Let me start with a confession: I don’t know how to write my résumé. In corporate jargon, without fact-checking, you might think I’m just a “Bachelor’s plus crumbs” kind of guy – if you cut my thesis on Newton and Goethe’s Color Systems down to a school project, erased my master’s in the History of Science in Rabat, and conveniently forgot my other paper on Euclid’s Elements. On paper, it’s minimalist. In reality, it’s a “Bachelor’s plus I’ve-lost-count,” with rare electives like setting up one of Marrakech’s very first proper LAN gaming centers, selling temperamental video games, and configuring mIRC so entire cybercafés could get back to flirting online. Fee? Under 200 dirhams, hand over heart – and already charging below market rate.
One of my first entrepreneurial lessons came from… an unintentional scam. In 1999, I sold patches to “fix” the Y2K bug. Experts were predicting the end of the world: grounded planes, collapsing banks, clocks flashing 1900. I was ready to save the planet – for a modest fee. January 1st, 2000 came and… nothing happened. My apologies to those who paid me. But I did learn something crucial: in business, sometimes it’s easier to sell a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist than to solve a real one.
A couple of years later, between 2002 and 2007, I somehow found myself supplying computers and networks – among other things – to Atlas Blue, Morocco’s first low-cost airline. Before that, I’d already been selling them IT gear while working at a hardware company. When I launched my first business, they became ERP clients. It wasn’t a masterstroke, more a string of 11 p.m. calls, network cables in the trunk, and promises kept at the very last minute. My diploma from that period? “Urgent delivery for stressed-out clients” – with honors in “standing installation, cold coffee, and forced smiles.”
Then came general philosophy in Marrakech – first class ever, genuine guinea pig – with an official order not to get political, which I dutifully obeyed. Later, I “left it all” for Rabat and a master’s in the history of science… a story with no sequel, since the very next day I was in a short-lived salaried job before starting my first “official” company, complete with stamps, paperwork, and an accountant who sometimes looked at me like I was a kamikaze.
Less than three weeks ago, while preparing a public tender application, I got a crash course in administrative logic. Required profile: solid experience, strategic vision, proven delivery. I thought I ticked all the boxes. The verdict? My résumé was “not coherent enough” to be considered. They didn’t notice that I already managed four billion monthly page impressions across my companies, or that I’d helped launch a state-owned app in a government ministry. But it’s true… none of that was in the “formal education” section.
The truth is, entrepreneurship is a field where the MBA elite and the self-taught end up in exactly the same position: juggling the same urgencies, the same curveballs, the same end-of-month pressure. My fellow entrepreneurs – whether framed diplomas or framed team photos hang on their walls – know this well: paper isn’t the battlefield. I owe a lot to many of them, especially those with prestigious credentials, who’ve trusted me with their projects despite my… creatively non-linear background.
So whether you’re like me or nothing like me, whether you have more diplomas than power outlets in your house or the reverse, let’s share a laugh at the irony of it all. Let’s laugh at the absurdities that make us stumble or win, at the poker moves that become résumé lines, and the résumé lines that mean nothing at all. Our greatest diploma may just be the ability to laugh at it… before getting back to work.
Society loves to measure an entrepreneur’s worth in years of schooling. But what matters is what’s left after theory: taking a “no” without flinching, saving a project at 2 a.m., or pulling off a mass payroll transfer at the end of the month. And believe me, there’s a certain poetry in that click – sending, in one fraction of a second, the invisible fruits of your work to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of bank accounts. That click might be the only diploma that truly counts.
And yet there is a moment when all comparisons fade away. That shiver I felt as, alongside a few hundred dignitaries from my region, I bowed before His Majesty. And in that solemn silence, hearing a servant’s voice, on behalf of the Father of the Nation, speak those precious words: “Gal likoum Sidi, Allah yerdi 3likoum” – My Lord says: may God be pleased with you.
In that instant, I, the entrepreneur with no résumé, received the honor like a blessing, aware that my winding, inconsistent path had not kept me from standing among my own.
And then, of course, there’s the one experience we all eventually add to our résumés. The one no school teaches, no jury validates, and that humbles every ambition. One day, we all die. And that’s when the real interview begins – the one where no one asks for your degrees or your financials, but opens, at last, your life’s balance sheet.
Lazily translated with AI from the original french version.
