Olivier Goy: Invincible Hope

In December 2020, a neurologist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière told Olivier Goy he had ALS, Charcot's disease. No cure. Three to five years. He spent four months on the floor. Then a sentence came to him, so simple it almost made him laugh: if I stay depressed, I punish myself twice.

Olivier founded 123Venture in 2000, with nine months of professional experience, to open private equity to ordinary savers, then co-founded October to finance small and medium businesses. Since his diagnosis he has become an ambassador of the Paris Brain Institute and has raised more than €4.5 million for research through a film, Invincible été, a book, Invincible, written with Anne Fulda, a concert at the Olympia, La Fresque Généreuse and now Invincible Hope. In this episode he speaks through Invincible Voice, a tool built with the researchers of Kyutai that rebuilt his voice from recordings made before the disease took it, and that he made open source for every patient.

Last year I took part in a campaign where leaders spoke publicly about the things we are trained to hide, and I shared my own story. It was one of the most liberating things I have done. Olivier has taken this further than anyone I know. I came to this conversation expecting to talk about courage. Olivier gave us something rarer: a method for loving life.

In our conversation, we explore:

→ From Annemasse to Paris: building two companies as an outsider, and why legitimacy comes from being useful
→ The diagnosis, the four months on the floor, and the decision that turned him into a fighter
→ Leading without a voice or a stride: how ALS rewrote his definition of leadership
→ Why people do not follow the invulnerable: leadership as a mission, visible cracks and generosity
→ AI that gives back: Invincible Voice, patient data at the Paris Brain Institute, and the Invincible Hope mural at Mount Sinai in New York

"The door that looks locked is usually just heavy. Push it. Legitimacy is not granted to you, you take it by being useful." Olivier Goy

If you have ever waited for permission to start something, or to tell someone what they mean to you, this conversation is for you.

Olivier's initiatives:

Invincible Hope: https://www.invincible-hope.com/
Invincible été, the film: https://www.invincible-ete.com/
Invincible, the book: https://www.invincible-ete.com/livre
The Invincible été research fund: https://institutducerveau.org/actualites/linstitut-cerveau-associe-au-lancement-fonds-philanthropique-invincible-ete-pour-recherche-sur-sla
Give to AI research at the Paris Brain Institute: https://don.institutducerveau.org/invincible_hope/~mon-don

RELATED EPISODES

• Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google X (2021), engineering happiness through expectation management: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/8944613
• Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD professor (2025), leadership, love, intention and freedom: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/17854175
• Dr Donna Hicks, Harvard (2026), dignity as the foundation of positive leadership: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/19240650

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JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Hello, and welcome to the Positive Leadership Podcast, the podcast that helps you grow as an individual, as a leader, and ultimately as a global citizen. I'm Jean-Philippe Courtois. My guest today is the most extraordinary person I've ever welcomed on this show. Yes. He is. He's very modest, you will see. At twenty-six, he founded a company that opened private equity to ordinary investors in France. At 40, he did it again, building one of Europe's leading lending platforms for small and medium businesses. Two companies, two markets that did not exist before he built them. Then December twenty-twenty, at forty-six, his life changed in one sentence from a doctor, and what he chose to do next is the reason for this conversation. He became a movie, an ode to life seen by millions, a book, a monumental work of art made of three thousand faces, a voice for research, helping raise more than four point five million euros for neuroscience, and a movement that unites finance, science, art, and healthcare, worlds that never speak, into one team on two continents. He can no longer speak, and yet you're about to hear him in his own voice, rebuilt by AI from recordings made before the illness took it. It is one of the most moving things I've ever been part of, I must admit. So please warm welcome to Olivier. Olivier Goy. Olivier, it's a profound honor to welcome you here. Thank you for trusting me with this conversation.

OLIVIER GOY: Thank you, Jean-Philippe. the honor is mine. The voice you are hearing was rebuilt by artificial intelligence from recordings made before the disease took it. So yes, today a machine is speaking with my charming French accent- But every word is mine.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So Olivier, before we talk about everything you've built, I want to start with where you come from, something I love to do with my guest. You were born in nineteen seventy-four in Annemasse, in Haute-Savoie, on the Swiss border, far from the salon of Paris finance. No family fortune, no inheritance, no network handed to you. Everything you built, you built it from scratch. So can you take us back to that childhood? What were the values and the conversations that shaped you at the family dinner table, at school in those, early years, and what did young Olivier learn there that is still sitting with you today?

OLIVIER GOY: I was born in nineteen seventy-four in Annemasse, in Haute-Savoie, right on the Swiss border, far from Paris, far from the salon. My parents were entrepreneurs of everyday life. My mother ran clothing shops in France and Switzerland. Joyful, talkative, always in motion. My father worked in real estate. He built a tennis club with his own hands, and it was on those courts as a boy that I had my first encounter with disability. I watched a wheelchair tennis tournament there. I did not know it then, but life plants its seeds very early. At home, the values were simple: work, independence- No complaining. My grandmother had a phrase for me because I was always in a hurry. "Minute, papillon." "Slow down, little butterfly."

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: "Calme-toi."

OLIVIER GOY: I never listened. I was a serious child. Sporty, but not a party boy. My parents taught skiing on Sundays at the local club. I skied, I played volleyball, I climbed cranes in quarries with my little sister. As she says, I was always outside, but I never went out. I did not drink. I still do not.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: That's good.

