Contact
• Website: www.oxatis.co.uk
Biography
"I'm passionate about entrepreneurship! I see it as a "modern adventure", as an opportunity to create
the uncreated, to do it better and faster than everyone else, and to do it with less financial resources than everyone else.
I see the
entrepreneur as a team coach: Convince the best players to join the team and create a sense of harmony and motivation between the players so
that 1+1 = more than 2!"
Professional Background
2001 - Present: I created Oxatis in France to provide
small businesses with a powerful, but easy-to-use, e-commerce tool at an affordable price. Today, thousands of merchant sites rely on our
services.
What I appreciate: The chance to work with exceptional colleagues, some of which have stuck with me for 15 years, to work in a perpetually evolving domain that requires constant re-evaluation, of being a company on a human scale while at the same time being the undisputed leader in a booming market, and, the icing on the cake, to provide a service used as a base for hundreds of projects planned out by other entrepreneurs and that I never get tired of leaning about.
1997 - 2001: EBZ.COM (California, USA), co-founder and CEO. With my team, we created one of the first three American e-commerce platforms for SOHOs and SMBs. When we decided to sell the company to a Canadian establishment, the platform was running more than 10,000 customer sites.
What I appreciated: The American adventure, a new work culture, a different way of working together, a market whose size seems unlimited, the workings of investors, the fact that the way people perceive your product, and not what your product really is, is what counts.
1984 - 1997: DFL (Paris, France), co-founder and managing director of a management software and services company employing more than 25 engineers. The arrival of microcomputers in large corporations offered significant opportunities. We grew and developed without calling upon outside financing.
What I appreciated: Allowing customers to uncover hundreds of practical professions. The rigor needed to work for Major Accounts. The satisfaction that comes from building a team and a company with little resources.
1981 - 1990: (Paris, France), I developed the first business planning software program for PC projects: PLAN IT. More than 700 customers took to this software, making it a market leader for 10 years.
What I appreciated: That being young and naive (20 years old) allows you to be daring: trying to create software alone at a time when the worldwide leader was Lockheed Martin, being convinced that all the major public works and construction companies were going to use it and that all of this would become a reality.
Conferences
* Since 2001 - Keynote speaker at various conferences.
* 1999 - Center Stage Speaker
at the "Microsoft Intranet/Intranet Strategic Conference" in Paris.
* 1991-1996 - Speaker at dozens of technical events and
conferences in Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Great Britain, and the USA.
* 1986-1988 -
Professor at the European Institute for CAD.
Publications
"Réussir sa boutique en ligne", ("Create a Successful Online Shop", currently being
translated), was published on 28 August 2008 with First Editions. It is a practical, step-by-step guide for opening and developing a
successful online shop, with an emphasis on specific examples and case studies.
Education
1988 “- “Nef d’or” from the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, best young entrepreneur.
1985 - 1 year – Post-graduate university studies at CAD (initial part of Ph. D), ENSTA Paris
1984 - 6 years – Graduate
of the Ecole Supérieure des Travaux Publics de Paris (civil engineering).
Interests
- Entertaining friends and cooking for them (real gourmet food,
not just burger and hot dogs).
- Restoring old stones or ironworks, renovation, building, etc.
- Reading abstract books or journals
about astrophysics, nuclear physics, >abstruse theories, etc.
And above all...
- My 2 boys and their mother
- Waterskiing, which I take very seriously (no Club Med for me when it comes to waterskiing!)
You seem to have got the niche from the root, Awesome work
Posted by: watch one tree hill | 31 October 2009 at 07:16 AM