“- It’s you who attacks us by telling us you are old-fashioned!
– I didn’t say you were old-fashioned, I said it was the old world… “
This no-nonsense, no-holds-barred exchange is taken from the second season of Who wants to be my partner? launched Wednesday at 9:05 p.m. on M6. It involves two of the new investors: Jean-Pierre Nadir, 56, creator of the Easyvoyage platform, and Anthony Bourbon, 32, founder of Feed, a company specializing in meal replacements. It is less a question of a clash of generations than of the meeting of two frank talk.
“We both have pretty strong temperaments. This allows for pleasant television moments, the 30-something says. Everyone has their vision. The show shows how we will think about and approach a project. From time to time there are little clashes which are always benevolent and in the interest of the entrepreneur. It is also by having a debate that we manage to bring out good ideas. “
“We have the same journey of people who have worked to get to where they are”
“With Anthony, we discovered each other on the first day of filming. We got it right. He dissects the cases very well, he has a lot of vista in his ability to analyze, ”assures the 50-year-old who says he recognizes himself in his younger brother. “We have the same journey of people who came from an environment that had little to do with business and who worked to get to where they are. “
Anthony Bourbon hides nothing of his chaotic and upset youth. He also integrates it into the storytelling of the company he created in 2017. “Violent father, depressed mother, he finds himself on the street at the age of 16, but does not give up and continues to respect what will later become the values of Feed “, we read on the home page of the website which underlines that the entrepreneur” wants to shake up the system, change the situation, by giving priority to meritocracy over hereditary . “
A message that he tries to defend in Who wants to be my partner? “It’s an opportunity to reach out and say despite the cards you have been given, even if you are disadvantaged, that you don’t have a lot of money, that you haven’t made studies, you can get by. “
“I think I have a certain legitimacy to say complicated things”
Anthony Bourbon, whose start-up has since its creation raised more than 40 million euros and sells its products in some 4,000 points of sale in Europe, claims his status as a self-made man. “On the show I tend to be very harsh [avec les entrepreneurs]. In view of my background, I believe I have a certain legitimacy to say complicated things because I have applied them myself. It’s more complicated, when you went to high schools and your parents made a lot of money, to say “You should do this, you should do that”, it’s much less credible. “
The man with the immaculate smile (he says he brushes his teeth five times a day), has also invested in forty other companies and created a foundation, Feed. Back. to reach out to “associations and groups committed to helping underprivileged children, students in difficulty or young women determined to build their future. “
Nadir had to pass in front of the jury
Jean-Pierre Nadir also traced a professional route which had not been marked out in advance. He likes to present himself as coming from a “peasant-intellectual-broke background”, which is not really enough to make him a class defector. He first grew up on the farm with his grandmother and then moved with his mother, a non-tenured Spanish teacher with changing assignments. The summer of his 16 years, he goes on a backpacking trip after reading On the road by Jack Kerouac. The following year, he set up his pancake business in a Breton business, and two years later, joined the Higher School of Advertising in Paris. He first had a career with a press group then, in the early 2000s, launched Easyvoyages, one of the main French tourism sites, which he sold two years ago to Webedia. His new hobbyhorse, Fairmoove, is a portal focused on “responsible tourism”.
Jean-Pierre Nadir has joined the second season of Who wants to be my partner? a bit by chance. Initially, he should have participated… on the side of entrepreneurs seeking to convince investors. “The production contacted me because I had created a new company, Carmoov, and they suggested that I go in front of the jury. At first, I thought it would give my start-up a lot of visibility. This is how we started to discuss the subject. I said I was also an investor, ”he says.
In Who wants to be my partner?, he wanted to show “the relaxation with which we can do things. Everything is not always rigor, organization, discipline. There are times when empathy and intuition can be extremely strong levers. Before the start of filming, he thought that “the stars were the jury”. “After ten minutes I understood that the stars are the candidates and that we are there to promote them and help them to express themselves”, he adds, modest or unaware of the capacity of his patter to steal the limelight from all that surrounds it.