Laurent Cerveau

🚀 Attending @VivaTech, it's always a feast for the eyes (and ears 😅). With Olivier Mathiot we discussed the development of Back Market 10 years later. Challenging panel title... : "BUILDING A RESPONSIBLE STARTUP!" *🔍 How did it start ?* Working for Neteven I discovered the passion and expertise of refurbishers and got mind-blown by the potential for giving tech a second life. The car market was already doing it... why not extending this philosophy to #Tech products ? That's where Quentin Le Brouster and Vianney Vaute were crazy enough to take part in this incredible adventure as co-founders. Ten years later, millions of people joined the refurbishing revolution. We are in 18 countries. 🌎 Our #impact is getting global. And we operate with an amazing team of 700 Back Makers. Our scale, market depth, and quality-price algorithm promote responsible tech use for over 10 million consumers, supporting refurbishers worldwide. "Small is beautiful," but "big is useful" when aiming for change. *🎢 Highs and lows... are part of the journey* Starting from scratch meant : - Building Trust: Ten years ago, refurbishing was unknown. We aimed to create more than a trusted brand: a movement. - Changing Perceptions: Proving that second-hand isn't second-best but the best option was a challenge. We wanted to turn skeptics into advocates. - Diversity: A diverse and inclusive team drives innovation and creativity. That is the focus of our recruitment strategy. I think about those who were part of this journey. They built what Back Market is today. A force for good. And we want to keep it that way moving forward. *🧐 Asked by Olivier what were my tips for Entrepreneurs...* - Make sure your business is impactful by design. Really. Don’t fake it. - Make sure to surround yourself with great people with skills that you don’t have. trust them then. Starting with your business associates. Complementary backgrounds are key to make the magic happen. And make sure they are fun or you will get bored😅 #VivaTech #BackMarket #Sustainability #Entrepreneurship #GlobalImpact #TechInnovation

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Delete your emails. All of them. But not one by one. Open the email management console for the whole team and click on DELETE. Precise, efficient. At least 100 GB purged. According to Ademe (Ademe is the French agency for Ecological Transition), you'll have saved at least 1 Kg of CO2. ... that is, if the entire team continues to operate without an alternative solution for ONE YEAR, of course. No emails. Not ever. Use nothing instead. It's not easy, is it? Alternatively, to be even more effective: the next time you want beef, don't have any. A single meal without beef is equivalent to 7 kg of CO2 not released into the atmosphere.  It's 7 times more effective. For an "effort" of just 30 minutes. --- Of course, if you want to delete e-mails, but ESPECIALLY if you want to unsubscribe from numerous mailing lists so that you no longer receive them, don't hesitate to do so. But if you can spare 3 hours for digital housework, you also have 3 hours to think about your eating habits and try to reduce your consumption of beef, or even meat altogether. Thank you 🙏 #DigitalCleanUpDay #DigitalCleanUpWeek

