Yvan Goudard

Yvan Goudard is a partner at Y Consulting and the author of Startup dot Comms, a practical communication blueprint for founders. His core argument is that unclear communication is rarely harmless — it wastes time, weakens trust, and hides problems that should have been addressed earlier. For Yvan, communication is not decoration or a department; it is the operating system through which a company explains itself and earns trust.

From pitch events and demo days across Southeast Asia to the quiet early hours at a table with a coffee, Yvan Goudard's work sits at the intersection of pattern recognition and practical help — driven less by certainty than by a repeated frustration with the same avoidable mistakes. In this interview with Powerful Blueprints, Yvan talks candidly about the curiosity behind his writing, the process that looks nothing like writing, and what his book circles around but never quite says out loud. Good morning, Yvan!

When did Yvan Goudard first realize he was a writer?

Yvan Goudard did not arrive at writing through a single defining moment, but came to recognize it as his natural mode of communication — the bridge between what he learns and how he helps others learn from it.

I never really had a single moment where I thought, "I am a writer." For a long time, I did not consider myself one at all. Writing was simply the way I processed what I was learning and shared it with others. When I came across an idea, a lesson, a mistake, or a pattern that felt useful, my instinct was to write it down, make sense of it, and pass it on. Over time, I realized that this was not just a habit. It was the way I naturally communicate. I think the realization came when I noticed that writing had become my default response to experience. If I learned something from working with a founder, attending a startup event, studying a company, or reflecting on my own journey, I felt the need to turn it into something useful for someone else. That is when I understood that being a writer was not necessarily about choosing a title. It was about having a constant urge to clarify, organize, and share ideas. So I did not become a writer in the traditional sense. I slowly realized I already was one, because writing had become the bridge between what I learn and how I help others learn from it too.

What was Yvan Goudard really trying to work out when he wrote Startup dot Comms?

Yvan Goudard wrote Startup dot Comms after repeatedly watching technically strong founders fail to explain what they were building in a way that was clear, simple, and convincing — and wanted to create something practical and direct to help them get the basics right.

What I was really trying to work out was why so many promising startups were making the same basic communication mistakes. I had attended many pitch events, demo days, startup panels, and founder presentations. Over time, I started seeing the same patterns again and again. Founders had interesting ideas, strong technical skills, and real ambition, but they often struggled to explain what they were building in a way that was clear, simple, and convincing. At first, I found it surprising. Some of the issues felt obvious to me: unclear messaging, confusing pitch decks, weak positioning, too much jargon, no clear audience, no simple answer to "why this matters." But then I realized that what feels like common sense to one person is often just the result of their own experience. Everyone comes to startups with different skills. Some founders are engineers. Some are product people. Some are operators. Some are first-time entrepreneurs trying to figure things out as they go. Communication may look simple from the outside, but it is a skill like any other. So the real reason I wrote Startup dot Comms was not to produce a grand theory about branding or PR. I wanted to create something practical, direct, and usable. No fluff. No abstract advice. No pretending that every startup needs a big agency strategy from day one. I wanted to help founders get the basics right: explain what they do, who they serve, why it matters, and why anyone should care. That was the real problem I was trying to solve.

What is Yvan Goudard's one-year goal?

Yvan Goudard's stated goal for the next twelve months is to build Branch Out into a consistent and useful podcast about communication in Southeast Asia.

One year from now, I would like to be held accountable for building Branch Out into a consistent and useful podcast about communication in Southeast Asia. For me, the podcast is a natural complement to Startup dot Comms. The book gives founders and communicators a strong foundation. It is structured, practical, and easy to return to when they need to think through the basics: messaging, positioning, storytelling, credibility, and trust. A podcast serves a different purpose. It allows me to explore more specific ideas, examples, trends, and conversations in a format that is easier to access in daily life. You can listen while driving, walking, cooking, or even taking a shower. That matters because useful ideas should not only live in books, reports, or long articles. They should meet people where they are. With Branch Out, I want to look at how communication actually works across Southeast Asia: how founders tell their stories, how brands build trust, how cultures shape messaging, and how ideas travel across markets. The goal is not just to launch the podcast. The real goal is to keep showing up, episode after episode, and build it into a resource that founders, communicators, and curious listeners can use to better understand the region.

What does Yvan Goudard's writing environment look like before the words come?

Yvan Goudard spends the first hour before writing settling his mind — sitting at his table with a coffee nearby, moving through notes and observations until the real point of an idea becomes clear.

