I am from Toulouse, married and have a two year old son. After having studied and lived in Paris for 10 years, we recently moved to Evian, on the shores of lake Geneva. After the successive lockdowns we made the choice of working fully remotely. Being a fan of mountaineering and sailing I don't regret my choice!
I have an engineering degree in material physics and chemistry... so I’m starting out very far from Tech! As it was not my calling, I did a masters at Sciences Po. And at the end of this master's degree, instead of doing what 99% of my class did and go to work in a bank or in consulting, I started an entrepreneurial venture with a friend.
We created our startup, and since we were pretty geeky, we developed our own web app. That's how I got into web development and I learned on the job how to program, build a site and start a business. It was very stimulating intellectually. Mostly, I preferred to interview, understand my users and design an experience tailored to their needs. Looking back, I made a lot of mistakes that I'm a little ashamed of now, and even though it didn't work out in the end, I was hooked.
Then I discovered that the Product Manager job was exactly what I liked about entrepreneurship, so I joined PrestaShop, then Drivy and Qonto. The key criteria for me was the company's mission and the positive impact it has on society.
When Vincent contacted me and described the problems Welii is addressing, it immediately resonated with my scale-up experiences. Welii's mission, which is to give back the power to companies against SaaS vendors, appealed to me. And as the first Product Manager, I'm back to the entrepreneurial adventure of my early days!
It's someone whose role is to make sure that the product or service you build meets the expectations of your customers. One of the lessons I learned from my very first experience is that there is nothing worse than building a beautiful product... that nobody uses. So I have to make sure that we build solutions that meet real needs of our customers and prospects. In other words, I answer the "why" question while the designers or developers answer the "what" and "how" questions.
So you have to be curious and versatile enough to be able to talk to many different types of clients, whether they are IT managers, financial directors or buyers, but also internally to be able to coordinate and prioritize business, tech and design efforts.
What stimulates me in this job is to see the impact we have on our users' problems as well as to bring together a team with various expertises for the same purpose.
My son, of course.
And professionally, I'm very proud to have been the product manager of the Bookings team at Drivy. With a team of people with different backgrounds in tech, design, data and business, we managed to create a 100% mobile car booking experience, which tripled the usage of the app and changed the habits of the renters. It was very energizing!
There is of course no typical day but my week systematically includes 4 or 5 interviews with clients or prospects. It's essential to discover needs and collect feedback, by testing prototypes for example. I also spend time with engineers to design solutions to the problems I have prioritized. Then I document the specifications and assist the developers in the execution, in order to make arbitrations and test new features or improvements.
As we are in the first phase of growth, I also sometimes take on a more operational or marketing role, in order to share the knowledge I have acquired in my previous experiences.
Of course, it's a very challenging job, which requires a good dose of organization, autonomy and initiative. But on a daily basis, the work atmosphere is relaxed and friendly. I find that one of Welii's assets is the culture of trust and transparency. Everyone is at the same level of knowledge on the performance of the business and on the strategic decisions.
Finally, we regularly meet in Paris to share a raclette party or have a few drinks at the café Lorette, our second HQ ;)
I want to see a rapid growth of the business, not only with new customers but also with our historical customers. On the product side, it will be exciting because we will cover new use cases for a wide range of users, to make the identified savings opportunities more and more actionable. The way we collect, process and structure our data will also be key to success.
The night of my wedding proposal I got my car stuck in a ditch. Nothing too serious, except that it was the 31st of December, at 11pm, on a very small country road near Tromso in Norway, at -10°C. I was desperate to spend the New Year's Eve waiting for a tow truck... Fortunately, a local helped us and we could see the fireworks and the Northern Lights just in time. And she said yes :)
That it is a unique opportunity to be part of a startup in its early stages of development, on a SaaS procurement market in full creation. Each employee has a direct impact on customer satisfaction and business growth. This gives the opportunity to learn and progress continuously.
Finally, Welii's mission to empower companies in their negotiations with SaaS vendors is very exciting. The SaaS market lacks transparency, and vendors take advantage of this to impose their prices and conditions. With Welii, we're shifting the balance of power by revolutionizing the way companies buy software.
Shadow IT is present for a company of any size and we always identify 3x more tools than our customers thought. If you spend less than $400k annually on SaaS tools, we'll identify fewer saving opportunities than a client who spends millions, but we'll help you quickly implement a data-driven buying strategy to prevent this wasteful situation from occurring and keep you focused on your business.
The security of your data is our primary concern. Which is why we have taken appropriate measures to protect your business.
You are free to add any budget owners or anyone involved in SaaS purchasing to streamline your procurement buying process at no additional cost to our platform.
Managing users and identities is a separate business that we don’t do. However, to bring you value and help you with this process, we have partnered with industry leaders like Okta and Auth0 so that we can help you in your Zero Trust Identity process.
We have developed a simple and intuitive solution allowing you to analyze all your SaaS inventory data through dashboard and dynamic list views based on search criteria and filters.
Spendesk is an enterprise expense management solution that allows all employees to pay for SaaS tools. Welii will provide you with insight and support to help you optimize your spending, add leverage to your negotiations, and remove the headaches associated with SaaS purchasing.