OLIVIER GOY: What did I learn at that table? That nothing would be handed to me. That work is a form of freedom. When I arrived in Paris, it was a shock. Everyone knew each other. I had not imagined such a closed world. I did not have the codes, the right schools, the informal network built in private clubs. A rich man in the provinces is a poor man in Paris.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: It's true.

OLIVIER GOY: I felt it deeply, and that feeling became my fuel. I had, I admit it, a social revenge to take. But the most important lesson from Annemasse is one I only understood later. My parents created value by being useful, with their hands, with their smiles- Not by being born in the right place. That conviction built my two companies, and it drives everything I do today. The mountain teaches you one last thing. You climb one step at a time.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Every step.

OLIVIER GOY: And you never climb alone.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yeah. I love it, Olivier. I think it's a wonderful, journey, and reminds me, differently obviously When I grew up and I went up to Paris from Nice as well, I was this, guy lost from the south in Paris. Had no network at all, and started working in a small software company at a time that nobody knew about Microsoft. That's a different story. I want to talk about your story. So back to you, Olivier. Long before the world knew the fighter, there was the builder. In 2000, at 26, you founded 123 Investment Managers and did something almost nobody in France believed possible. You opened private equity to ordinary people, ordinary investors, and grew it to more than 1.3 billion euros under management. That's an amazing achievement. Then in 2014, you did it again as an entrepreneur, founding what became, October, today one of Europe's leading lending platforms for small and medium businesses operating across France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and it's probably even more countries today. 20 years of building two ventures, hundreds of people, thousands of investors and entrepreneurs trusting you, Olivier. So of all those years, if you could pick one story for our listeners, one specific moment that carries the most enduring lesson you learned as an entrepreneur, and tell us what happened, and what did it teach you that still holds today?

OLIVIER GOY: I will give you one moment. I was 25. I had exactly nine months of professional experience in finance- Nine months as an employee, and I decided to create my own company- To open private equity to ordinary investors-

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Very bold

OLIVIER GOY: In France in 2000. Everyone explained to me politely that this market was reserved for the happy few- That the banks owned the clients- That a young man from Annemasse with no network would be eaten alive. I did it anyway. Not because I was reckless, because I had understood something the insiders could not see. The rules that seem immutable are often just habits. The people who benefit from a closed system never question it. Only the outsider, the one standing at the door, asks the obvious question: Why can ordinary savers not invest in the real economy? There was no good answer, so I built the door. 14 years later, I did it again with October, the day the French banking monopoly opened. Small and medium businesses were locked out of financing. Same closed system, same obvious question, same answer. Build the platform. And here is the enduring lesson, the one that still holds today in my hospital bed- As in my board meetings. Legitimacy is not something you wait for. It is something you take by being useful. Nobody gave me permission to start 123. Nobody gave me permission later to raise millions for brain research from a wheelchair. If I had waited to be legitimate, I would still be waiting. There is a small epilogue. When success came, I bought the toys, a Ferrari, some beautiful watches. I sold them all quite quickly. Deep down, they did not interest me. That taught me the second half of the lesson. The fuel that lasts is not status. It is usefulness. The day my body broke down, the Ferrari would have been of no help. The habit of being useful saved my life.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing, such, an amazing, incredible stories, Olivier, and, I, I love the, the way you talk about certainly not waiting for permission and never take no as an answer. And, and I could feel that incredible, passion you have to open those doors that were locked. So I want to stay a little bit more now on entrepreneurship for a moment because, Olivier, it's a world I'm also living in a way every day myself in a different environment, which is nonprofit. For the past 10 years, you know, with, my nonprofit called Live for Good, I've had the joy of nurturing and growing hundreds of young impact entrepreneurs who want to change the world. And if there's one lesson those 10 years have burned really into me, it is that the starting point is everything. The entrepreneurs who last are the ones who fall in love with a problem, not with a solution. And the ones who shape their mission early build something meaningful and lasting because that mission give them clarity, purpose, and direction as well. When everything else shakes, the others chase products and drift. So when, Olivier, when you look back at your first life as an entrepreneur and everything you built since then, where do you see that idea? Did you love a problem when you started 123 and October? And how important has it been in what you are building now to shape the mission first before the tools and before the money, the Ferrari, the Ferrari and before the plan?

OLIVIER GOY: Jean-Philippe, when I heard you describe your 10 years with Live for Good, I smiled- Because I learned that lesson twice. Once slowly, once brutally. The slow version first. Yes, I loved the problem when I started 123 and October. The same problem, in fact, in two forms. Unfair access. Private equity reserved for the happy few. Bank financing closed to small businesses. I was never in love with a fund structure or a lending algorithm. Those were tools. What made me get up at dawn was the injustice of a closed door. The proof, October is named after the month the banking monopoly opened. The mission is literally in the name. But I must be honest, in my first life, the mission coexisted with other fuels. Ambition, recognition, that social revenge I mentioned. It worked, but it was noisy inside. Then came the brutal version. In December 2020- Everything I had built as identity collapsed in one sentence from a doctor. And what remained- Once the noise was gone- Was a mission of absolute clarity. Accelerate research and change the way the world looks at disability. I did not choose it in a strategy seminar. It imposed itself. And you are right, that clarity has been everything. When your body fails a little more every month- You cannot afford to drift. Every project I launch- A film, a book, a mural- A fund- An AI voice- Passes a single test. Does it serve the mission? If yes, we go, fast. If no, we drop it without regret. So my answer to your entrepreneurs is this- Fall in love with a problem, yes, but go further. Let the mission choose you. Look for the problem that makes you angry. The one you cannot unsee. Because when everything shakes, and one day everything shakes, the product will not hold you, the money will not hold you, the mission will.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: It's a, it's an am- it's an amazing, and, and certainly I would say, Olivier, not to flatter you at all, the best, conversation or definition I've ever heard of a purpose. You live it, we can see it, we can feel it in your person, and in your voice and in your life, and that's an amazing learning that for sure with the podcast we'll share with many young people, entrepreneurs. And I go back later to youth because I, I think it's many important moments to share with youth to shape a better future. Now, I'd like to go back if you, if you allow me, in December of 2020. You talk about that moment. You know, at 46 years old, at the height of everything, you were diagnosed with ALS, for our listeners, which is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, what we call in France, in France, la maladie de Charcot, a disease that progressively paralyzes the body while leaving the mind completely intact. The doctors speak of a life expectancy of three to five years. A year later, you handed the leadership of October to your partner, Patrick de Nonville, and I cannot imagine what those m- months were like for you. So can you take us back to that moment in your life, and when and how did you learn? Where were you? Who was with you in that moment? And what happened inside you in those first hours and days after that famous sentence from the doctor?

