Thomas van de Velde

General Manager and CTO of 3 technology startups

Greater Toulouse Metropolitan Area

About

General management and technical leadership of a startup company Specialties: ►Leadership in an international fast evolving environment ►Technology expertise in fields of IP Telephony, Call Centers, and software development ►Boosting sales and Customer satisfaction; 20 years of experience selling technologies to mid, large & international accounts ►Teams transformation and redeployment to meet goals of fast growing businesses ►Development of a technically competent and loyal development team

Experience

  • General Manager Semios AI at Semios.ai
    Jul 2021 - Present · 5 yrs

  • Webinage SAS (16 yrs 3 mos)
    • General Manager
      Sep 2019 - Present · 6 yrs 10 mos

    • General Manager and technical lead
      Apr 2010 - Sep 2019 · 9 yrs 6 mos

      General Manager and co-founder of software startup Webinage.

  • Avaya (6 yrs 2 mos)
    • EMEA Technical Sales Director
      Nov 2007 - Apr 2010 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      Lead technical sales in EMEA. Managing up to 200 presales systeme engineers across 27 countries.

    • Senior Manager Western Europe Technical Sales
      Nov 2006 - Nov 2007 · 1 yr 1 mo

      Lead all of Western Europe Technical Sales field forces (50 system engineers and 7 managers across 15 countries), reporting into Western Europe sales VP and leadership team member. ►In-depth restructuring of French SE team which was constantly overloaded, but overstaffed: on a team of 22, 9 were released while simultaneously 5 new talents were added. As a result, the better balance in competencies solved the capacity issue, at 21% less cost ►Installed a strong training program to increase expertise; across all 50 Western Europe pre-sales engineers, individual certification moved up from 25% to 91%

    • Manager, EMEA Technology & Consulting
      Mar 2004 - Nov 2006 · 2 yrs 9 mos

      Established and lead first Consulting System Engineering team in EMEA to host Avaya's top 15 presales Consultants for Europe Middle-East and Africa. Reporting directly into EMEA CTO, the team provides ultimate presales expertise across entire Avaya portfolio: IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centers, Voice Messaging, Conferencing, and Video. ►Management of 15 high-potential talents, remotely, in an international environment. No undesired attrition despite relentless offers from competition ►Intense cross functional collaboration with all other departments (sales, marketing, R&D) to recycle lessons learned in the field, and to make best use of technology differentiators ►Organized 5 years in succession the international technical conference, TechShare: 150 to 200 consultants from all Europe, 80 partners and 40 presenters

  • EMEA Corporate Consultant Engineer at Lucent Technologies
    Jan 1999 - Feb 2004 · 5 yrs 2 mos

    IP Telephony expert and evangelist, supporting launch of this emerging technology in France, and later across Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA) following the acquisition of Lannet by telecommunication vendor Lucent Technologies. ►Company quickly established itself as a leader in Europe with about 20% of market share ►Recognized as an international expert in IP Telephony and Unified Communications with a proven impact on senior leadership, R&D, and marketing. ►Represented the company in public (public speaking up to 500 persons) and in the press

  • Technical Account Manager at Madge Networks
    Jan 1996 - Dec 1998 · 3 yrs

    Presales system engineer covering France South at IP networking startup Lannet. Leveraged technology vendor environment to develop an international-class technical expertise in the fields of IP communications, Ethernet networks, IP routing and ATM transport. Successfully established jointly with sales exec a ‘high-touch’ indirect selling model, based on direct end-customer engagement, designed to drive vendor preference, while handling all delivery through business partners to optimize coverage and decrease cost of sales. Business grew from 400k to 5M$ with 2 persons