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[🎬 Replay of the keynote of Stanislas Niox-Chateau, CEO and Cofounder of Doctolib, at the Adopt AI #Summit by Artefact] on Building the healthcare we all dream of, thanks to AI. 👉 Watch and get inspired by Stanislas Niox-Chateau on the Vision stage: https://lnkd.in/eWRQdsJZ 📖 Read the REPORT of Adopt AI with the replays & synthesis of all CEOs keynotes & key discussion panels: https://lnkd.in/e8yj2CeN 💼 After a severe back injury ended his tennis aspirations, Stanislas pivoted to academics, graduating from HEC School of Management. He co-founded Doctolib in 2013, which quickly became a leader in #ehealth across Europe, dramatically improving how patients connect with #healthcare providers. The platform serves 380,000 healthcare professionals and attracts 80 million patient visits each month. Key insights from the keynote of the CEO of Doctolib: ✔ Niox-Chateau envisions a future where healthcare professionals have access to patient #data in the right context, enhanced #medicalknowledge, and more time for #patientcare. He emphasizes the importance of simple, smart tools to enable preventive care. ✔ He believes that technology can transform how practitioners innovate in their daily work, allowing general practitioners and specialists to treat more patients and handle broader #clinicalcases efficiently. ✔ AI and technology can transform passive, traditional consultations into more dynamic, engaging experiences, benefiting both professionals and patients. Digital #healthstartups play a crucial role in this evolution. ✔ Niox-Chateau emphasizes that technology should be easy to use and have a significant impact on the daily lives of healthcare professionals. #AI can amplify these changes, opening up new possibilities. ✔ At the outset, AI will support practitioners with administrative tasks, ensuring transparency and reducing the possibility of mistakes, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency of #healthcareservices. ✔ Niox-Chateau concludes by reinforcing the potential of technology and AI to change the lives of patients and professionals, encouraging the audience to embrace these innovations for a better healthcare future. 🗣 “I believe technology, amplified by AI, can have a systemic impact on health and the lives of professionals. We dream of healthcare professionals with patient data in the right context, enhanced medical knowledge, and more time for patient care, enabled by smart and simple tools for preventive care,” says Stanislas Niox-Chateau. 👉 Watch all the replays of the Adopt AI Summit: https://lnkd.in/eDxHcR47 📅 Save the date - on November 21st, join us at the AI for Health Summit at STATION F in Paris, where Doctolib will be present to explore the future of healthcare technology! ⚕ You can already book your pass: https://lnkd.in/ej3pUNa7 

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📣 At SpendHQ we like "boring technologies" like Ruby on Rails, but moreover we do like "interesting developers" like Guillaume Briday who are passionate in their field! ❓ Did you know that Guillaume was not only an expert in monolithic web application development, but also the founder of what he calls "Monolithic Tap Dancing"? The new popular approach to perform 👞 Tap Dance 👞 inspired from Web development best practices 😅 🎥 Learn more about it in my dedicated episode about Guillaume! (🇬🇧 English subtitles available 🇬🇧) #tapdance #rubyonrails

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It's hard to believe that this week marks 15 years since Alexis Fogel, Jean Guillou, Bernard Liautaud, Emmanuel Schalit and I launched Dashlane. In the beginning, it was a school project at CentraleSupélec, with just a few of us working in a cold, windowless printing shop in the basement of the ESCP Business School, trying to create something that would make users' digital lives easier. When we first set out, we weren't looking to create a password manager. Our first idea was a virtual personal assistant which would automate tasks online such as monitoring your bank account or making purchases. As we were working on different prototypes, we realized that we had to be very focused in order to do one thing well, instead of many things poorly. We also realized that the tasks we wanted to automate all started with authentication, so we eventually honed in on password management. This netted us $5M in Series A funding. This was a lot back then, or at least we thought. In those early days, the pace of work was frenetic. We were coding from morning until night, and on weekends. We pushed a lot of code to production at once, and things broke. But it's that pace of innovation which allowed us to get to where we are today. Through the years, three people with interns in a cold basement turned into 30 people having pizza at the office most days, then into 150 people celebrating our 10th year anniversary. Fast forward to today, there are more than 300 Dashlaners working to deliver the credential security that every business and employee needs to thrive. We’ve now grown to secure the credentials - passwords, passkeys, and secrets - of more than 23,000 organizations and millions of consumers. We’ve taken the lessons learned from our consumer heritage to provide the workforce fast and secure access to applications, and to give IT admins tools for proactive breach protection. We're also leading the push towards confidential computing use in credential management, and are deeply involved in building a passwordless future. Credential management has evolved into so much more than facilitating good password hygiene. Attacks targeting the user are growing in both frequency and sophistication, and so organizations today are recognizing that credential security is not a nice-to-have, but a foundational part of their tech stack. We've only begun to explore what's possible in our space. There's more coming soon. Happy birthday, Dashlane!