OLIVIER GOY: It started with a tennis racket. A morning in 2019, a match with a friend who hits like a brute. My racket kept turning in my hand. I could not hold it. We laughed about it. Everyone said tendinitis. My sister teased me, "With your crazy serves, no wonder." But the tendinitis never healed. Then small strange things. In the morning, I could not pull my phone off its charger. Then a bad fall from my bike, alone on a quiet road without understanding why. For the hypochondriac I was- The man who could turn a head cold into the end of the world- This was torture. Blood tests, brain MRI, scanners, all good. Then in October 2020, an electromyogram. I came out of that exam really unwell. Within hours, I was talking incoherently, vomiting- Losing consciousness. Emergency surgery. I woke up 10 or 12 hours later with a hole in my forehead. 10 days in the hospital, almost alone in the middle of COVID- Eating hospital food- And staring at white walls. Still no explanation. And then came that day of December 2020, a small, worn-out office at the Pitié-Salpêtrière. A neurologist, Dr. Amador looks at me and says, "Here it is." "I found what you have. It is called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Charcot's disease." She explains gently, precisely, "The motor neurons die. The body becomes a prison. The mind stays intact. No treatment. Three to five years. I will not play Superman for you." It hit me like a bomb. As she spoke, I felt myself cracking from the inside, a silent detonation. I, who had never broken, cried like a little boy. I wandered out through that hospital as big as a city, climbed into a taxi, and tried to call my wife, Virginie, and my friend Xavier. I could not line up two words. I was drowning in sobs. What followed were, quite simply, the four worst months of my life. I was lost, unable to see anything positive. I say this because it matters. The fighter you see today- Was born from a man on the floor.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: This is,.. I mean, this is what, what I said in, you know, at the beginning of this episode, to our listeners and, and to Olivier. This is probably-- this is for sure the, the most, emotional episode I've ever done and, and the most amazing man I've ever met with and, and from whom we can learn so much. So I'd like to pursue the discussion, Olivier. One of the guests, on the podcast as well, who marked me most as well, is, called Mo Gawdat. He was the former chief business officer at Google X. I knew him actually because before that he worked at Microsoft, so he was one of my team members in the Middle East at the time. In 2017, Mo lost his son Ali during a routine surgery. He told me that grief put a choice in front of him, and 17 days later he started writing and dedicating his life to making one billion people happier in Ali's name. So what strikes me, Olivier, is that in your story too, there seem to be two moments. As you said, the diagnosis is the first, brutal, incredibly hard and, and you know, at, at the core of, of your identity. But the second one, the decision, that one was yours. That's something you decided to do. So was there such a second moment for you, right? A day, an hour or at-- later on after this episode that you share with us where you are going and you decided what you're going to do with your life you had left, and not the life you had lost behind. What happened in that moment in your mind, in your heart as well, and what did you decide?

OLIVIER GOY: Yes, Jean-Philippe, there was a second moment, and like for Mo Gawdat, it was a decision. But I want to be honest about how it came, because it was not a flash of heroism. It was three months of work in the dark with a fantastic psychologist at the hospital- Who took my hand when I was drowning. And one day with her, the click came. A sentence formed in my head so simple it almost made me laugh. If I stay depressed, I punish myself twice. Once by the disease, once by me. The disease had taken my future. Was I really going to hand it my present as well? After all, we are all going to die. I had simply been given the schedule. From that day, I decided to live intensely, precisely because my death had been announced. That click transformed me into a fighter. Everything that exists today was born in that moment. Then came the second decision, the public one. In March 2021, I told my story on a podcast for entrepreneurs.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yes, I listened to the podcast.

