Welcome to Loic’s Newsletter

I write about entrepreneurship, technology, consciousness, spirituality, and everything I learn through life. Frequency: twice a week.

I also have a podcast, it’s on Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon podcasts.

I am a French Entrepreneur who writes often. I’ve been writing since 2003 when I first discovered blogging, and have never stopped sharing since then. I was born in the South of France, then lived in Paris, San Francisco, as well I spent about a year in the jungle in the Amazon forest, and many other places.

I try to share everything I learn through writing, via audio, video, or through conferences.  I’ve been doing this for around 20 years.

I’m just like you, learning about life with humility. I absolutely love sharing what I learn all the time.

A tech entrepreneur and conference organizer

I passed 50 and have invested in many tech startups—and I still do. I also started the largest technology conference in Europe at ((the time - should define when this was, we don’t know), called LeWeb. I co-founded and ran it with my ex-wife Geraldine for 12 consecutive years, it gathered 4000 people and an untold number of countries, maybe 80 or so. Then we sold it. I also invested in many startups as an “angel investor”, such as LinkedIn, very early on when many people did not believe in them. I still do.

A father

I have three incredible boys in their twenties. Magdalena gave me a fourth baby boy on November 29, 2023.

A middle-age crisis and a “seeker of awakening”

When I was 40, I divorced. Nothing seemed to be “enough” anymore, regardless of any material success or recognition in the world. I fell into the cliché of the midlife crisis. I was bored with life.

Meditation

I did my first meditation retreat Vipassana. After discovering meditation I’ve never stopped since, with only periodic breaks.

I went to seek therapy in San Francisco for the first time in my life. That lasted a few years. Then I attended the Hoffman Institute. I kept meditating while going through past trauma, the divorce, losing my father when he was 53, my sister when she was 36, peeling the layers of my life and my mind.

I was seeking freedom so I went to Burning Man, 8 years in a row. I found freedom there, but then had to return to reality. I had multiple trips around the world with friends, kite-surfing while investing in startups. I loved it. I had “earned it”. I thought that freedom was happiness.

The truth is I started drinking even more than I did previously. Wine, as everyone knows, is well-recognized as part of “being French”. I was drinking at least a bottle of wine a day, plus some cocktails. This was all “normal”, then I stopped drinking in 2021.

I found more freedom for sure and enjoyed that time with friends—but I was still missing something.

The “hole” in me seemed to get deeper rather than filling up.

I also felt I had explored all the layers of our Western system, the “matrix”. Exploring more “reality” and trying to succeed more at everything felt like being stuck in a hamster wheel.

Looking back at my life, I did the college thing (here at the French HEC School of Management), got married, then divorced, started a few businesses, lived extraordinary adventures, and even spent a few months in France helping run the campaign of a future President (I did not like this experience because of so much lying involved in politics).

Looking inside instead of outside

I then started seeking. Instead of seeking success, achievements, or increasing whatever I had materially, I started looking for happiness. I could not find it.

Something was dead inside.

I found a lot of suffering inside - regardless of the cool photos I was posting on Instagram.

The plants and the Amazon forest

In October 2016, I took my partner, Leila Janah, to see Machu Picchu in Peru for her birthday. From there Leila decided we should visit the Peruvian Amazon forest, and I ended up experiencing my first ayahuasca ceremony there. I did not want to do it. I had never taken any “drugs” apart from smoking some weed a few times (which I really disliked and so never tried again).

Seated in the jungle a maloca with Leila and two Shipibo shamans, I had life-changing visions for the first time. Whatever it was I was changed forever, more than I thought.

I could not believe what I saw when I woke up from the effects of the plants.

I felt that those poorly studied plants were changing me so much that I kept going to the ceremonies, each time vomiting a little more of my traumas and realizing who I was not more clearly. It was not entertaining, it was in fact really difficult. Each ceremony was like seeing the truth about all my past mistakes. It was way more powerful and expedient than meditation, (which I kept doing anyway).

After about a year of “purging” in ceremonies, I stopped vomiting. I met the Chief of the Yawanawa tribe, Nixiwaka Yawanawa, in his village deep in the Amazon Jungle of Brazil, in the State of Acre, near Peru.

The Chief invited me to do a “dieta”. They are periods from two weeks to a year of intense “work” with powerful plants, generally isolated in the jungle and with very little food.

I am not sure why, but I spent about a year (on several trips) in the jungle with indigenous “shamans”—as we call them—mostly Yawanawa but also other tribes such as Ashaninka, Katoukina or Koulina.

I saw that I was feeling and getting better, so I felt that I needed to “go all the way” as an entrepreneur; but now the startup was…me.

Under the guidance of the Chief, I completed 7 dietas in three years, which are the basis of the most advanced training of that tribe.  I then concluded with the “Muka dieta” and lost 25 kgs in 3 months. I was isolated in the jungle, wholly disconnected for 3 months from April to June 2022.

I completed the 12 month dieta with no sugar, no fruits, no sex whatsoever, no meat (some chicken sometimes), no pure water (only tea), and observed a lot of the discipline I learned there.

“Vision Quester and Sundancer”

Working with plants gave me access to another world, but I was very frustrated to need them in order to see it.

I started another path, Vision Quests and Sundance, which is only based on fasting also in the jungle, but this time in South Dakota and Mexico. I completed 3 vision quests and 2 Sundances as I write this. I will do two more to finish the basics of that path, “the Red Road.”

I’ve now searched quite far, what’s next?

7 years seeking to know myself better, and I was just getting started.

I am looking back at the past to make sure I am actually awake, and that I have not replaced the material “matrix” ego with my new “consciousness” or “spiritual” ego. I fell into that trap many times, but I feel it’s less the case now.

So what’s now?

I am learning to master myself, seeking to finally be fully independent in my life and my thinking. I am dedicating my life to studying my own consciousness and balance.

Instead of staying in the forest alone, I am writing this newsletter, and have built a startup again with my partner Magdalena Sartori.

PAUA is a community for those who want to learn more about themselves and become better human beings—who want to stay in the modern world and not disappear in spiritual work. It is a WhatsApp community (see tab top of the page) and a series of events, PAUA.

Thank you for reading, please feel free to comment or send an email, I read all but cannot always answer as I get a lot.

I also have a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and Amazon podcasts. You can also follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

photo - one of the “dieta” places I called home many times at in the “Sacred Village” of the Yawanawà. Thank you Faisal Tisnés for taking this photo from a drone for me!