Marc Berthold

Marc BertholdOct 12, 2026

Last Thursday at the Ambassade de France en Autriche, something clicked. And I left with a lead for Orsana from a company with 7,000 employees. La French Tech Vienna held its very first gathering as an official community, and despite the almost 20h of driving in 2 days, it was more than worth it. I attended as General Secretary of La French Tech Est with Alexandra Berthold, board member as well, and with Charly MRAZECK, my co-founder at Orsana. Most events reward the people who already know everyone. There's a hierarchy, a set of regulars who've claimed their corners, and five years of existing relationships sitting between you and the person you actually want to meet. But that event was different. No established hierarchy. No regulars. Everyone in the room figuring out their place at the same time. The person who would normally be unreachable is standing in the same unfamiliar room as you, equally open to a real conversation. The evening itself was something special. The venue, the energy, the mix of founders and members of the ecosystem as well as curious people showing up to something genuinely new. I went with a clear intention, met founders, met potential customers. And one of them turned into a real lead for Orsana: a company with 7,000 employees, now in active discussion. That's what happens when you choose the right room at the right moment. If there's a new chapter, a first edition, or a founding gathering in your city, that's the one to prioritize. Thank you so much Renaud Viot and Cécile Deterre, PhD for the invite, it was an outstanding event. It was a pleasure to meet you all: Matthieu Peyraud, Bettina Dorfer-Pauschenwein, Arianna Olivero • Business France Österreich, Verena Gruber, Francis Rivera, Céline Garaudy-Dumontheil, Jean-François Diet, Hervé Ochsenbein, Slavisa Milanovic, Peyman M. Kiasari, Raphaëlle Linette, Maarten K. Pieters, MBA, Ümit Bas and so many more!

Marc BertholdOct 13, 2026

Last weekend, I coached at Techstars Startup Weekend Strasbourg. 150+ participants experiencing years of emotional learning compressed into 54 hours. Most of them strangers to each other on Friday evening, and 54 hours to go from an idea to a pitch in front of a jury on Sunday evening. What makes these events valuable isn't the startup itself, because let's be honest, most teams won't continue Monday morning (and that's ok). No, the real value is the emotional curriculum. If you want to know what entrepreneurship actually feels like, you don’t need years to find out. You just need that one weekend. → Excitement to start something new. → Motivation working with a team you just met. → The first hard conversation with a real prospect. → Rebuilding the idea from scratch overnight. → Falling hard when a coach challenges you gently. → Completely demotivated. → Fully recharged after one team dinner. → More progress in one hour than the last twenty. → Frightened the moment pitch training starts. → Not knowing how you’ll be ready in two hours. → Nervous walking on stage. → Relieved the second it’s done. → Thrilled looking back at what got built in 54 hours. → Sad on Monday morning, knowing it’s already over. Each emotional swing teaches you something about your own resilience and decision-making under pressure that no business book can replicate. If you're considering entrepreneurship but haven't experienced that cycle, a Startup Weekend gives you the most honest preview available. You'll know whether you want to live in that pattern before you commit years to it. I didn’t go through all of that myself last weekend. I watched a room full of strangers go through it, and tried to make it a little easier for them. That’s the part of entrepreneurship I love most. The people, and what they become under pressure, together. The same part I loved the most about being a professional esports player. Training together, working together, sweating together, falling together, getting back up together, winning together, and becoming more than teammates in the process. Here's the final results: 🏆 1st Prize: Meumeubles with Camille Pelletier The ecommerce platform making secondhand furniture look good 🥈 2nd Prize: Nelyko with Ronan Bernede The all-in-one app for the future of animal health 🥉 3rd Prize: E-vonne with Magali Donge - Nest The app that reassures and takes care of your grandparents 🌱 Impact Prize: Fiou with Alice Bourassin The support network for care professionals who can finally breathe ❤️ Jury's Pick: Liber.a with Serahley JALLIM The wireless, compression-free, 100% fabric bra Thank you to the organizers and partners for making such an incredible event happen: Startup Weekend Strasbourg, EM Strasbourg Business School, ALUMNI EM STRASBOURG, La French Tech Est, Bpifrance, Startupéro, Ville et Eurométropole de Strasbourg

Marc BertholdOct 14, 2026

Tomorrow, I become a student again. 15 years after my Master's degree, I’m starting an Executive MBA at ICN Business School. 1.5 years, alongside everything else I’m building. Because if you thought I was gonna stop everything else, you don't know me at all. But I’m not doing this for the diploma on the wall. After my previous startup GamingPrivé, I had time to actually sit with what I could have done better. Founding a startup and exiting it doesn’t mean you know it all. It means you survived one specific version of the problem. I made real mistakes scaling that business. Not because I lacked effort, but because I lacked frameworks I’d never been taught and didn’t know I was missing. An EMBA is where I go find those frameworks now, on purpose, instead of learning them the expensive way a second time. Most founders stop learning in structured settings the moment they start a company. They tell themselves the company is the education now. It is. Until it's not enough anymore. I’m going back to the classroom to apply everything I missed the first time directly to Orsana, with one target in mind: 10M ARR (and then 100M 😇) That means automating what I don’t need to do myself. It means trusting my team and my associates with more than I currently do. It means delegating the parts of the business I’ve been holding onto out of habit. Tomorrow I become a student again, 15 years after graduating from EM Strasbourg Business School. Not because I have something to prove. Because every lesson I bring back from that classroom goes straight into building Orsana better, faster, on purpose. And this is exactly how I plan to get Orsana to 10M ARR faster than I would have alone.