OLIVIER GOY: My parents fought against it. It was too much for them. But I knew the business world. I did not want rumors spreading in my back, hurting my company, hurting my teams, and above all, deeper, I wanted to remain the one leading the game. I said it that day with a bit of bravado, "I am doing it because I decided it." Difficulty has never frightened me. I am better in adversity, and now I had a magnificent adversity in front of me. What did I decide concretely? Three fights, which are really one. A fight for research, so that those after me get the treatment I will not have. A fight to change the way the world looks at disability. And a fight to make people love life, even in its hardest passages. The disease, despite itself, handed me the most powerful lever of my existence. People listen to a condemned man. I smile at that irony every day, and I use it every day.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: It's, it, it's another incredible moment, Olivier. I mean, and a couple of, call-outs in what you said. I think the first one is you recognize the incredible role of those caregivers Like your psych- psychologist and, or many of those people, men and women in hospitals, caregiver centers who take care of humans day and night. So it's a, it's a call out to all of them because I think we, we never, we never talk about them enough. And the second one, which to me is, an incredible, leadership principle, lead the game. You are the one to decide destiny of your life, and you are, I mean, a- an incredible example of life. Of people sometimes who complain about lives and problems and so on. Well, please, step back and decide just to lead the game. So now I'd like to continue discussion and, and I love, you know, as you, as you saw me doing, using different conversation I have with different, guests. And one guest I had is Gianpiero Petriglieri. He teaches leadership at INSEAD, and he was a guest on this show, and he told me that leadership is ultimately identity work, which I agree actually. And the hardest question is never, what should I do? But who am I becoming? And when life dismantles the identity we spend decades building, we face the deepest work of all, deciding who we become next. ALS has taken so much of the doing, the movement, the speed, the voice, although I love your voice. What has it revealed about the being when everything you relied on was stripped away? Who did you find underneath? So who have you become, Olivier, in your internal search?

OLIVIER GOY: Gianpiero is right. The hardest question is: Who am I becoming? ALS answered it for me by subtraction. It took the doing piece by piece, the stride, the handshake- The voice, and what remained underneath surprised me more than anyone. First, an honest confession. Before, I was a winner running a winner's software. Fragile people- Hesitant people, people I judged to be without depth- Did not really fit into that software. I am not proud of that sentence, but it was true. The rolling compressor- The newspapers called me. A compressor does not cry, does not doubt- Does not slow down. The disease broke the software, and through the cracks, a whole world came in. The world of the wounded, the cracked, the ones I used to avoid. Patients, caregivers, people carrying invisible burdens wrote to me by the thousands. They taught me more in three years than business school taught me in a lifetime. I discovered emotion, received and given. I discovered the strength of connection. I learned to let myself be traversed by what I feel instead of managing it. My friend says something that is not politically correct- But I will say it here. Since he has been sick, Olivier is living his best life. And here is my own confession, which I have made to them. I would have loved to become this man while still standing. The smile you see is not a mask. There is a flame now that was not there in the photos of the serious CEO in his white shirt. Who have I become? A man who knows he's not his voice, not his legs, not his calendar. I am what I give. And I have kept two engines from the old Olivier, because a philosopher I like says, "The only power stronger than pain is desire." Action and desire. They protect me from useless misery, so I act and I desire more than ever. It turns out the being was there all along, waiting under the doing.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: That's another incredible moment, Olivier, as you talk about being here to give and be in the desire and in the action with that incredible intensity I can see in your smiles right now in this, Podspace studio where I'm recording this episode. It's an amazing co- positive, contagious wave that you can feel, I can tell my listeners. So I'd love to take a moment. Yes, please. Thank you so much. I want to take a moment for everyone listening to describe what you've actually built since, 2020. Because when you step back, it's, it's just astonishing. You became a newly born entrepreneur. As you just said, it's a new Olivier that was born with a crystal clear sense of mission. You articulated that so well. Your new North Star accelerate research and change how the world looks as disability. Around it, you built a narrative and storytelling strategy. The documentary, Invincible été, the book Invincible with Anne Fulda, La Fresque Généreuse, 3,000 portraits on the façade of the Paris Brain Institute's- even a concert at the Olympia in Paris. You put science and research at the core as ambassador of the Paris Brain Institute, the world's second largest neuroscience research center that a pleasure to visit with you actually the other day, Olivier. Thank you for that. And you design a funding strategy that leverages both finance and philanthropy, including an endowment fund built to finance neuroscience for ninety-nine years with more than four point five million euros raised to date and more to come. You implement relentlessly using AI and every tool available to achieve more with less. And above all, you created a movement that kills the silos between finance, research, art, and healthcare. And every- everyone told you those worlds don't talk to each other. You made them one team actually on this, on this disease, which is amazing. When I describe it that way, mission, story, science, funding, AI, movement, it sounds like the playbook of the most modern entrepreneur I know except the venture is your life, Olivier. So was this deliberate? Did you consciously apply everything you learned building companies to this fight, or did the strategy emerge from the urgency and from your mission?

