Draw yourself a new path

You may not yet have heard of PathMotion – a rather unorthodox, yet compelling new careers website with a lot of potential; the brainchild of entrepreneur David Rivel.

I sat with him at a London diner to hear his story. His enthusiasm is not only breathtaking, but also contagious. There is no pretence about him and his words did not once sound dubious; he was genuine and passionate about what he is trying to achieve.

David has followed an interesting path to get to this stage. Born in Belgium, he spent his undergraduate years mostly at the University of Westminster, when upon graduation he joined the coveted graduate programme at General Electric. After a couple of years, David ventured to France to pursue an MBA at INSEAD, one of the world’s best and most prestigious business schools. Doing justice to his degree, he soon joined the Boston Consulting Group for eighteen months. One would have thought this supposed dream path would have made David happy, but alas, from day one he realised this was probably not right for him.

David’s views on business and startups take a top-down approach. He believes that most successful businesses start from the pain of seeing a situation that needs urgent change. In the case of PathMotion, David felt frustrated at seeing those around him making potentially poor career moves, or being uncertain of what path they would need to take to get where they want. PathMotion was hence born out of a true desire to show people that there is many a way to achieve different career goals, and that the road most travelled is not necessarily the best or only one.

The whole concept of PathMotion is that, armed with information about who you are and what you want out of your career, it is able to show you the paths of people who are now where you want to get to eventually. The website does this by asking you a series of well-constructed questions developed by David and a team of specialised psychologists. A clever algorithm then computes all the information given to it and shows you these paths as well as job openings to which you may want to apply. David’s idea is that “every career path can be turned into career advice”. Inevitably, the more role models he is able to profile, the more accurate this advice is likely to be.

“If it helps people think differently about paths and careers” the project has done a great part of its job David Rivel, Pathmotion founder

David is the first to acknowledge that while he believes his idea is a good one, ideas are a pound a penny. The most important thing in a startup is choosing your team, especially your potential cofounder(s) well, as this will lead to a good implementation and execution of the idea. He likens this process to a “marriage” and is keen to stress the potential for it to prove fatal to the business should it be less than ideal. He believes that it is not necessarily a good thing if cofounders are too similar in background. In the high-tech startup world it is ideal to have someone who is good at fighting sharks in the commercial arena and someone who is technically more able. One thing that both must have in common, however, is the same kind of determination and passion for the project. Having a cofounder rather than going at it alone is also key in idea validation and discussion.

The rules of startup funding have changed, David argues. In the past, a good idea and a half-baked business plan was almost all that was needed to attract venture capital investment. Nowadays a real “product / market fit” needs to be established. Startups need to gain traction and starting a business in this way does not come cheap. David managed to find money through less conventional sources: he raised capital from friends, family and past colleagues who believed in his capabilities to make his idea work and ultimately generate a return on their investment. While the US and UK seem to be taking all the credit for the new tech boom, PathMotion is based in Paris. David is complimentary of the city’s startup community and operates out of an incubator there. He praises France’s 0% loan incentives for entrepreneurs. He dismisses the myth that successful global businesses need to be in California’s Silicon Valley or London’s Silicon Roundabout.

Asked about under what metrics he will use to measure the success of PathMotion when the time comes to do so, David takes the view that “if it helps people think differently about paths and careers” the project has done a great part of its job.

When speaking of his own role models, David says that he has managed to find inspiration in the people closer to him. He sees this as a more realistic view of how the world works. People whom one aspires to be need not be the behemonths of the business world that one associates with the likes of Apple, Facebook or Microsoft; they can be as wide-ranging as the University of Leeds graduate who worked for a professional services firm for three years before starting an eco-hotel in Vietnam.

He appears to have been stung by what entrpreneurs like to call the elusive startup bug. When asked what he plans to do when his time at PathMotion ends, he says it is “hard to predict” and that he is not necessarily a “serial entrepreuneur in-the-making”. For now though, PathMotion is set to make your career path a little easier.