Before I write anything, the first hour is mostly about settling my mind. I am usually sitting at my table with my laptop open and a coffee nearby. There is often some city noise in the background, but I need the immediate space around me to feel calm. I do not need silence, but I do need to feel that I can stay with one idea long enough to understand it properly. I usually start by looking through notes, fragments, or observations I have collected from conversations, events, or things I have read. At that stage, I am not trying to sound clever. I am trying to find the real point. What is the useful thing here? What did I actually learn? Why would this matter to someone else? The environment has to allow for that kind of honesty. No rush, no performance, no pressure to make the first sentence beautiful. The words usually come once I stop trying to "write" and start trying to explain something clearly.

How does Yvan Goudard's book-making process work from first instinct to finished draft?

Yvan Goudard's book-making process begins long before anything looks like writing — starting with repeated observations from events, conversations, and founder materials, and moving through stages of frustration, structure, rough drafting, and simplification before a finished version emerges.

For me, a book starts long before it looks like a book. It usually begins with a repeated frustration. I notice the same problem again and again, in conversations, events, pitch decks, panels, or founder stories. At first, I just take notes. Small observations. Sentences. Examples. Things people say. Things they do not say clearly enough. Patterns I cannot ignore. That part looks nothing like writing. It looks like attending events, listening carefully, asking questions, reviewing startup materials, talking to founders, and trying to understand where communication breaks down. A lot of the work happens while walking, thinking, or connecting ideas that did not seem related at first. Once the pattern becomes clear, I start organizing it. I ask myself: what is the real problem here, and what would be useful to someone trying to solve it? I do not want to write something decorative. I want the structure to be practical. So I break the idea into sections, questions, examples, and simple frameworks. Then comes the messy draft. I write quickly at first, without trying to make every sentence perfect. The goal is to get the substance out. After that, the real work begins: cutting, simplifying, moving things around, removing anything that sounds clever but does not help the reader. With Startup dot Comms, the process was very much like that. The instinct came from seeing too many startups struggle with the same basic communication mistakes. The book became my attempt to turn those repeated observations into something clear, useful, and easy to return to. By the time I reach a finished draft, the writing has gone through several stages: observation, frustration, structure, rough explanation, simplification, and refinement. The finished version may look clean, but behind it is a lot of listening, questioning, deleting, and trying to make the idea useful enough to deserve the reader's time.

What did Yvan Goudard discover while writing Startup dot Comms that genuinely surprised him?

Yvan Goudard found, while writing Startup dot Comms, that communication is far broader than most founders realize — not a department or a campaign, but the operating system through which a company explains itself, aligns its team, and earns trust in every ordinary exchange.

What surprised me most was how narrowly many people understand communication. When people hear "startup communication," they often think about pitches, marketing, PR, social media, or press coverage. I understood why, because those are the visible parts. They are the moments where communication becomes public and easy to judge. But while writing Startup dot Comms, I became more convinced that communication goes much deeper than that. At its core, communication is the exchange of information. Every time a startup shares information, it is communicating. A pitch deck is communication. A meeting is communication. An investor update is communication. A product demo is communication. A report, an email, a job description, a dashboard, a customer reply, even the way code is documented, all of it sends a message. That was the part that became clearer to me as I wrote the book. Communication is not a department or a campaign. It is the operating system through which a company explains itself, aligns its team, earns trust, and makes decisions easier for others. The surprise was realizing that many startups do not fail at communication only when they go on stage or speak to the media. They struggle with it every day, in the ordinary exchange of information between founders, teams, users, investors, partners, and the market. So the book became less about making startups sound good, and more about helping them share information in a way that is clear, useful, and understood by the people who need it.

What is the one thing Startup dot Comms approaches but never quite says directly?

Yvan Goudard's central unspoken argument is that unclear communication is rarely harmless — and that founders owe the people they want to reach a genuine responsibility to be clear, not merely polished.

The thing I would say directly is that unclear communication is rarely harmless. In startups, we often treat confusion as a normal part of building something new. Sometimes it is. But too often, unclear communication wastes people's time, weakens trust, slows teams down, and hides problems that should have been addressed earlier. A confusing pitch is not just a bad pitch. It may reveal that the founder has not fully understood the customer. A vague website is not just a weak website. It may prevent the right people from seeing the value of the product. A poor investor update is not just an administrative issue. It can damage confidence. A messy internal message can send a team in five different directions. So if there is one thing Startup dot Comms circles around, it is this: communication is not decoration. It is responsibility. If you want people to believe in your idea, work with you, invest in you, buy from you, or follow you, then you owe them clarity.

