, if it works [chuckle] If I talk about the top manager, like CANAL+ they're extremely skilled. They are very brilliant people. That's not the topic. It's just like, they don't know. If we take the case of CANAL+, we have no idea of how we would do things, but we just want to do it. And we'll try and eventually in five years, we will just say, "Yeah, we made it." But there is so many things that will happen on the journey.
0:31:52.1 Francois Ajenstat: Well, it goes back to the thing we said earlier, which is being uncomfortable, which means that you don't necessarily know, but you're comfortable trying and learning.
0:32:02.3 Damien Delautier: Exactly. My favorite quote, basically, I think it's a good moment to say, it's from Mike Tyson. Maybe you know already it, it's when he said that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth or something like that. Yeah, this is totally, it's, you don't know how, you don't know when, you don't know who, but nothing will go the way you've planned it. And it's just your ability to continue to keep focused and to stay focused, sorry. And just try to do what you have in mind and go with everything that goes on the way.
0:32:38.3 Francois Ajenstat: So talking about getting punched, building is never easy and it's not always success. Sometimes there's these, oh shit moments, that happened where you didn't plan it, you got punched in the face. Tell us about one of these oh shit moments, and what was it, what did you learn from it, how did you resolve it?
0:32:58.9 Damien Delautier: So, I'm gonna talk about CANAL+. We had a very collective, oh shit moment. I think it was two years ago, something like that. When basically the platform crashed during one of the most important moment of the year. So it was during a soccer game, champions league game. For those who know what is Champions League, the platform crashed just dark screen for everybody.
0:33:23.6 Damien Delautier: That's probably the the worst nightmare I would say when you manage a streaming platform. So I'm not the it's a collective, oh shit moment. But it's it was very, I would say, important moment in in our company, because basically everything we said that at some point we should do it or we should fix that or but let's focus on something at the moment. This is when, exactly when, we said, "We should have done it." So we've learned a lot from it.
0:33:55.4 Damien Delautier: It has changed almost everything, I would say, in the in CANAL+ Tech. It's not funny, but this is when actually my manager, he was new. I had this role, and he, yeah, he was he was two months old in in this new position. And two months after I joined the the the role, the worst thing happened. So it has been, I would say, now we can talk more lightly about it, but it was for him a great way, I would say to just understand he had the list of everything that should be fixed after that. And there was no debate about it. So you had this list and he say, "We need to fix that. Any question? No? Okay. So let's do it." So it was, yeah, it was very, because you know that when you don't plan for the worst, for the worst, actually the day it happens, this is there nothing you can do? You can see all the signs that that's problem A that happens and or probably B will happen also, and you see B happening. And it's like a long list of thing that doesn't go the right way. And it's good at some point where you have no idea of what is happening because it's becoming too deep in the tech aspect of the so you have people talking about things that you have no idea of of what they are talking about, but you just wait, and you you just try to understand what happened, and you're not the only one.
0:35:13.6 Francois Ajenstat: You have almost all the company that just like what happened, what happened? So it was a very, a very important moment. So I think we learned a lot from it. I'm talking about it because it was in the press, basically that we couldn't hide anything. And it has started just for the funny, I would say part of it, is that when it happened in like two or three minutes, we became a trending topic, top trending topic in Twitter.
0:35:38.2 Francois Ajenstat: Oh my.
0:35:39.7 Damien Delautier: So you are like, everybody's talking about your family in Twitter. That's crazy. So you realize also how important, well, important, we are not saving lives, but how important. Yeah. What you're doing is for people, you have to imagine that for this kind of event, people invite, or the people at their home, they make dinner or bring pizza or whatever, but this is a moment and they are just in front of a black, a black screen and they've paid for that. So it's more about just the app, the crash. It's about also what will happen in people's life. And it was a tough moment, but very important one.
0:36:23.4 Francois Ajenstat: But it sounds I mean, you that you guys handled it properly, and now you're stronger as a result of it, and you built the better product, by learning through an incident like that.
0:36:32.1 Damien Delautier: Yeah. That's something I hope will never happen again, but for sure, Yeah. We have seen everything that we need to to fix. So it's not the best way to to learn, I would say. Probably more smoother way to to do it. But for sure, there was a before and an after.
0:36:49.4 Francois Ajenstat: Well, that's fantastic. Before we end, I must ask, what is your favorite show on CANAL+ right now?
0:37:00.8 Damien Delautier: That's well, very tough one because we have a lot of things. So as you can imagine, we have shows from, from all the companies, but I can tell you what I'm watching at the moment. So that's not a show from CANAL+, but we aggregate Max. So to be honest, I'm still in the Game of Thrones thing. So I'm watching, House of Dragons the season two. Now that it's finished, I binge the show.
0:37:29.5 Francois Ajenstat: It's a great one. It's a great recommendation.
0:37:31.6 Damien Delautier: But it has been great as we are aggregating a lot of content. I'm capable I've discovered things that I would have never seen before. And I would say that Apple TV plus shows are just amazing also. I've discovered great things. I don't know how why is there not more communication on them. There is so many great shows on this platform. But this is great what you can see with Canal+ that our actually content, you have so many great content here. We produce our own content and we are doing very great stuff also, but I would say one of the toughest things to do in a streaming platform is you have so many content that, how do you like make people discover this content and how do you ensure that you don't miss anything?
0:38:18.2 Francois Ajenstat: Great recommendation. Well, Damien, it's been a pleasure talking to you today. The 10 things I love about you is your focus on the people, on your empathy and also your transparency on all the opportunities that are in front of us and learning and growing together. And so really appreciate that, how you shared those insights today, but just how you approach, the job and the challenges ahead.
0:38:46.1 Damien Delautier: So let's discuss, in one year, if you want to see.
0:38:48.9 Francois Ajenstat: Absolutely.
0:38:50.4 Damien Delautier: What has been done.
0:38:52.3 Francois Ajenstat: There'll be lots of success. I have no doubt about that.
0:38:57.3 Damien Delautier: I hope.
0:38:58.0 Francois Ajenstat: Damien, thank you so much for joining us and thank you all for listening to Next Gen Builders and look out for the next episode wherever you get your podcast. And please don't forget to subscribe.