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I comment I made on a thread of Benjamin White's received some love: "If you're looking for a freelancer to write shoehorned history/LegalTech analogies, Benjamin White, I daresay I could have a go! Eleanor of Aquitaine: M&A deal where the acquired party brought a hell of a lot to the table but was left languishing alone by the new owner Roman Republic: a plucky startup takes on and swallows up all-comers until it becomes a juggernaut that loses momentum, disintegrates and is picked apart by ravaging outsiders. PE asset stripping? Visigothic and Ostrogothic kingdoms East India Company: Alternative Government Service Provider. Does the same work as government, operates factories, and works solely for corporate profit." Once I've finished the draft of my next novel and have sent it out to beta-readers I'll knew a new creative project to keep me sane. Who'd read a tongue-in-cheek look at history through the eyes of a Tech Bro?

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⚽️ Today I learned from Nathan K. that Real Madrid and French national team player Aurélien Tchouaméni has created a new interview series called "The Bridge." It's clearly inspired by LeBron James' "The Shop," where LeBron and Maverick Carter host debates and frank group discussions with celebrities while sitting in barbershop chairs. That series started on HBO in 2018 and now continues on YouTube. "The Bridge" is essentially Tchouaméni's own interview show, a group discussion with leading public figures. Episode 1 came out four months ago and features a one and a half hour group discussion on life with Thierry Henry, Francis Ngannou, Khatia Buniatishvili & Steven Bartlett. The show is produced by Excellence Sports Nation (ESN), who represent Tchouaméni and other athletes. I can't tell whether this is meant to be just content marketing for the agency but there's huge potential to turn this show into IP the same way that "The Shop" has grown and commercialized. Seeing Tchouaméni take on an ambitious media content project is fantastic. As a professional athlete, you're in constant need of diversifying your career and Tchouaméni doesn't have the luxury of endless brand deal offers like a Ronaldo or Messi. This unique content helps Tchouaméni build his own personal brand and a lot of positive comments on the first video indicate that he's winning over new fans, myself included! Tchouaméni is a fantastic player but you wouldn't really categorize him as one of the best or most famous athletes in the world. What I've seen from this show is that Tchouaméni has more humour, charisma, and boldness than many other players more famous than him. If Tchouaméni and ESN want to take this further, they could build and commercialize "The Bridge" into a real big content format. This content would be attractive for brands looking to connect with football fans, young audiences, and diaspora groups around the world. This kind of long form strategic content is a much more powerful way for influencers and athletes to connect with audiences rather than one-off endorsements or blithely putting their names on products. Tchouaméni isn't just being paid to read off lines but he's essentially a co-creator and co-producer that guides the content with his own personal touch. This content opportunity exists for all types of athletes and influencers who have deep connections to culture. I expect to see many many more examples of talent building their own strategic long form content that authentically captures the attention of young audiences. #media #content #entertainment #sports #interviews #football #soccer #marketing https://lnkd.in/e6pUH2wR

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There a fewer and fewer public companies.  They were +8000 in the US in 1996 and are now only 4642.  That’s down 43%. How did this happened? You can explain this in many ways :  The regulation makes it increasingly difficult for a company to IPO VC & PE have be on the rise for the last decade Acquisitions are also on the rise. To give you a snapshot : 870 publics companies were acquired by one of the magnificient seven (google, apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia) And what’s the consequence? More and more companies, facing difficulties by IPO are drawn to VC & PE were there are more and more investors. Even though the private market lack transparency and available data, VC and PE firms have been working on tools to obtain data in ordre to make better investment décision. It’s the case for Earlybird or EQT Ventures. And also a lot of start-ups that are now working to create tools to help VC in their decision making process. So now the question is : will private markets one day have a sufficient data level for investors to make as informed decision as they would in public markets ? On my side I truly believe that in the upcoming years, we'll see the first quants VC. If you want to read some more : https://lnkd.in/eKFZuyeE

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Open Source is the most effective collaboration model we have where competitors and unrelated needs come together to build the future.

