Adrien Aumont — So it’s official: we’re at the end of March 2023 and the ROSCO has let us go. It's a blow. A proper blow. But it’s not game over. We're not quite on the ground yet. We still have the hotel giant and investment giant up our sleeves. We’re still waiting for their letters of interest, which would enable us to withstand this shock. It’s mighty painful and comes at the worst time. However, we try to stay positive. We mustn’t forget that these are two huge names. One is a household name and the other is one anyone in corporate finance would know and respect. If they commit, we’d hope to find another ROSCO, an infrastructure fund or another entity to buy and lease assets to us. There are reinvented night trains patiently waiting to be manufactured in a workshop in Eastern Europe, after all.
Romain Payet — As Adrien explained, the timing of the ROSCO’s withdrawal is catastrophic. It’s important to understand that fundraising is momentum. It’s a time-restricted window in which everything depends. The best way to conclude is announcing as much good news as possible to reassure everyone. Because good news tends to generate other good news. A trusted partner is one who moves forward and a partner who moves forward is a partner who announces good news. Steps are taken, with decision-makers voting positively, issuing letters of interest, speaking approvingly about you to those around them and so on. And then, at the end (we hope) funds are released.
The only problem is that this momentum is unique. If we can’t move things forward, the momentum stops in its tracks. In any case not in this way, in these incredible conditions, nor with this extraordinary team. Except that we have bad news to tell our two giants: our plans for March 28th 2023. They’re reassuring and tell us that it doesn't matter, that we will find solutions together and that the ROSCO was only part of the equation. It didn’t all rest on them, which is both true and false. We can survive without the ROSCO, but bad news a few days before the end of a fundraiser never comes without consequences.
Nicolas Bargelès — The result was instant. At the beginning of April, the management company let us go. At the very last moment, at the final investment committee, in which all partners vote by a majority to determine the future of a company. Is it because too many people back budget airlines, rather than night trains? Maybe. Did the consulting firm they hired to help them influence the decision? Maybe also yes. Was it because these experts were too cautious about our model’s potential? Also a possibility. We’ll never know for sure.
Finally, since bad news never comes in isolation, the hotel group lets us go too. Two days later. As with the ROSCO, we’ll only find out why at a later date. It’s a story of an organisation’s inner workings and an unfortunate shift within it. To put it simply, we were placed under the supervision of the wrong person. From a boss who prefers his teams to focus on the hotel business rather than on subsidiary activities. A small consolation prize all the same, we know that those we interacted with genuinely wanted to get involved.
Adrien Aumont — To say that it’s a tough pill to swallow would be an understatement. We barely have time to acknowledge the crushing blow of the first giant before the second hits us. Just when everything was taking shape, now everything seems to be collapsing around us. The news is all the more difficult to take because it’s unexpected. Perhaps we were a little too sure of ourselves with the infrastructure fund, but this time we had good reasons to believe in it. We have completed the investment protocols. The investment bank believed in Midnight Trains wholeheartedly and had financed projects much more complex than ours. It was sure we were going to succeed. But everyone gave up on us.
Now we have to announce this to our strategic committee. The one we've brought so much good news to lately. Here’s hoping they still trust us, because we’re running out of cash.
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