OLIVIER GOY: Both, Jean-Philippe, and that is the honest answer. The urgency came first. The method came from twenty years of muscle memory. When you are told you have three to five years- -you do not sit down and write a strategic plan. You are on the floor. For me, it was four months on the floor. What pulled me up was not a plan; it was a click and then an instinct. And that instinct, it turns out, was the entrepreneur's instinct, still intact even as the body failed. I could not stop myself from seeing the problem as a builder. There is a cause nobody funds enough. There is a disease nobody understands enough. There is a public that looks away from disability. Those are markets that do not exist yet. And I know exactly what to do with markets that do not exist yet. I had done it- Twice. So no, I did not consciously sit down and say, "I will now apply the startup playbook to my own death." But when I look back, every reflex was there. Start with the mission, not the tool. Tell a story people can feel- Because facts inform and stories move. On the boat to Antarctica, in the middle of the Drake Passage- With my things flying around the cabin, the idea came. I will give a photo to everyone who donates to research. Two minutes after posting, fifteen thousand kilometers away, I had my first donor. That is a growth reflex, not a plan. Then measure, iterate, delegate, repeat. The film, the book, the concerts- The fund built to finance research for ninety-nine years. Each one is a product serving the same mission. I did what I have always done, except this time the venture is my own life and the deadline is written on my body. And here is the deeper truth: The disease did not make me a different man. It freed the man who was already there from the serious, austere shell I had built around him. Same energy, same impatience, same hunger to move the lines, just pointed at last at something that truly matters.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: That's, that's obviously, to me, entrepreneurship at its very best, Olivier. And i- it's not about the, the next AI unicorn raising billions, you know, and, and inventing super intelligence, which may be exciting for some people, but it's about life itself, exactly as you describe at the core of your enterprise, at the core of your mission. And, and to me, that's, that's an amazing example that I want to broadcast to many others. So I'd love now to focus a bit on the research itself, Olivier, because this is where your work becomes, I think, very concrete, by the way. Through the Paris Brain Institute, you've helped fund and connect research on ALS at European scale, including CURE-ND4ALS, the alliance announced this spring in The Lancet Neurology, uniting the Paris Brain Institute with Germany's DZNE, the UK, the UK Dementia Research Institute, and the Leuven Brain Institute. And now you're building a transatlantic collaboration as well between the Paris Brain Institute and Mount Sinai in New York, applying AI to neurodegenerative disease at a scale never attempted before with the ambition of a hundred thousand patient cohorts. And I, I must say, I, I met recently, thanks to Olivier, the research team in Paris that is doing an amazing work, leveraging AI for good to actually provide not just hope, but actually provide a lot more visibility, understanding of ALS in the future. So you spend your days with researchers. Cut through the noise for us, Olivier. Which research projects underway today give you the most genuine hope- For ALS and for neurodegenerative disease more broadly, where do you believe the breakthrough will come from?

OLIVIER GOY: Let me be honest with your listeners first, because I owe them honesty above everything. I expect nothing from science in the time I have left. I have made my peace with that. I fight so that those who come after me get the treatment I will not. That frees me to speak plainly without the desperation of a man bargaining for his own cure. I have learned to be brutally rational about hope because I have seen false hope up close. I once took the first regional train to a small town three mornings in a row to see a healer everyone swore by. Two years later, I had caught COVID twice, but Charcot still had not been beaten. So who knows? I say it with humor, but the lesson is serious. I have watched patients lose their entire savings to a clinic charging a hundred thousand dollars for miracle cells. So when I talk about genuine hope, I mean hope that survives the double-blind trial.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: -

OLIVIER GOY: I lived that too. I was on Relyvrio, the treatment the whole world dreamed of- Until the PHOENIX-Phased III results landed in my inbox one March morning.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: -

OLIVIER GOY: No effect. Better than placebo by nothing. The stock lost eighty percent that day. Over twenty years, more than fifty molecules have been tested for ALS. Real hope has to walk through that graveyard and come out standing.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: -

OLIVIER GOY: So where do I actually see it? In one word: data. Finally read with the right eyes. For decades, we had the data and not the eyes to read it. That is changing now. The most exciting work I see joins two things that used to be separate: enormous, well-organized patient cohorts and artificial intelligence powerful enough to find the patterns a human never could.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: -

OLIVIER GOY: At the Paris Brain Institute, the second-largest neuroscience center in the world, we are building a cohort of more than a hundred thousand patients followed over years, linked to hospital data on a scale never attempted. And I believe the breakthrough will not come from one country's genius. It will come from collaboration that is real, not ceremonial. That is why CURE-ND4ALS matters, uniting Paris with Germany, the United Kingdom, and Belgium, published this spring in The Lancet Neurology, and why we are now building a transatlantic bridge with Mount Sinai in New York. ALS is the same disease in Paris and in New York.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: -

OLIVIER GOY: The data should talk to each other. My honest hope is not a molecule. It is the moment those datasets finally meet and the eyes to read them are finally sharp enough.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, that's,.. I, I must tell listeners again, as I was visiting again the, the Paris Brain Research Institute on AI, it's just amazing to see, again the, the positive power of data and AI if applied well. And there's a lot of, great br- brains actually, and people and minds in terms of research and scientists in AI, technologies as well that I met with, who are cooperating with many other centers in the world on open science as well and AI to get the data to actually inform us about paths to solve that, disease in the future. So it's, it's an amazing one. Now I'd love to come back to AI because obviously you are an incredible user of AI yourself starting with the voice we are hearing right now clearly. Incredible Invincible Voice, that's the name, built with researchers of Kyutai, an open source free for patients, researchers, and healthcare organizations everywhere, reconstructed your voice from recordings made before the disease took it. You have a sentence about it the-- and this that I find magnificent: "AI did not invent my voice. It gave it back to me." And about research data, another one: "We have the data. We did not have the eyes to read it," as you just said. Now you live at the sharpest edge of what AI can do for human being, and from that vantage point, what is your philosophy of AI, you know, in a broad sense in service to humanity? What should we be racing to build, and what should we be careful never to lose?

OLIVIER GOY: I speak to you today in my own voice, and I lost that voice years ago. AI did not invent it. It gave it back to me. So forgive me if my view of artificial intelligence is not abstract. It is the most intimate thing in the world to me.

