The Summer Reset - Part 1

Work-life balance is not the point. Clarity is.

The debate around work-life balance is ridiculous. On one side, you’ve got the Zen brigade lighting candles around their calendars, whispering that balance is everything, as if inner peace had quietly become a master of everything.

On the other, the hustle bros pounding double espressos at 10pm, proudly tweeting that if you’re not bleeding from the eyes and ignoring your loved ones, you’re clearly not meant for greatness.

Both sound equally unhinged.

And yet, founders are stuck in the middle, trying to build something meaningful while being told to either meditate or die trying.

Let’s be clear, I believe in hard work. Nothing meaningful gets built without it.
But there’s a difference between hard work and working hard.

Hard work is about focus. About using your time with intent, cutting the noise, doing what actually moves the needle. It’s not about waking up early just to drown in Slack and back-to-backs until your brain melts.

Being busy is not a badge of honor.
Being efficient, decisive, and relentless on what matters — that’s hard work.

So no, I’m not against intensity. I’m against waste.

This being say, let’s get real, assuming that you want to do the hard work. If you’re building a company, not a side project, not a lifestyle gig, but a real, ambitious company, then yes, you’ll have to work like crazy sometimes. But if you only work like crazy, with no pause, no reset, no actual thinking… you’re not building anything. You’re just surviving your own calendar.

So here’s the deal.

Take the summer. Use it. But don’t use it just to rest, use it to realign.

You don’t need a break from work. You need a break from noise.

Most founders don’t burn out from effort, they burn out from chaos. From lack of direction. From saying yes to too many things that dilute the one thing that matters.

Summer is the mid-season break. Like Thanksgiving or Christmas, it’s one of the few moments in the year where the world slows down with you. No guilt. No pressure. No freaking fear of missing out.

So take it seriously. Not to get a tan. To get some clarity. As always, start with the simple questions from which everything derives.

• Do I actually know where my company is going?

• Do I know what role I’m supposed to play in getting it there?

• Does my team even understand what game we’re playing?

If the answer to any of these is not written somewhere already, congrats. You're normal. And this is your chance to fix it.

Start with the outside shell : Vision, Mission, Narrative, Primitive, Values.

Every company needs a compass. Not a vague sentence in size 8 font on the last slide of the pitch deck, a real compass. And it starts with five things:

Vision

What future do you believe in? Not in a vague, spiritual sense, but in a macro, decade-long, this-is-where-the-world-is-heading way.

And if your vision fits in a tweet, it’s probably bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, it should be inspirational. But only as the outer shell of a vision powered by a real, concrete, working engine underneath.

At Kima and Cassius, our vision starts from a simple truth: capital is abundant, judgment is rare.

Money moves faster than understanding. There’s more dry powder than discipline, more noise than conviction. Everyone has access to the same deals, the same data, the same founder memes, but very few know how to see beyond the surface. Hype masquerades as strategy. Consensus masquerades as insight.

That’s where we draw the line.

We believe the next era of venture capital will belong to those who can actually think, who can separate the signal from the noise, not with a hunch, but with precision, clarity, and courage.

Judgment is our craft. It’s not a gut feeling, it’s a skill. Built from repetition, sharpened by experience, powered by a relentless desire to understand not just what a company does, but why it will work. We’re artisans of decision-making in a world that often confuses activity for progress.

Our vision is not to follow the trend, it’s to shape the next generation of category-defining companies, by backing the founders who build with obsession, speed, and depth. Founders who don’t just chase opportunity, but who see something others missed, and who are willing to suffer a little to make it real.

Our role is to be early, to be right, and to be useful when we show up.

Mission

What do you want to become in that future? Not just what you do, who you are becoming. A startup builds a product. A company becomes something in the world. Don’t mix up where you’re starting with where you’re heading.

Our mission is to back European (and let’s admit it, a lot of french) founders who are building global companies and to be the partner that truly understands what that takes.

We do this not because it’s a positioning play, but because we’ve lived it. We know what it means to grow up in systems built for stability, not scale. To operate in cultures where ambition is often understated, where failure is feared, and where the first instinct is caution, not courage.