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The Lean Secret to Crafting Irresistible Products... Thrilled to announce that I've been featured in the new book "Build to Sell: Meshing Lean Engineering with Modern Product Management" by Caroline Besnard Flavian Hautbois and Sandrine Olivencia ! 🎉 This game-changing guide is packed with insights and strategies for creating captivating products that connect with users on an emotional level. From emotion-centric design to performance-based product development, this book covers it all. As the CTO of Echo Analytics, I'm honored to be recognized alongside other industry leaders and innovators. This book is a testament to the power of meshing lean engineering with modern product management to create products that not only work but captivate users. If you're looking to take your product development skills to the next level, I highly recommend checking out "Build to Sell". It's a must-read for anyone looking to bring a new product concept to life, scale up a promising product, or revitalize an existing one. Thank you to Caroline Besnard Flavian Hautbois and Sandrine Olivencia for including me in this transformative journey. I can't wait to see the impact this book will have on the tech industry! #newbook #productdevelopment #leanengineering #productmanagement Taktique https://lnkd.in/eMa-F3k4

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🎉 I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my very first tool website : "Rohlfatools" I know its very normal but for me it is very exciting. 🌟 What makes this announcement even more exciting? Well, I'll tell you: I built this entire platform without a single line of code! That's right, zero coding knowledge, yet I've managed to create something truly remarkable. I have created three tools here which are: Summarizer, Word Counter and Image Compressor, these tools are very common but I made this for testing, hope it works properly. 🌐 So, what are you waiting for? try this now and don't forget to send me a feedback link is here 💁‍♂️ tools.rohlfa.com #Testimonials #NoCode #UserExperience #Authenticity #CommunityBuilding #rohlfatools #wordpresswebsite #wordpresstool #Chatgpt #toolwebsite #webdevelopment

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As AI-generated code becomes increasingly mainstream, should we be worried about code quality? This was the theme of the panel I took part this week hosted by the Software Craftsmanship Community at Trainline . Hosted by Maciej Kowalski it included myself, Sandro Mancuso, Jean-Marie Ferdègue and Adam Tornhill who also showcased this really cool AI assistant he has developed which automates code quality by picking the best FM for the job depeding on the context of the code before spitting out suggestions. These are my main thoughts on some discussions we had: 1/ Can we trust AI to output good code?The importance of code quality is no more or less with AI-generated code than it ever was with human pre-generated code making its way into software either through refactoring tools, code snippet libraries or stack overflow copy/paste. If anything shouldn't our trust increase considering that AI suggestions are the product of millions of lines of code that have been parsed rather than someone's take on it which may have been upvoted by a couple of people? Either way, a comprehensive automated testing strategy can offset those risks. 2/ Are we losing control? The more code is generated by AI the more it may seem like we're dealing with blackboxes that we either don't know much about or don't spend enough time reasoning about. However, has this not been the case for the longest time? Node.js, python, net ...they all have their package managers and it has become an intrinsic part of development to npm something into your code and watch the lonnnng list of code that you're pulling into your codebase without that level of caution. Again, the issue of governance, compliance and security is solved by various independent solutions, though, of course, the origin of the code could play a part in the rules depending on your requirements 3/ As devs use more AI assistants, will they lose their skills? Did we stop learning about code when we moved on from programming on the mainframe console to notepad to an IDE with autocompletion and the bells and whistles? nope. We just keep on moving up the abstraction layers and learning about the things we need to learn for our time leaving the deeper exploration for experts who want to specialize. that's normality in every field. AI assistants like Amazon Q Developer prove that AI coding assistants are not one dimensional. You can ask it to summarize what a code file or the whole project loaded in the IDE does, ask it to generate code and explain along the way teaching you concepts, theory and best practices. You can even ask it to benchmark the code so you can select the most performant. So the possibilities are all there, it's just a question of allowing time for us as developers to adapt to them until AI coding assistants like Amazon Q become just part of our normal developer flow.