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OLIVIER GOY: Every sentence you hear is proof of what this technology can restore. That is the first half of my philosophy. We should be racing to build AI that gives back. Gives back a voice to those who lost it, gives back autonomy, dignity, the ability to say, "I love you" to your child when your body no longer can. We built Invincible Voice with the researchers of Kyutai And we made it open source, free for every patient, every researcher, every hospital on Earth. Because a voice is not a luxury product. It is a piece of a person. And on research, the same conviction. For decades, we had the data and not the eyes to read it. AI is the eyes. Turned on neurodegenerative disease, on the brain, the most complex object in the known universe, it may finally let us read what was always there. Now the second half, the warning. And it comes from the same place. I have lived at the mercy of tools. When a machine speaks for you, you learn very fast the difference between a tool that serves you and a tool that replaces you. What we must never lose is the human at the center. AI should give me back my voice, not speak in my place. It should give the researcher sharper eyes, not remove the researcher. It should compress the distance between people, not become the thing they talk to instead of each other. I am the opposite of a naive optimist here. I have seen how a promise, medical or technological, can seduce desperate people and empty their pockets. So I ask of AI what I ask of any treatment: rigor, honesty, evidence-

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OLIVIER GOY: And a clear answer to one question: Does this actually serve a human being? Race to build the tools that give back, and guard with everything we have the warmth, the connection, the love that no machine will ever replace. The voice can be rebuilt. What the voice is for cannot.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Well, this is, by far the most articulate conversation I ever had or podcast I ever listened on what AI should do for humans and society. Thank you for lighting up our minds and hearts, Olivier, in making that so personal, so intimate, and so real for people, when sometimes you hear many, you know, CEOs of those AI companies talking very artificially of what AI can do, it should do for humans. So there's another dimension I want everyone to feel, Olivier, with you, because you brought it at the center of your mission as well, art. And I think it's wonderful because it's so rarely done by entrepreneurs. And your book carries it in its, in its subtitle, "Behind the Smile: The Fight of a Life," a call to look at life and love it fully. Your film as well is, in your own words, "An ode to life and to love, beauty, laughter, a few tears as well, and a furious desire to live." And with La Fresque Généreuse, so The Generous, Fresque, I don't know actually the word in English, sorry for my international listeners, you turn generosity itself into a work of art. I know you're talking-- taking that idea to America, and it's called Invincible Hope. Tell us about Invincible Hope, a monumental mural I know on the facade of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, thousands of portraits of people taken by you, spelling out the words invincible hope, with the artistic direction of Vahram Muratyan, every face funding the AI research collaboration between Mount Sinai and the Paris Brain Institute. What does this project mean to you, Olivier, and what will it take to make it happen?

OLIVIER GOY: To understand Invincible Hope, you have to understand where it comes from. It began on a boat to Antarctica-

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OLIVIER GOY: With a simple idea: Turn generosity into a gift. Give a photograph to everyone who donates to research. That became a movement. Then it became a wall. In Paris, for the anniversary of the Paris Brain Institute, we created La Fresque Généreuse, a monumental mural on the facade of the institute-

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OLIVIER GOY: Made of thousands of faces, each one a donation to research. Generosity made visible, made beautiful, a work of art you could belong to. Invincible Hope is that idea, crossing the Atlantic. Picture the facade of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, thousands of portraits taken by me, arranged with the artistic direction of Vahram Muratyan, the designer behind Paris versus New York-

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OLIVIER GOY: Spelling out two words for the whole city to read: invincible hope. And every single face funds the AI research collaboration between Mount Sinai and the Paris Brain Institute. A wall of human faces financing the science that reads human data. The symbol and the substance are the same thing.

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OLIVIER GOY: What does it mean to me? It means I get to build one more bridge before I go Between art and science, between Paris and New York, between the people who give and the researchers who search. It is the most complete expression of everything I believe, that generosity should be joyful, that a cause should be beautiful, and that worlds which never speak finance, science, art, health care can become one team. What will it take? The same things it always takes. A great artist, and we have him. Institutions willing to say yes to something unusual- And they are leaning in. And people, many people, willing to put their face on that wall. This project is still taking shape, so I will not overpromise. But I have learned that a wall of faces has a strange power. Nobody looks away from it. And looking, really looking, is where everything begins.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Again, I think this is such a, an incredible and, and noble way of being an entrepreneur, Olivier, because I take it as a co-expression of your project, of your mission that you've been so eloquently talking about in our discussions. And because I, I believe, like you and many others, I'm sure, on this, podcast, that art, you know, is an expression of love and is a way to open hearts and minds to act and, and work on a desire, as you said before. So this is a wonderful, connection point between the world of technology, science, neuroscience, having heart at the center of it, and make it human with all those faces facing you as you, as you see them. So thanks for bringing that to all of us. Now I'd like to, to go continue the discussion a bit on leadership. You know, I've asked hundreds of leaders on this, podcast to define leadership, which is, well, a big question. CEOs, scientists, authors, change makers, activists, almost all of them answer from a position of strength, presence, voice, energy, the room turning to all them when they walk in, you know, of course, show themselves. You lead today with none of those instruments, and yet you have mobilized researchers, artists, CEOs, philanthropists, total strangers across two continents in a way that none of them could have done that. So how has this changed your definition of leadership? What have you learned about what actually moves people, now that you lead without any of the traditional tools of authority? What did you learn?