And yet, the most ambitious European founders break free from that. They choose discomfort. They leave behind what’s familiar. They land in places like the United States, fast, aggressive, unforgiving and they don’t flinch. They adapt. They outwork. They absorb the new rules. And then they rewrite them.

That’s who we back.

We believe that the best companies of the next decade will be born at the intersection of two worlds: the creative resilience of Europe, and the scale instincts of the U.S. Our mission is to be the bridge and the engine.

We don’t just write checks, we coach, pressure, support, and challenge. We show up where it hurts. We move fast when others hesitate. And we help our founders turn cultural discomfort into strategic advantage.

Because when a European founder makes it globally, it’s not by accident. It’s by grit, precision, and adaptability. And we know exactly what that journey requires, because we’ve been on it too.

Narrative

This one is subtle, but powerful. Your narrative is the emotional layer of your vision, it’s not what you say you do, it’s what people feel when they encounter your product, your team, your brand.

It’s the undercurrent that runs through everything… pitch decks, sales calls, tweets, press coverage… and leaves people with a sense of… I get it. And I want in.

It’s how your vision becomes human. If your vision is what you believe the world is becoming, your narrative is how that belief shows up in people’s lives, what it feels like to be a customer, a recruit, a user, a fan.

And the best narratives? They don’t need to be forced. They emerge from how people talk about you when you’re not in the room. It doesn’t need a tagline, it needs consistency.

I once ran a workshop at L’Oréal. I asked a room full of execs after explaining that concept: So what’s your company’s narrative? They quoted the CEO’s corporate line. I had to stop them. I told them: no. That’s fluff.

What you really do is far more simple, straightforward and universal as a brand of your magnitude. You bring well-being to the world. That’s the whole story. You’re not just making lipstick. You’re helping someone feel like herself before a job interview, a first date, or even a chemo session. That’s your narrative. And you should own it.

Primitive

If your narrative is what makes people feel something about your company, your primitive is what makes that feeling real.

It’s not your pitch. Not your tone of voice. Not your culture slide.

It’s the core feature, the single building block, the irrefutable concrete manifestation of everything you claim to be. It’s the part of your product or system that, if you removed it, the whole thing would fall apart.

It’s not about what’s visible, it’s about what’s foundational.

At L’Oréal, the narrative is beauty and well-being. But the primitive? It’s the care, by experts. Scientists formulating every product — that’s the backbone. Without them, it’s just lipstick.

At Bump by AMO, the primitive is the map, reliable & unique. The map is what keeps you coming back. It’s the feature that says: this is for people like me. You come for your friends, to record the places you’ve visited, to connect with your closed ones in a uniquely contextual way.

At WhatsApp, the primitive is obvious: the chat, live. Everything else is secondary. No chat with a sense of live activity, no WhatsApp.

A good primitive isn’t flashy, it’s indispensable. It’s the thing that quietly powers trust, loyalty, usability, scale.

You don’t need five. You need one.
You don’t need to market it. You need to build everything around it.

If narrative is what you promise, primitive is what you deliver. Tangibly, functionally, repeatably. And when it’s strong, the rest of the product becomes obvious. It cascades. It clarifies.

So if you’re lost in complexity, go back to the primitive.
What is the one feature, behavior, or mechanic that carries everything else?

Build that right, and your story writes itself.

Values

Values are not who you hope to be. They’re who you’re willing to be, especially when it’s hard.

They’re not decor. They’re not a wall poster in the kitchen. They’re your internal boundaries, the rules you don’t break, even when breaking them looks easier, faster, cheaper, or more popular.

They exist to protect your company’s soul when everything else feels blurry, when the vision is far, when the product is late, when the market turns, when the energy drops.

Your values are how your company behaves when no one’s watching. And the best values are not moral, they’re operational.

• If you say "clarity" is a value, then no meeting happens without a doc, and no doc ends without an action.

• If you say "care", then support tickets get answered with empathy, and customers feel like humans, not metrics.

• If you say "ambition", then you fire fast when someone’s coasting, even if they’re nice.

• If you say "inclusivity", then the first ten people you hire already reflect that. Not one day.

Values are only real when they cost you.

• Compassion costs speed.

• Excellence costs margin.

• Transparency costs comfort.

