B2B SaaS · AI · DeepTech · Digital · Media · E-commerce
Europe · Asia · US — 20+ years scaling tech companies internationally
Timing beats conviction. Confidence beats timing.
In 1997, still a student, I went to Silicon Valley to see the revolution firsthand: Bell Labs, HP Labs, people ready to hire me on the spot. I didn't yet have the confidence to stay. What I brought back never left: the certainty that this kind of ecosystem was possible, and the drive to build it, through every wave since, from e-commerce to AI.
Co-founder. A decision-support platform for large industrial groups. €2.2M seed, a 5-person team, an R&D partnership with INRIA on machine learning, PoCs with industrial groups. Then the dot-com crash: the shareholders pulled the plug despite the traction. What I kept: a method, and the habit of carrying product, tech and business at once.
A chain I put to work for startups and large corporates alike, ever since.
Turned a local ad-tech platform into scalable B2B infrastructure. Having proven my own technical range — languages, databases, architecture — I took R&D on alone to build the foundations of the new platform: the first real lesson in product-led scale, what breaks first when volume triples.
€5M to €40M revenue. 21 countries in 18 months. I walked in as Director of International Development and asked to have the title changed to COO & CTO — the moment I moved from pure execution into business, product and marketing, not just tech. International scale at full speed, the operating model rebuilt in real time as the company outgrew it every quarter.
€350M revenue, 30+ countries. Started as deputy technical director; within months the mission expanded to reorganizing and optimizing the entire international operation, and the COO role at board level followed naturally. Post-M&A integration, governance, and performance structuring through a pre-IPO trajectory.
Toward the end of the Digital Virgo years, I found the same ambition I'd carried since 1997 already at work in Silicon Sentier, the association founded by Marie Vorgane Le Barzic. The structure later went private under the name NUMA.
It's at NUMA that I attend a masterclass by Eric Ries on lean startup, and confront my own track record — Kappa Valor, Kwanko, Dukan Diet, Digital Virgo — against his view of product for the first time. A little later, conversations with Strate and Schoolab expose me to Design Thinking, which I confront the same way. Out of both confrontations comes the method that has shaped my work since: technology stops pushing — it answers a real, measurable, usage-centered customer friction instead.
Every stage of the build, then years passing it on across the French tech ecosystem: NUMA for startups, Ticket for Change for social and societal entrepreneurship, Schoolab for students, and Fab Labs like La Paillasse and Usine IO for makers. Hack40 is what came out of all of it.
I co-founded it in 2015 around one conviction: deploying growth through technology, new tools and new ways of working, to accelerate how scale-ups and corporates roll out. In parallel, I co-founded Le Sentier to carry the values of that ecosystem: an open system linking tech and the smart city, where startups, corporates, public organisations and the neighbourhood's own residents test and validate new solutions together.
From there, I built and ran Hack40 as an operating platform: a network of international operators and founders, deployed on the ground to take startups into new markets and into their first enterprise accounts, across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Built the regional operating model — governance, delivery, staffing — across Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, China and India, and the institutional partnerships behind it: government agencies, incubators, accelerators and VC networks.
International scale, enterprise sales and forward deployment: I take on the hardest stretch of a startup's growth, winning its first large accounts and its first markets abroad. Each engagement below, I led personally.
Market entry beyond the home market: EU-ready product, local partners, a pipeline built on the ground.
Enterprise and channel deals with corporates, IT integrators and public agencies, negotiated end to end.
From PoC scope to live test, measured impact and first contract: the first win that makes the next ten possible.
I led the European expansion of AI video-analytics startup Cynapse AI, in parallel with its US growth through hardware partners such as NVIDIA.
With Korean public agency KITA, I sourced and qualified the needs of 100 corporates in Singapore, then brought AI startup Factagora into OCBC Bank: an AI assistant helping client advisors sell and manage ESG-related financial products. I ran the deal end to end, negotiating for both the bank and the startup.
I brought AI startup Sensfix into Alstom: a mobile digital twin for maintenance teams, built on all of Alstom's documentation, images and playbooks, to locate and repair the components the solution flags.
