She couldn’t be there physically, but even from a distance, Fiji Simo captivated the audience. From its screen, the CEO of Instacart, now a manager at Openai, spoke to the 2025 HEC promotion, not to tell its professional success, but for Demystify what to do with it when you do not enter any box.
Because all his speech is based on the idea that it is possible to build a professional career without pedigree, without connections. Sometimes it is enough to start with Bring your own chair to a table where no one is waiting for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbiwd9xzoo4
The tone is set from the first sentences, Fiji Simo remembers his arrival at HEC, a fisherman’s daughter, with an accent from the south of France, in an amphitheater where students talk about the professions of their parents. A codification that she does not know, and we make her feel, but she does not resign herself and decides to invent her own story.
This common thread, it unrolls it with consistency, not to be satisfied with the already open boxes, not to ask for authorization to exist, but to build, and often, rebuild a path from what you are.
When it comes, Facebook refuses it. Too “strategy”, not enough “build”, that it doesn’t hold it, she infiltrates elsewhere, postulates a marketing position, invents a false product, creates her slides, her launch plan, her visual prototype. No one asked him. But that is precisely what will make the difference in his candidacy. Do more than what is expected, because the diploma alone guarantees anything.
A chronic disease that sometimes prevents him from walking or standing? It does not make it inevitable, but a starting point for a medical research project. A market that doubts the delivery of post-Cavid races? She straightens Instacart in two years, taking all analysts back. A tech sector which doubts an too feminine, too French, too “out of frame” CEO? She takes it from the front, and wins.
During her speech, she speaks of creation, in the deep sense of the term, Create your career, create your tools, create a link, And above all, create for others. His motorcycle is to give back, giving chances, like others have given him. Detecting potential before it is visible, as Mark Zuckerberg did with it, power only makes sense if it is redistributed.
And then there is this moment when she evokes the AI, without squander or panic, just a simple truth, the tools are there, and they are powerful. But they don’t think about you, they don’t decide the world you want to build. What we will do with this intelligence will be determined by Our choices, our projects, and our courage.
In an unstable world, where models vacillate, where certainties collapse, The only thing you can still have really is its ability to create. A particularly inspiring speech which is intended for everyone.
