Maintenant j’ai 150+ courriels auxquels je dois répondre… ça va me prendre quelques jours.

Aussi, pour un café, un lunch, un verre, une rencontre: ça me tente, mais je vais devoir gérer un horaire assez plein, [...]]]> Oui, je vous ai suggéré de m’envoyer un courriel hier. Merci d’avoir pris le temps de m’écrire, j’apprécie vraiment!

Maintenant j’ai 150+ courriels auxquels je dois répondre… ça va me prendre quelques jours.

Aussi, pour un café, un lunch, un verre, une rencontre: ça me tente, mais je vais devoir gérer un horaire assez plein, avec quelques semaines à l’extérieur de Montréal en plus. Mais si vous êtes à Austin au SXSWi, ça pourrait être une très bonne place pour prendre un verre avec moi.

Next Friday will be my last day [...]]]> Cue Frank Sinatra (here’s the backstory and the lyrics). Or better yet, the Limp Bizkit version. One thing has been pretty constant with this blog (over the last 10 years): it’s my soapbox and it’s the best place to make these professional and personal announcements.

Next Friday will be my last day at Needium. I have resigned from my own startup. Seb is also announcing the same thing on his blog. We decided together that after building two startups in 5 years (Praized, then Needium) it was time for us to move on, to set sail for new and unexplored seas.

The great thing when you build a startup, when you architect your company as much as your platform, is that given the time and the means, these things scale, mature and somehow get a life of their own. I am really proud of what we have collectively built in those 5 years. It was a fantastic roller coaster ride (ask any startup founder about it). I had the privilege to work with an awesome team. I wish them the best of luck going forward.

Our company is now at another phase of it’s life, it’s all about sales, revenues, market share. As a shareholder, I hope to see it grow and continue scaling in this emerging social media market for SMBs. But as a maker, hacker, thinker, tinkerer, builder, as a geek artiste, I had to admit to myself that my heart was no longer in it. Over the last few months, I probably went thru the classic stages of grief… and now am completely at peace with this decision.

Starting next Monday, I will roam free for a while, then probably settle down… somewhere.

Between now and then, you know where to find me, I’m always on the internet. I will be looking for new challenges. I will be loosing sleep and obsessing about new things that needs to be solved, created, developed, shipped and iterated. Of course. I will also take a few well deserved weeks of vacations. Somewhere between two and six. Or not. Who knows?

I have also written a longer, more personal version of this post in French; Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. If you can’t read French, I would gladly share with you the nuances I added in this other version. But it would most likely require meeting in person (f2f) and the right atmosphere. Not *that* hard to make happen…

Source: envisioningtech.com via Sylvain on Pinterest

The best Canadian page on the subject is on Michael Geist’s blog (with some specific national action items).