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We’re so excited to reveal the newest startup within our portfolio: meet Tandem 🚲 Cofounded by Christophe Barre (CEO) and Manuel Darcemont (CTO), Tandem is designed to help your users get the most out of your product, effortlessly. An AI-powered personal assistant that lives within apps, it guides users to effortlessly discover, set up, and utilize the features they need, on screen - just like a human would. High churn and drop-off rates plague SaaS tools because teams lack the time and resources to deeply understand and cater to all their users' needs. The result is a great product, but it's underused because its full value remains hidden. Enter Tandem. This innovative AI copilot: 🤓 Understands and guides users within your app 💡 Suggests the best features at the best times 🧑‍🏫 Explains functionalities, assists users, and even performs tasks to get them started Tandem is there for users, showing up in the exact way they need, whether its their first or one-thousandth day using your product. Only 2-10% of a product's user base are power users. Tandem's goal is to bring that number to 100%. To find out more and get a demo, visit their website (link in comments). Florent Quinti Pierre Lemaire Médéric Manière

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I faced this situation when moving same code from one GPU to a more powerful one —————— Summary from the article: In software engineering, dependency versions are constrained and containers are used to ensure reproducibility. However, this may not be enough with LLMs if the GPU is not identical. All of this can introduce challenges, especially if the hardware used in development differs from that used in production, or if you want to opt for more powerful GPUs at some point in order to scale up in production. In this article, I first present the protocol of the experiment, then compare the results between two environments from which only the GPU differs, one with an Nvidia T4 and the other with an Nvidia A10G. I start with simple cases and then longer prompts, like for a RAG. Each GPU has its own architecture, optimizations and parallelization capacity, which can lead to small differences in the accuracy of the calculations. With LLMs, these small differences repeated over millions of calculations can lead to a discrepancy influencing word choice when generating sequences. Since LLMs are autoregressive, i.e. they predict the next word based on previous ones, a different word in the middle of the generation can cause a cascading reaction, resulting in a discrepancy in the response. For RAGs, longer prompts require more computation, increasing the possibility of inaccuracies and promoting potential discrepancies between two GPUs. Compared to my usual posts on LinkedIn, this article allowed me to flesh out my thoughts and experiences in a more in-depth way, while also including some code.

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We are observing the same thing at Zelros. To meet the demand of our solution's users, the issue is not only about training LLM models, but also serving them with an efficient infrastructure. #AI #GenAI #TechForInsurance

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The 3 part process to great communication for deep tech CEOs... Before I give it away, remember that the job of the CEO is to convince people to join you. Convince investors. Convince candidates. Convince customers. Step 1: Create the narrative Step 2: Back it up with receipts Step 3: Deliver with emotion to make it take hold Convincing people was my job as a trial lawyer. It was my job when I taught law students at SMU Law. It's my job today with the most ambitious CEOs and companies in the deep tech space. This 3 step process is the framework for it all. Worked in a courtroom on murders and child abuse cases. Worked to now raise $800m in capital. It will work for you too. #deeptech #strategiccommunication

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🚀 User acquisition in web3: 3 top solutions ! Struggling with your user acquisition in the ecosystem ? Check out these innovative solutions: Zealy, Layer3, and Galxe. Discover how they can transform your strategy in our Chain R3action article ! 🔗 Full article and subscription link in the first comment !

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Watching the Roland-Garros French Open over the weekend and saw this motto: Victory belongs to the most tenacious. The failure rate of startups is high. According to recent statistics, approximately 90% of startups fail, with around 10% to 20% achieving long-term success. Various sources attribute this high failure rate to multiple factors, including under capitalization, poor product-market fit, inadequate marketing strategies, and team issues. Different industries exhibit varying failure rates. The failure rate for technology startups is around 63% within the first five years , while the failure rate for e-commerce startups is about 80%. HealthTech startups also face a high failure rate of around 80%, largely due to challenges in determining value propositions and strategy. Despite the high risk, some startups do succeed, sometimes making up for the losses of the many failures, which is why investors continue to support them. As the early stage investment market stands currently, a founder should not expect an investment based on the relative merits of a company. In other words, you may be building a great company but there’s no guarantee of an investment. This predicament requires both defensive and offensive strategies to navigate. One that we are seeing increasingly is the move toward cash flow neutral/ cash flow positive operations.

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