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This Week Is Going to Be a Good One
—Another French Guy, Another North Star, and Why Your Strategy Is Probably Still Lost in the Desert
This week is going to be good. No, seriously.
We’ve got Jean-Marc Papin of Horizon Media on The ADOTAT Show, and yes, he’s French. That makes two in a row. It’s not a conspiracy. I’m not slowly turning ADOTAT into a Cannes afterparty. But I’ll admit: if I hear one more perfect pronunciation of “programmatique,” I might start demanding baguettes with my show notes.
Jean-Marc has one of those North Stars that sounds so lofty, you almost want to roll your eyes—until you realize he actually means it. He’s out here trying to save the planet through adtech. And no, that’s not code for planting a tree every time someone clicks a pre-roll. He’s talking carbon-aware bidding, sustainable infrastructure, and the kind of operational rethink that makes most holding companies break out in hives.
But what got me wasn’t just the ambition—it was the clarity. The absolute laser-focus on why he’s doing what he’s doing. That kind of mission isn’t just branding fluff; it’s what separates leaders from overfunded deck jockeys.
Which brings me to this week’s spiritual detour: Tisha B’Av, the Jewish national day of mourning, fasting, and serious reflection on destruction—of both temples and dreams. Two thousand years ago, Jerusalem burned. The Temple was gone. Exile began. But what did we do? We got a North Star.
Literally.
We still pray three times a day to return to that place, that idea. Not just physically, but spiritually. That clarity? That longing? That’s what keeps an identity alive for millennia.
Most startups can’t even stay focused for two sprints.
Let’s cut to the uncomfortable truth:
Most companies today have no idea what their North Star is.
They throw around phrases like “customer-centric,” “data-driven,” and “AI-powered” like they’re incense in a WeWork chapel, hoping one of them will magically transform into strategy. Spoiler: it won’t.
A North Star is not your quarterly OKR.
It’s not your brand book.
And it’s definitely not that “vision slide” you show investors before pivoting again two weeks later.
It’s the one metric, the one idea, that everything else orbits around. It tells your team, your customers, and your shareholders: this is what we exist to do, and this is how we know we’re doing it.
Jean-Marc’s North Star? Carbon reduction through smarter ad delivery.
Yours? Judging by your last press release, something something “empowering engagement at scale.” Translation: you have no idea.
Here’s the litmus test:
If every person on your team—from your head of growth to your HR intern—can’t say what your North Star is in five words or less, you don’t have one. You have a slogan. And slogans don’t scale.
Netflix has one: subscriber growth.
Airbnb? Nights booked.
Meta? Monthly active users (and the ability to quietly melt democracy while doing it).
They didn’t choose those because they were flashy. They chose them because those metrics are sacred. If they go up, value is being delivered. If they go down, the sky is falling.
Want to find yours? Here's your five-step crash course:
1. Kill your buzzwords. If your "mission" sounds like it came from a Wordcloud of TED Talks, start over.
2. Ask what your customers would actually miss if you disappeared. Not you. Them.
3. Choose a single, measurable metric that reflects that core value. One. Not seven. Not a weighted dashboard. One.
4. Make sure your team can actually move that number. If they can’t, it’s a vanity metric in lipstick.
5. Preach it. Everywhere. If you’re not talking about your North Star in every meeting, every brief, every board update—you’re already lost.
Jean-Marc gets it. His whole model is built around it. And whether or not you think adtech can save the planet (spoiler: it might not, but it could try harder), his clarity is what every founder should be aiming for.
Tisha B’Av reminds us what happens when you lose your center. When purpose collapses and what you thought was permanent turns out to be fragile. The only thing that survives? A vision worth holding onto. A direction you don’t abandon—no matter how many empires fall, market cycles tank, or Series C rounds ghost you.
So take a lesson from Jean-Marc. Take a page from 2,000 years of spiritual resilience. And maybe—just maybe—stop pretending your weekly active users graph is a vision. It’s not.
Your North Star isn’t about where you’re trending.
It’s about where you refuse to stop going.
Stay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.