I opened L'Oréal to AI startups across India, Asia and the Middle East: sourced across 5 verticals through 200+ accelerators, incubators and VCs, then prepared 10 finalists to pitch, scope and contract with L'Oréal's regional teams.
Alongside the launch of Hack40, I audited tech-driven companies on behalf of their investors, and gave each CEO a technology strategy to act on.
Audit of each portfolio company, with a technology strategy proposed to every CEO.
Technology audit on behalf of the investors, Entrepreneur Venture and Bpifrance.
Today, Digital Minded is the entity through which I take interim C-level mandates and permanent executive roles.
In 1997, I saw the Silicon Valley wave before most of my generation, and still went home because I wasn't ready. Seeing the future first means nothing without the confidence to act on it. That's the gap I help founders close.
I've lived every side of it: a 2001 seed round at Kappa Valor wiped out by the crash, a Series A at Dukan Diet to fund international expansion, an IPO prepared at Digital Virgo that never happened. What I trust now: ARR, traction and proof that someone will pay, over the story alone.
Barriers to entry erode fast. The lasting advantage is a strong customer relationship and a team agile enough to adapt. Across 20+ countries, I've seen it: give field teams the freedom to find their own path to local growth, and you get scale instead of chaos.
From my series on how AI is reshaping the COO role, the customer path and capital patience.
The COO's job is shifting from protecting scale through controlled duplication to designing a portfolio of operating choices — drawing on the Dukan Diet country-launch playbook and Digital Virgo's multi-country integration work, alongside operating principles borrowed from Claire Hughes Johnson, Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Cook and Gwynne Shotwell.
Read on LinkedIn →Buyers increasingly form their shortlist through AI-mediated research before a salesperson ever enters the room. Argues most companies are still optimizing the back half of the funnel while the real decision is forming upstream — using Perplexity, the Salesforce/HubSpot comparison dynamic, and Alan as cases.
Read on LinkedIn →Capital no longer funds growth narratives it can't verify. Includes a candid account of a capital allocation decision at Dukan Diet, where dividend and e-commerce investment diverged from the coaching-engine story being told to the board — alongside Klarna, Gorillas/Getir and Mistral AI as cases.
Read on LinkedIn →Putting the raise to work: KPIs, OKRs, team design, delivery governance, and build-up strategies, from acquisition to integration.
Market entry, local partners, a pipeline built on the ground.
Enterprise sales, partnerships, forward deployment from PoC to first contract.
Ownership of results across complex, multi-country operations.
Restructuring teams and operations around AI.
One shared plan, one operating rhythm.
Corporate & startup references, supported through innovation, transformation and operator-led execution:
And 150+ B2B SaaS, AI and DeepTech startups, including:
Takes COO, General Manager or Operating Partner roles in B2B SaaS, AI and DeepTech startups and scale-ups: international scale, enterprise sales and forward deployment from PoC to first contract, operational structuring after a funding round including build-up integration, and AI transition. Backed by COO & CTO roles at Dukan Diet (€5M to €40M in 21 countries) and Digital Virgo (€350M, 30+ countries), and by the startup engagements he has led through Hack40.
A traditional COO joins one company, full-time, indefinitely. An Operating Partner takes the same operational ownership on a defined mandate, for a portfolio company or a scale-up navigating a specific inflection point.
Primarily post-Series A through Series C — companies facing international entry, post-acquisition integration, or scaling a team past the point where founder-led execution still works.
Two formats. Interim executive mandates: typically six months, renewable, contracted through Digital Minded. Permanent executive roles: COO, General Manager or corporate officer (Directeur Général), usually with equity (BSPCE). Every engagement includes direct operational ownership.
How AI is restructuring enterprise operating models — decision rights, the changing role of the COO, and the three contractions of 2026: the customer path, capital patience, and product time. Grounded in direct experience at Dukan Diet, Digital Virgo, Kwanko and Hack40.
COO, General Manager or Operating Partner in a B2B SaaS, AI or DeepTech scale-up: an interim mandate (six months, renewable) or a permanent executive role with equity.