OLIVIER GOY: You are right, Jean-Philippe. I lead today with none of the classic instruments. No voice to fill a room, no stride to walk onto a stage, no energy to radiate across a table. In my old life, I had all of that. I was, the newspapers wrote, "A rolling compressor." A compressor leads by force. It moves straight ahead. It does not whimper. It flattens what is in the way. That was a kind of leadership. It worked, and I have had to unlearn almost all of it. Here is what I discovered, and it surprised me more than anyone. When you strip away every instrument of authority, what is left is the only thing that ever truly moved people, authenticity and a cause larger than yourself. I cannot dominate a room anymore, so I have to move it. Those are completely different verbs. I lead now with three things. First, a mission so clear that people can see themselves inside it. Nobody rallies to Olivier Goy. They rally to the fight against a disease, to a different gaze on disability- To research that might save someone they love. I am not the destination. I am the door. Second, vulnerability, fully visible. I cannot pretend to be invulnerable. I am in a wheelchair. I speak through a machine. My cracks are on the outside. And I have learned that people do not follow the invulnerable. They are impressed by them, and they keep their distance. They follow the human being who is in the arena, cracked and still standing. Third, generosity as a strategy. I give first. A photograph, a smile, attention- Gratitude, and it comes back multiplied. Someone once called me an influencer of kindness. I did not fully claim the title, but I will claim this. I have proof now that kindness organizes people better than fear ever did. My old leadership pushed. My new leadership pulls. And the strange truth is that from a wheelchair, unable to speak, I have mobilized researchers, artists, CEOs, and total strangers across two continents far more powerfully than I ever did standing with my full voice running a company. Weakness, it turns out, was hiding a strength I never knew I had

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: I mean, again, this is, and this is gonna be, I'm sure, a very memorable moment of our conversations, Olivier. I mean, both in a way, you talk about leadership. Funny enough, I just, posted a few weeks ago, a post celebrating, you know, three million downloads of my podcast, and I was trying to express what I learned about leadership, and I was saying exactly, I think, the word you used, which is leadership is not a destination, impact is. Positive impact is. And I think you embody so much of that. Olivier, you know, ten years of Live For Good have taught me three things about building anything that matters. One, love the problem you want to change in the world, not your solution. Two, shape your mission early because it brings clarity, purpose, and direction when everything else is uncertain. Three, build together with others the world we want to see because no one does it alone. So you have now lived two entrepreneurial lives, and the second one embodies the three lessons more completely than almost anyone I've met. So here's my question: How do you define entrepreneurship today compared to your first life? And if you are starting all over again, twenty-six years old, founding your first company, knowing what you know now, what would you change?

OLIVIER GOY: Your three lessons are exactly right, Jean-Philippe. Love the problem, shape the mission early, build together. I lived my first life half following them and my second life fully inside them. So let me answer with that contrast. In my first life, I would have defined entrepreneurship as this- Identify a closed market, find the audacity to open it, and execute relentlessly. That is not wrong. It built two companies. But there was a word missing, and the missing word was why. I was in love with building. I was less clear about what it was all for. There was ambition, recognition, a social revenge to take. Good fuel for a rocket, but noisy, and ultimately not enough to hold you when life shakes. Today, I define entrepreneurship differently. It is putting all your energy, all your creativity, all your appetite for risk at the service of a mission that matters more than you do. The tools are the same. The audacity is the same. The relentless execution is the same. What changes is the center of gravity. It moves from me to us, from succeeding to being useful. And paradoxically, it makes you stronger, not softer, because a mission larger than yourself does not get tired when you do. So what would I change if I were twenty-six again, founding my first company, knowing what I know now? I would not change the audacity. I would not change the work. I would change the order of the questions. Before what do I want to build, I would ask, "What is this for, and who is it for?" I would shape the mission first, exactly as you say, because the mission is what holds you when everything else gives way. And I would slow down just enough on one thing only: the people. I was so busy building that I sometimes flattened those around me without meaning to. I would tell young Olivier, "You can be in a hurry. Keep that, but never be in a hurry with people." In the end, the companies are tools. The people are the point. It took a disease to teach me that. I would love to have learned it while still standing.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: What you just said, Olivier, resonates so much with our Positive Leadership Podcast conversation and, and this universe of so-called mission-led organizations. I so much believe in the power of truly mission-led companies where the why starts the des-- before the destination, and why and what is the cause that we want to go after as an entrepreneur, as a nonprofit, whatever is the project of your life. Now, returning, to some of your recent interviews, Olivier, one word keeps coming back, and it's not a word we hear often from entrepreneurs or financials people. It's love. You talk about learning to slow down as well. You just said that, right? Before strength means moving forward fast. Today, you believe far more in the strength of connection, in letting yourself be traverse, traversed by emotion. You came from finance, tech, value creation. You now combine the rigor of economics in service of s-solidarity and people. Someone described your transformation beautifully, from a man of movement to a man of élan. This is a beautiful French word for our listeners, that- Is inspiring from momentum. It means really inspire momentum. The inner drive that carries others forward. From changing the world to loving the world, you want us not to confuse succeeding with fulfilling, being in accord with yourself. And you tell us to be curious about ourselves and about others, of course, as well. And you say, "Everything passes very quickly. Laugh, love, say thank you, and don't wait for a tragedy to discover what is essential." So has love become your philosophy of life, Olivier, your mantra now? And I want to push you further. What would business look like if it were built on love? If you can dream.

OLIVIER GOY: Yes, and I understand how strange that word sounds coming from a man who spent twenty years in finance. Love was not in my vocabulary.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No.

