From OpenClassrooms to Cocohop: the journey of a CTO turned founder

Vincent has 15 years of experience in tech startups and scale-ups, in France and the US. He was tech lead at OpenClassrooms, right hand to the CTO at Etsy, team manager at Tinyclues, then tech director at Selency. He also co-founded several marketplaces, in baby gear, and now in B2B tourism with Cocohop.

In this conversation, Vincent shares what he has lived: stepping into roles of responsibility without always being ready, growing teams, going through hard decisions, and trying — at every step — to stay fair, clear, and attentive to others as much as to himself.

OpenClassrooms: "We were 9, everything was still to be built."

Vincent started his career at OpenClassrooms, when the site was still called Le Site du Zéro. The team was nine people, and everything was still to build. He quickly took on lead responsibilities, then tech lead, and helped create the 2012 version of the site.

"Since then, it's become something big. It always feels good to see your work evolve like that."

Etsy: immersion in a demanding American ecosystem

He joined A Little Market, which was acquired by Etsy a year and a half later. Hired as an R&D engineer, he took on the data topics, built a tech team, and became right hand to the CTO, then interim CTO.

The acquisition changed everything:

"Overnight, our counterparts only spoke English, the technical ecosystem switched languages. You lose half the team. Those who stay have to relearn everything."

He got on the train. He pitched the architecture in front of 1,000 people in New York because he was the only one who could do it in English.

"You learn on the fly. You don't have a choice. And after that, you're not afraid of anything."

What he took away: technical rigor, respect for the warmth of American management style, and the ability to embrace radical cultural shifts.

Tinyclues, CarJager, then the urge to start something

After a stint at Tinyclues leading a B2B data team, Vincent joined CarJager as a late technical co-founder. A marketplace for collector cars, everything had to be rebuilt: mobile app, website, B2B tools. In a year, everything was live. He left for personal reasons, but the company is still running, with €40M in revenue.

A family marketplace, while becoming parents

With Molina, his wife and partner, he then created a second-hand baby gear marketplace. The idea came with the arrival of their first child. The project was sold to Campsider, a specialist in second-hand outdoor gear.

"We stayed within the same theme: handmade, second-hand. But with meaning for us."

Selency: rebuilding a team, then having to shrink it

When Vincent joined Selency, the company had just raised a big €60M round. On the product side, everything was accelerating. On the tech side, the team was reduced to 4 people, with no CTO. He found a very dense codebase and a way of operating that produced a lot of instability. But instead of judging or showing up with certainties, he took the time to look.

"I told myself: ok, there's a history here. People did their best given the context. Let's understand how it works before touching anything."

He observed, made a diagnosis. The organization was complex, incidents were frequent, but the team showed courage. Above all, he didn't want to add pressure.

"We needed to bring back some calm. Some visibility. I wanted people to know what was happening when things broke, and to be able to sleep at night."

He set up monitoring tools, logs, a first framework for production. No immediate overhaul. The goal: restore a foundation of trust, where everyone could work without fearing they'd bring everything down.

Once that base was in place, he started hiring — but again, without rushing. He sought to understand the real priorities, the right profiles, the right timing. In two years, he grew the team to 25 people. He structured the organization, formalized career paths, and promoted people internally.

"What mattered to me was creating an environment where people understand where they're going, what's expected of them, and what they can expect in return."

He kept his managerial commitments, tried to be clear, accessible, fair.

But in 2022, the situation changed. The company entered a phase of seeking profitability. He had to manage two successive waves of layoffs. It was the first time he experienced this at that level of responsibility.

"These are moments where you never have all the cards. You do the best you can. You make decisions you wish you could have avoided. And you live with them."

He acknowledges that some decisions left marks, and that despite the efforts to remain fair, certain human losses weighed on him.

"Some of the people I let go weren't the most visible, but they had real human impact. It's not always quantifiable, but you feel it afterwards."

For him, Selency remains a turning point: not so much for the technical choices, but for what it taught him about being a manager in uncertainty, with everything that implies in terms of discomfort, responsibility, and self-questioning.

Cocohop: two people, one product, one vision

In 2024, Vincent and Molina launched Cocohop: a B2B SaaS platform for tailor-made travel professionals. Their mission: automate the time-consuming tasks of travel designers using AI.

• Travel itineraries generated automatically (up to 50 pages, in 20 seconds).
• Quotes generated, styled, and ready to sell.
• Payment, signature, traveler documents, mobile app.

"We save 75% of the time. And it's not marketing: it's measured."

They both work on it: him on tech, her on product and strategy. Zero fundraising. A useful product that's moving fast. Already over €3,000 of MRR with revenue above €30k in less than 4 months.

Their ambition: a small but powerful company.

"Our dream isn't to raise 10 million. It's to have 10 ultra-versatile people who understand everything, do everything, and work well together."

Thanks Vincent for the generosity of our exchange.