My story

France

After growing up in France and graduating from a Top 15 French Engineering school (ENSTBr), I moved to the UK in 1995 to obtain an MSc and PhD in Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology from the University of Sussex, Brighton.

Brandwatch

I joined Runtime Collective as employee no1 back in 2000, and went through the roles of Lead Developer, Project Manager and Product Manager until 2005, when after several pivots I took on the role of CTO. Runtime Collective became Brandwatch, the enterprise social insights company.

Cue 10 years of building and scaling an amazing Engineering team through fantastic growth. Brandwatch is now the global leader in its market and won the Europas award for Best Marketing Startup and the UKBAA award for Best Angel Exit of 2014.

Key achievements
- Led the product roadmap, architecture and development of Brandwatch Analytics, growing revenue from £0 to £10Ms
- Grew the Engineering team from 10 to 100+ staff; overall responsibility for recruitment, team structure, processes, international expansion, managing a budget of £10M+
- Completed 3 rounds of fundraising for a total of $60M

See my history of how we built Brandwatch.

Consulting CTO

From 2015 to 2021, I helped small and mid-size technology businesses in their growth, through one-off engagements, hands-on ongoing roles and lighter, monthly mentoring sessions. Successes include helping clients through their Series-A and launching award-winning, best-in-class products.

Current Projects

I currently am:

a volunteer football coach, and secretary of the wonderful Withdean Youth FC, where we help 300+ boys and girls enjoy playing football at grassroots level
curating the 5-Minute Football Coach newsletters (and previously, the 5-Minute Startup CTO)
practicing long-distance running (marathon and ultra-marathon)
more to come!