• Creativity costs predictability.

• Focus costs opportunity.

• Boldness costs consensus.

And that’s the point. Values are also selective. They help you say no. To the wrong investors. The wrong hires. The wrong shortcuts. You’re not supposed to be everything to everyone, values are how you decide who you are for.

• Vision gives you direction.

• Narrative gives you connection.

• Primitive gives you structure.

• Values give you backbone.

They don’t make things easier, they make them clearer. So if you’re not sure what your values are, ask yourself:

• What do we refuse to compromise on, even when we’re tired?

• What gets someone fired here, not for incompetence, but for attitude?

• What do we praise, even if it didn’t move the metrics this week?

That’s where your real values live. Write them. Live them. And when in doubt, enforce them. Or let them go. Because values that aren’t enforced… are just vibes.

Then, go inside… Your Operating Principles

Once the vision is clear, the mission is real, the narrative is felt, the primitive is defined, and the values are set, you still need to build something that actually works.

That’s where Operating Principles come in.

These aren’t philosophies. They’re instructions.
They tell your team how to behave every day.
Not when things are perfect but when things are messy, fast, unfinished, hard.

Operating Principles are your company’s muscle memory. They guide decisions, shape habits, and prevent chaos. They’re what makes your culture repeatable at scale.

They are not how you think you work, they are how you want to work, consistently. And they’re only useful if they’re specific.

Vague: “We move fast.”
Precise: “We reply to every founder within 24 hours, even if it’s a no.”

Vague: “We communicate openly.”
Precise: “Every doc starts with what went wrong last time. No exceptions.”

Vague: “We care about quality.”
Precise: “No design goes live without two independent reviews. Ever.”

Great Operating Principles feel like constraints, and that’s intentional. If they don’t push back on your worst instincts, they’re not doing their job. Here are examples of principles that real teams live by…

• Don’t miss deadlines. Be organized.
  Everyone says they’re overwhelmed. Guess what, that’s not a personality trait, it’s a systems failure. Fix your habits.

• No meeting over 30 minutes without an agenda and action items.
  It’s not harsh, it’s respectful.

• Every meeting starts with a post-mortem.
  What did we fuck up last time? Say it. Write it. Own it. Otherwise, you’re just repeating mistakes on loop.

• You ship every 10 days, no matter fucking what.
  Yes, this is an actual principle. And it works. Don’t argue with momentum.

• In marketing, we pitch 3 fresh ideas every 2 weeks.
  Creativity is a muscle, not divine inspiration.

• Docs are read before the meeting. Phones off. Follow-ups within 12h.
  Common sense? Sure. But write it down, or it doesn’t happen.

And we can go on and on…

• “No silent disagreement. If you think it’s a bad idea, say it now or live with it.”

• “Asynchronous first. Meetings are for conflict, synthesis, or decisions.”

You’ll know your Operating Principles are working when:

• People start quoting them in Slack.

• New hires ramp faster because the rules are written.

• Decisions happen without asking the founders.

• Accountability is normalized, not personal.

If your values are the code, your Operating Principles are the protocol.

They make the whole system work. And here’s the golden rule:

If it’s not written, it doesn’t exist.
If it’s vague, it’ll be misinterpreted.
If it’s misinterpreted, it’ll be poorly executed.

So write them. Refine them. Test them. Enforce them.
And when they start to feel invisible, that’s when they’re doing their job.

Make them company-wide but also department wide if needed.

Do the work, properly

We’re doing this exercise internally. With Emmanuel at Cassius. With Alexis at Kima. It’s not a strategy offsite. It’s not an ego trip. It’s work. It takes time to prep, a full day to align, and then weeks to embody.

But it’s one of the few things that compound, like interest. Or trust.

Because once it’s done, everything runs through that lens and more importantly though the systems that are built to sustain them. You know who you are. You know how you behave. And your team knows it too.

So, no… This summer isn’t about balance. It’s about alignment.

Take the time. Rethink the story. Rewrite the rules.
Get your vision straight, your ops tight, your values lived, not just listed.

Then get back to work.
Clearer, sharper, lighter.
Ready for what’s next.

See you around for the second part on efficiency and delivery :)