What is it about Yvan Goudard that gets lost between who he is and how his work gets read?

Yvan Goudard is frequently read as writing from certainty, when in fact most of his work begins with a question he has not fully answered yet — driven by curiosity, repeated observation, and a desire to name patterns that feel useful, not to declare fixed answers.

Something people almost never get right is that they sometimes read my work as if it comes from certainty. Because I write about communication, branding, startups, and strategy, people may assume I have a fixed answer for everything. But a lot of my writing actually comes from questioning things. I am often trying to understand why something works, why something fails, or why people keep missing the same point. I am not writing from a place of "I know better." I am usually writing from a place of "I have seen this pattern enough times that it may be useful to name it." That distinction matters to me. What can get lost is the curiosity behind the work. I am not interested in communication as a way to sound polished or impressive. I am interested in it because it reveals how people think, how teams align, how trust is built, and where misunderstandings begin. So if people only see the finished article, post, or chapter, they may miss the part before it: the listening, the doubt, the frustration, the observation, and the attempt to make sense of something that felt important but not yet clear. My work may look structured by the time people read it, but it usually starts with a question I have not fully answered yet.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Yvan!

Frequently Asked Questions about Yvan Goudard

Who is Yvan Goudard and what does he do?

As a partner at Y Consulting, my work sits at the intersection of communication strategy and startup growth across Southeast Asia. I wrote Startup dot Comms after years of attending pitch events, demo days, and founder panels and repeatedly seeing the same basic communication mistakes go unaddressed. My interest in communication goes well beyond branding or PR — I see it as the operating system through which any company explains itself, earns trust, and aligns its team. I also write and speak regularly on how founders, brands, and communicators can share ideas more clearly and usefully across the region.

What is Yvan Goudard's book Startup dot Comms about?

After years of watching technically strong founders struggle to explain what they were building in clear, convincing terms, I wrote Startup dot Comms as a practical, direct communication blueprint for startup founders. The book covers the basics that often get overlooked: messaging, positioning, storytelling, credibility, and building trust with the people who matter to your business. My aim was to create something with no fluff and no abstract advice — something founders could actually return to when they need to think through a specific communication problem. The core argument running through the book is that unclear communication is rarely harmless; it wastes time, weakens trust, and hides problems that should have been surfaced earlier.

What is Yvan Goudard's approach to the writing process?

Having spent years working with founders and attending startup events across Southeast Asia, my writing process starts long before anything looks like a book or article. Most of the real work happens in the observation phase — attending events, listening carefully, taking small notes, collecting examples, and waiting until a pattern becomes impossible to ignore. Once the pattern is clear, I organize it into practical sections and frameworks, then write a fast messy draft focused on getting the substance out rather than perfecting sentences. The final stage is where most of the effort goes: cutting, simplifying, moving things around, and removing anything that sounds clever but does not actually help the reader. By the time a piece looks clean, there has been a lot of listening, questioning, and deleting behind it.

What is Yvan Goudard's biggest insight about startup communication?

After writing Startup dot Comms and working closely with founders across the region, my biggest insight is that most startups understand communication far too narrowly. People tend to think of it as pitches, marketing, or press coverage — the visible, public moments. But communication is really the exchange of information in every direction: a meeting, an investor update, a product demo, an internal email, even the way code is documented all send a message. The real problem is not that startups fail on stage; it is that they struggle with communication every day, in ordinary exchanges between founders, teams, users, and investors. That is the gap I wrote the book to help close.

What is Yvan Goudard's goal for the Branch Out podcast?

Having written a structured foundation for startup communication in Startup dot Comms, my goal with Branch Out is to build a companion resource that works in a completely different format and context. The podcast is designed to explore how communication actually works across Southeast Asia — how founders tell their stories, how brands build trust, how cultures shape messaging, and how ideas travel across markets. I see the podcast as something people can access while driving, walking, or cooking, because useful ideas should meet people where they are, not only in books or long articles. The real measure of success for me is not the launch itself, but showing up consistently, episode after episode, and building something that founders and communicators across the region can genuinely use.

What does Yvan Goudard say people consistently misread about him?

After writing across communication, branding, and startup strategy for years, the thing people most often get wrong is reading my work as if it comes from a position of certainty. I am not writing from a place of "I know better" — I am writing from a place of "I have seen this pattern enough times that it may be useful to name it." What tends to get lost is the curiosity and doubt that sit behind every finished piece: the listening, the frustration, the attempt to make sense of something that felt important but not yet fully clear. My work may look structured by the time it reaches a reader, but it almost always starts with a question I have not completely answered yet.