Xavier Niel’s 5 Anti-Advices That All Women Should Learn From

We thought he was shy, a geek with a slight autistic spectrum – he jokes about it himself. Evolving in the spotlight was neither his strong point nor his thing until now. But that was before. Because at the start of the 2024 school year, the man many consider to be France’s greatest entrepreneur came out of his shell to perform on stage at the Olympia on September 18. And to give his advice in a stand-up style, on a deliberately sensationalist subject: “How to become a billionaire”, which in reality amounted more to explaining “how to become an entrepreneur”, and also to draw on the autobiographical thread of his event book, A real desire to cause troubleto be published on September 25 by Éditions Flammarion (1).

This is the book that perhaps best explains who Xavier Niel really is. It explores his way of thinking, of taking on subjects, of “disrupting” sectors as varied as the Internet, mobile telephony, but also agriculture, education and the media, with this always very personal way of going through the window, or of “hacking the system”. He is the first to regret it: “There are not enough women, he notes, in France, in important positions”, at the head of companies, in scientific fields… His book could also be a master class just for them, so much so that, throughout the pages, we understand that to succeed, that is to say to do what we love, to find what makes us happy but also to think big, to change society, to make a difference, we must (also) know how to… disobey. Take steps aside, and even “lots of stupid things”. The recipe seems to have become his trademark, his pleasure, even his expertise, one would be tempted to add, so much does this prism seem to have been erected into a system for him. This is not necessarily the case for women, who often impose themselves through hard work, discipline or sacrifice, hampered by “good student” reflexes that they struggle to shake off. This is where Xavier Niel’s advice comes in, to teach us how to kick the anthill hard. Perhaps because school was not really his subject. Or because he arrived like a dog in a bowling game in a market that did not expect him. “If the game is against you, change the rules,” he advises in essence. Here are five pieces of advice, or anti-advice, taken from reading his book, and to meditate on urgently, to change dimension.

1- The yellow line, you will bite

It is now a well-known fact: in 2004, at the very beginning of the Free adventure, Xavier Niel was imprisoned at La Santé for aggravated pimping and receiving stolen goods. The cause: the prostitution activities carried out by sex shops belonging to a company he had recently bought… In August 2005, Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke dismissed the charges of pimping, but sentenced him to two years of suspended imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 euros for receiving stolen goods. When he was received in his office, the magistrate gave him this advice: “Bite the yellow line, bite it often, but never cross it.” “It was a revelation,” wrote Xavier Niel, “the best advice I have ever been given. I apply it scrupulously.” I’m not the only one: if you look closely, entrepreneurs who have recently created large companies, such as Uber and Airbnb, spend their time playing with the laws of the countries in which they are developing.” What can we learn from this story? Obviously, the idea is not to end up in prison or to attract a conviction. But, Xavier Niel suggests, to avoid taking the most well-trodden paths, by buckling up. To allow yourself to change the rules instead of constantly suffering them within the limits of legality. In start-up language, this is called “shaking up the game”. The future never belongs to the wisest.

2- By playing, you will learn

I have failed ten times more in my life than I have succeeded. My luck is that I forget: I move on.

Xavier Niel

At the root of his success, Xavier Niel explains, is this precious character trait: “I take everything as a game.” What interests him, he says, is not so much making money, but simply winning. “To come in first,” he specifies. The consequence of this state of mind: an extraordinary ability to try one’s luck, and to make mistakes… which one would do well to draw inspiration from, in order to survive in business. His advice? “Make mistakes!” – which is easier to allow yourself to do when you are at the head of a fortune of 10 billion euros, but still. “I am the biggest loser on earth,” the entrepreneur ventures. “I have failed ten times more in my life than I have succeeded. My luck is that I forget: I move on to something else. If you let yourself be discouraged by your failures, or if you listen to all those who say it’s impossible, you don’t do anything.” When he presented the Station F project (today the largest start-up campus in Europe, Editor’s note) to François Hollande, then President of the Republic, the latter asked him: “But are you sure there are 1,000 start-ups in France?” “I had never asked myself the question, Xavier Niel smiles. I left the Élysée saying to myself: “Maybe he’s right!” But I also told myself that I had to forget this question very quickly, otherwise I would never create Station F. When it opened, we had received more than 3,000 applications.” QED.

3- “Street smart”, you will become

This is how Xavier Niel chooses his collaborators: more than diplomas, or even brilliant careers, he looks for “street smart” profiles – meaning “resourceful”. How to recognize them? Xavier Niel offers a very visual method in his book. Imagine that your toilet is clogged. Are you the type to launch a call for tenders to find the most effective and least expensive solution? To call the little plumber down the street to come and fix it? Or to roll up your sleeves and unclog it yourself? “The street smarts “are those who choose the third option,” he says. An incentive to “think solution”, when everyday life would like to drown us in a list of problems – and they never fail to come.

The important thing in life is not whether you will succeed or fail. It’s who you want to do it with.

Xavier Niel

4- Your collaborators, otherwise you will recruit

Based on the previous lesson, Xavier Niel reveals his recruitment method. Here again, we are on a model of efficiency. Because to recruit, Xavier Niel avoids headhunters or other consultants. He goes on LinkedIn himself. And directly contacts the profiles that interest him. Obviously, most of them think it’s a joke when they read his messages, sent from an account without a photo. Those who respond score a first point. The rest is played out over a lunch, the entrepreneur quickly feeling “what the person has in their belly.” “For many,” he explains, “the method is unacceptable. But why bother conducting fifty interviews? When you put people to work, they reveal themselves right away. They deliver, or they don’t deliver. If it goes badly, we part on good terms. And that’s it.” This is what is called trusting (yourself). Or giving another dimension to the word delegate. “You can’t succeed alone,” continues Xavier Niel. I often say: it is diversity that creates success. Without my partners, who have very varied profiles, the Free adventure would never have worked.” Multiplying young profiles in your teams, from different social backgrounds, training, ages and genders, nourishes creativity and awakens intelligence. “Did you go to Polytechnique or HEC? Great, but we don’t care. What can you do, how do you navigate in this ocean of knowledge, these are the right questions,” asserts the entrepreneur. “The important thing in life is not knowing whether you will succeed or fail. It’s knowing who you want to do it with.”

5- You will question the education of children

What does the founder of Free think about the invasion of digital technology in our lives, and the place it should occupy, or not, in children’s education? Selected excerpts: “Not only is digital training insufficient (at school, Editor’s note:), but we did not understand to what extent the Internet was challenging the acquisition of knowledge, writes Xavier Niel. Today, knowledge is everywhere, we no longer need to know things by heart. We need to learn how to organize them. Learning to learn, that’s the trick” (…) “Kids will use Chat GPT anyway. So rather than forbidding them, let’s teach them how to use it intelligently. And take advantage of it to explain to them how it works (…) The best way to fight against fraud is still to integrate AI into learning. I persist in thinking that technology facilitates it, and does not prevent it. If students are more ignorant than before, it is perhaps because we do not teach them how to use these tools.”

(1) A real desire to cause troubleby Xavier Niel, interviews with Jean Louis Messika, Ed. Flammarion on sale September 25, 19.90 euros.