Conserving Cash: Veodia CEO Guillaume Cohen (Part 1)

Guillaume Cohen is the founder and CEO of Veodia, an SaaS streaming video service. Before founding Veodia, Guillaume was head of enterprise business at Envivio. He led the founding of the Enterprise Work Group at the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) and is a regular speaker at conferences. Here he shares his entrepreneurial journey with us.

SM: Where do you come from? What is your background?

GC: I was born in Bordeaux, France. I grew up in the southwest of France, where my family still lives. I moved to Paris to study and lived there for about 10 years before moving to the States.

SM: You did all of your engineering schooling in Paris?

GC: Yes. I went to the Ecole Polytechnique and ENSTA [Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées], both in Paris.

SM: Did you work in France?

GC: Very briefly. As I was finishing my degree I worked in some startups part time. Internships are required as part of the curriculum in France. I did that, but right after I graduated I came straight to the US.

SM: Why did you want to come to the US?

GC: To be honest, I had friends here already, telling me that the surfing, quality of life, and weather were great. Obviously, being in high-tech, this is where things happen. That made sense. I first applied to do a master’s here instead of ENSTA in France. I did not get any scholarships, so I would have had to borrow money, so I decided to finish my studies in France and then get a job here.

SM: Where did you get a job?

GC: I got a job at a company called Envivio. It was a spin-off of France Telecom in the video space. It was started by an alumni of Polytechnique, which is how I got in touch. I joined them in March of 2001.

SM: What was the capacity of your employment with them?

GC: I started first as a professional services engineer. I got involved with some big projects with clients like Citigroup. I understood the technology, and because I was in constant contact with the clients I understood their needs as well. I started packaging the technology for a particular client, and it became a product that we started selling to more clients. Almost accidentally I created the enterprise market for Envivio, which initially was focused on the telecoms, selling them video equipment for IP TV. We basically started working with Citigroup, building this product, and we started growing this market, which at the time ended up being the majority of the revenue source.

SM: What was the enterprise product?

GC: It was broadcasting for internal communications. Citigroup had analysts doing morning calls, briefing the brokers in the different branches. Typically they do a conference call, but they needed to broadcast one to many in order to share not just audio but also video and recorded sessions to make them available as a knowledge asset that could potentially be resold. It was really more IP television addressing enterprise scenarios.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Conserving Cash: Veodia CEO Guillaume Cohen
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