Before The Unicorn
With Alexandre Prot, co-founder & CEO of Qonto.
Prot is a well-known name in banking. Before Alexandre, the son, there was Baudouin, the father, who spent 30 years at BNP and served as its chairman from 2011 to 2014. And honestly, at first, everything seemed to point to the son eventually taking on the same kind of responsibilities as his father.
Alexandre earned a Master’s in Finance from HEC. As part of the program, he spent six months in China with Carrefour, followed by another six months at Goldman Sachs in London. His early career was just as prestigious, spending three years at McKinsey. But driven by a growing interest in entrepreneurship, Alexandre decided to head back to school for a year at INSEAD in Singapore, known for its strong entrepreneurial culture.
There, something clicked. Rather than advising, he wanted to lead, to operate, to build. That was his thing. After his time in the city-state, Alexandre returned to Paris with a new mindset: that of an operator. For a year and a half, he led the French expansion of German company Wimdu, an online marketplace for booking accommodations, where he learned fast and delivered with flair.
That was it. Alexandre had taken his first step into entrepreneurship, and now, he wanted to go all in.
At 31, he walked away from everything.
***
Alexandre's first move was to go to Silicon Valley for a month, alone. It’s the epicenter of global tech, and he wanted to see what was happening there. Being the good student he was, he planned his trip carefully. He rented a car, drove along the long highways from San Francisco to San Jose, and set up lunches with friends of friends and contacts he had made in the previous years. He attended conferences, and one in particular left a mark: a talk by Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram, who had just sold his startup to Facebook for a billion dollars when the company had only 11 employees. The story seemed unreal and deeply inspired Alexandre. He came back from the trip full of ideas — maybe too many — but one thing was certain: he was going to launch something.
A few weeks later, as he was heading to a friend’s 30th birthday party, Alexandre ran into an old buddy from high school: Steve Anavi. The two hadn’t seen each other in years.
— So, what are you up to these days?
— I just left Groupon. I’m thinking about starting my own company. And you?
— I just got back from a month in Silicon Valley. I’d like to launch something too.
There was clearly something to explore. So Alexandre and Steve decided to meet again to talk more. Soon, they were seeing each other several times a week, meeting over lunch or coffee in Parisian brasseries — in France, a brasserie is the kind of place where you can do just about anything. They bounced ideas around and challenged one another. The connection was there and it made sense to take the plunge.
In March 2013, after three months of intense brainstorming, the two friends agreed on one thing: at some point, you just have to go for it. That’s when they heard about a startup weekend organized by Microsoft in Paris. The concept was simple: you had one weekend to come up with an idea, build a first prototype, and present it. The jury was top-tier. Frédéric Mazzella, the founder of BlaBlaCar, was there. So were Oussama Ammar, who had just launched The Family, and Raffi Kamber, an investor at Alven.
At 5pm on Friday, Alexandre and Steve showed up at Microsoft’s accelerator, tucked away on a quiet street in the 2nd arrondissement, with the idea of Korner Space, an Airbnb for pop-up stores. With a small team, they spent the entire weekend, day and night, refining the project and designing a first version of the product.
On Sunday at 6pm, the results came in.
Korner Space was named the winner, and the two friends secured a one-hour meeting with Raffi Kamber. It was a huge boost. Not only were they reassured about their ability to deliver, but they also realized just how strong the chemistry between them really was.
***
A month later, Steve and Alexandre showed up for their meeting with Alven. It was a unique opportunity to secure their first investor, and Alven wasn’t just any fund. They had backed companies like Stripe, SeLoger, Captain Train, and many others. They had to make it count.
But the two friends didn’t come to pitch their winning project. They were here to present a brand-new connected e-cigarette brand.
It was far from the original idea, and at first glance, the new project could sound a bit out there. But the two friends brought so much energy and complementarity to the table — and the connected objects market was full of opportunity — that Alven decided to invest anyway. A clear reminder that VCs often back teams more than ideas.
That said, not everyone around Alexandre shared the same excitement. His inner circle struggled to understand his choice. He kept hearing things like, “Why would you bother with something like that?” But he had made up his mind and there was no turning back.
***
As if fate wanted to prove all the skeptics right, the early days of Smokio were chaotic.
The first production run was supposed to be ready for the Christmas season, a crucial time in retail, but it ended up arriving… in January. One month later, just as the young company had secured its biggest in-store distribution deal with Fnac, the retailer canceled it the very morning of the launch.
But the two young founders kept getting back up. They showed resilience at every turn and in the end, things worked out. Two years in, while part of the team was in London for a networking event, one conversation turned into an acquisition offer. Smokio was eventually sold to a major player in the industry.
The adventure flew by — maybe too fast — and the two friends had clearly caught the startup bug. They’d just made a decent exit but they weren’t about to stop there.
***
Like many entrepreneurs, Alexandre and Steve had faced their share of frustrations with traditional banks. Opening a business account had taken forever, the tools available were outdated, and getting someone on the phone was always a struggle. Remember these little plastic devices for validating transfers?
To validate their idea, the two friends turned to social media. “We were in Facebook groups. We’d identify people who were having issues with their banks and send them messages. They were really eager to talk with us. They genuinely wanted things to change.”
And that’s how Qonto was born, in April 2016.
For nine months, the two founders, along with a small team, tested an early version of their product with 150 beta testers. To launch quickly without needing a payment institution license, they partnered with a BaaS provider. At the same time, they began building their own banking infrastructure, one that customers would eventually migrate to in 2019 and 2020 — based on their payment institution license obtained in 2018, Qonto doesn’t have a banking license. They kept it simple at first. Early growth isn’t about scale, it’s about learning. By talking to users, gathering feedback, and meeting people in person, they uncovered what really mattered. The best move to do that? “Let me buy you a coffee while you tell me how you handle [insert pain point].”
It worked. The success was immediate. In its first two months, Qonto attracted 1,000 customers. A revolution was underway in the banking industry, it was the first time you could open a business account entirely online. To sustain that momentum, Qonto followed a pattern in building its growth team I’ve already shared in this newsletter: starting with generalists, then bringing in specialists. Early hires were agile and could handle everything from paid acquisition to content and PR. But as the company scaled and growth became more complex, they added subject matter experts to deepen technical capabilities and push performance to the next level.
That growth drew in customers, but also investors. In total, the fintech raised €622 million across five funding rounds from top-tier investors. Valar Ventures — Peter Thiel’s fund — and Alven, their long-time backer, were the first to invest. They were later joined by DST Global, Tencent, and Tiger Global. Its Series D in 2022, €486 million, remains the largest funding round ever for a French fintech, turning Qonto into a unicorn valued at €4.4 billion.
Since launching nine years ago, the startup has grown into a scale-up and shows no signs of slowing down. Qonto now serves over 500,000 clients across eight countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal, and has a team of 1,600 people.
The challenge now is the same one all “first-generation” fintechs face after years of rapid growth: continue to scale without losing agility. That’s the mantra Alexandre and Steve now share with their teams: “become big and strong, not big and heavy.”
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Thomas