OLIVIER GOY: Movement was. Speed was. Control was above all, control. I wanted to be the owner of my own life, to dominate the elements. Love is precisely the thing you cannot control, so I kept it at a distance. The disease reversed everything. It took movement, so I discovered momentum, that inner drive the French call élan, which does not push forward but carries others along. It took control, and in exchange, it gave me the one thing worth more: presence. I have learned to slow down, to let myself be traversed by emotion instead of managing it, to take my naps in nature in Normandy and count them as achievements, not wasted time. A few years ago, I would have written an angry tweet about time lost in a hospital waiting room. Now, I know the value of simply being alive. So yes, love has become my philosophy. If by love we mean this, paying real attention to people, saying, "Thank you," saying, "I love you," not waiting for a tragedy to discover what is essential. I say it plainly now because everything passes very quickly. Laugh, love, say thank you, and do not confuse succeeding with being fulfilled, being in accord with yourself. Those are not the same thing, and I chased the first for too long before I understood the second. What would business look like if it were built on it? It would not be softer. This is the misunderstanding I want to correct. A business built on love is not naive. It is more rigorous- Because it refuses to treat people as means. It would keep the discipline of economics- And add the discipline of solidarity and discover they reinforce each other. My fund proves it in miniature. Investors who cap their own return at three percent so the surplus funds research for ninety-nine years. That is finance and generosity in the same instrument, and it works. Business built on love asks one extra question at every decision: Does this serve a human being? It costs nothing to ask, and it changes everything that follows. I ran a company the old way, and I am running a movement the new way, and I can tell you, the new way mobilizes more people more deeply than fear or ambition ever did.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Well, again, thanks so much for sharing such a, a deep lesson in life. And, you know, I was talking about those movements of mission-led companies. There's also a wave of excitement on AI, AI-first company. But I would dream of love-first companies, Olivier, listening to you, what it would look like. And I think the definition you gave, which is both the rigor of a real business in terms of economics, thoughtfulness, combined with the why of a real mission in service of others as well, and for the good of humanity, wow, that could move the world. But I think you will be a wonderful example o- of that for many entrepreneurs who are fully listening to that, to that podcast. Now, Olivier, I want to end with a conviction I carry everywhere. I believe the time has come for a new generation to rise, a generation that refuses to inherit the world passively and instead shapes the world it will live in. I see them every day at Live for Good, at SKEMA, as a chairman of that business school, but also now as a granddad with my grandson, who is twenty-two months old. And everywhere I go, I believe young people have a vital desire for impact, searching as well for the courage where to begin. So what is your call to this new generation? What advice would you give them for building their lives, their ventures, and the world that they want to see, that they want to shape by themselves?

OLIVIER GOY: To the young people listening, I want to speak simply because I do not have time to waste, and neither, though you do not feel it yet, do you First, do not wait to be legitimate. I started my first company with nine months of experience and no network, and everyone told me it was reserved for others. It was not. The door that looks locked is usually just heavy. Push it. Legitimacy is not granted to you, you take it by being useful. Do not wait for permission, that will never come. Second, love the problem, not yourself. Find the thing that makes you angry, the injustice you cannot stop seeing, and build your life around solving it. The mission will carry you through the days when nothing else can. I know because a disease put me on the floor, and it was the mission, not ambition, that pulled me back up. Third, and this is the one I learned too late, do not confuse succeeding with being fulfilled. You can win every prize and still not be in accord with yourself. Be curious about others and be curious about yourself, which is harder. Slow down enough to actually see the people beside you because in the end, you are only as strong as the love you have received and the love you have given. And last, the thing I most want you to hear, do not wait for a tragedy to discover what is essential. I needed a death sentence to learn to truly live. You do not. Everything you are waiting to do, the call to your parents, the dream you keep postponing, the person you have not thanked, do it now. Not someday, now. I am the proof that it is later than you think, and also the proof that even then, even at the very end, it is never too late to start loving your life. Aim for the moon. Even if you miss, you land among the stars. And whatever you build, build it together. Nobody does anything alone. I am living proof of that, too.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Well, Olivier, I mean, I, I couldn't dream of a, of a better closing, loving your life. Loving your life, and I strongly believe, like you, I think that each one of us, whatever is our age, by the way, the new generation as well as, you know, older people as well, you own your life, and you should be an entrepreneur of your life, and love is at the core of that mission of your life. So from the bottom of my heart, Olivier, thank you so much. You've been so generous coming all the way in a very crowded Paris I can tell the listeners, to this studio, spending time with me in the studio preparing that, podcast. I appreciate that so much. And I came into this conversation expecting to talk about courage, and you gave us something much rarer actually, and much more precious, a me- a method for loving life. And you lost your voice and made the whole world listen to you now. You were told you had three to five years, and you choose to fund science for 99. You turn finance, research, heart, technology world that never speak to each other into one team with one mission, and you remind us one of the most important thing of all, don't wait, love, love. Say thank you now to others. That is, to me, positive leadership at its most powerful. So thank you for that lesson. And to our listeners, if Olivier's story inspires you, and I'm sure that's the case for all of you, watch Invincible été, read Invincible as well, join Invincible Hope, where every portrait funds brain research on both sides of the Atlantic. And, you can also, of course, give to the Brain Institute, Brain Research Institute of AI Center in Paris, and you will find all the links, of course, in my you know, in, in the show notes of this episode. And please, and additionally, keep listening to the Positive Leadership Podcast 'cause I love having you, giving us reviews and, and sharing the way you appreciate our guests like Olivier today. Olivier, continue strength in your incredible mission. Thank you for your trust, your fight for Invincible Hope, an incredible example you lead for all of us. I'm Jean-Philippe Courtois, and this is the Positive Leadership Podcast. Until next time, stay positive, love life, love the world, and keep leading with purpose. Thank you so much. Take care, Olivier. Take care to all of you. Thanks so much from the bottom of my heart, Olivier. Merci beaucoup énormément de ta présence et de ton témoignage.