Pascal Levy-Garboua
Founder of Noosa Labs
Pascal Levy-Garboua
Founder of Noosa Labs
Paris, Île-de-France
Overview
Work Experience
Founder and CEO
2021 - Current
Noosa Labs acquires profitable SaaS Companies for small businesses around the world. we buy small profitable bootstrapped SaaS Companies ($150-$800k in ARR) and take care of the product and customers. We already bought 4 businesses so far. Learn more at www.noosalabs.com We hold for the long term, build the features customers need, and make sure the product can keep delivering great value forever.
Co-Founder
2020
We are building the best online education platform for no-code targeting aspiring entrepreneurs, side-hustlers, and intrapreneurs. Priority #1: build the best learning program in France Priority #2: help folks make money or get hired Priority #3: repeat in more countries and languages
Venture Partner
2020
Long Journey Ventures is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture fund led by Lee Jacobs, Arielle Zuckerberg, and Cyan Banister, with a network of venture partner operators (Brian Balfour from Reforge, Jonathan Bruck, cofounder of Pocket, Elaine and Todd from Dandelion, Justin Mares, and myself). We strive at being helpful in the areas of our expertise to help a Company graduate through the different milestones of this long journey. Example of Companies we invested in: - Zeal (Payroll API) - Cashdrop (mobile POS) - PopShop (video commerce) - AtoB (fintech for trucking industry) - Deno (Open Source) etc...
Angel Investor
2012 - 2019
I invest in US-based Companies with strong network effects - mostly marketplaces, or data networks. My goal is to create a network of Companies that can learn from each other. I am often times one of the first checks a Company receives, and I am fine with that. I can be pretty active with my investments, acting as their first call - or completely remote depending on the Company stage, need, and my relationship with the founding team. Notable active investments: Notion Checkr Compound (Token: COMP) Kin Insurance Womply Spotter.la Crusoe Energy Trusted Health nTopology Point Hello Heart PayJoy Some Exits: Producteev (acquired by Jive) Caviar (acquired by Square) Wit.ai (acquired by Facebook) Rickshaw (acquired by DoorDash) Simplecast (acquired by SiriusXM) Origin (acquired by Stratasys) My full portfolio is available at weavecap.com
VP Business Development
2018 - 2019
Grew Checkr partner network while building our indirect revenue business into Checkr's fastest growing and most profitable business line - from zero to 8 figures in revenues in 3 years with 3-digits growth. Managed a team of 7 great BD professionals.
VP Marketing and Business Development
2016 - 2018
Member of eStaff. Leads the marketing and business development teams at Checkr (10 FTE and growing). - Building the business development, alliance and channel sales team at Checkr (team growth, strategy, involved in strategic partnerships). - Lead marketing team (team growth, strategy). Grew marketing team from 2 to 8 in 6 months - including PR, Product Marketing, and Demand Generation.
Head of Business Operations
2015 - 2016
First executive hire, member of eStaff In charge of Marketing, Business Development, Finance, Vendor Management and whatever else needs to be done to help Checkr founders create an awesome Company. - Marketing: Interim VP Marketing. Launched new Checkr website. Hired Checkr initial marketing team (demand generation, product marketing). Designed Checkr first marketing and sales integrated campaign. Positioned Checkr as a leader in on demand economy. Prepared Checkr move into the entreprise HR market. - Finance: Interim CFO. Put together Checkr business plan for fundraising. Supervised creation of Checkr first business dashboard. Doubled gross margin in 3 months by analyzing our cost structure, working with our vendors or clients, and focusing on this metric. Managed outside accounting firm. Put together AR collection plan and reduced AR/AP gap. Monitored 409A valuation. Lead hiring of Checkr VP Finance to "replace me". - Business Development. Manages Checkr indirect sales channel and integration partners. Learn more at checkr.com/partners. Part of Checkr Strategic committee. Checkr provides modern, compliant background screenings for startups and enterprises. Backed by Accel Partners and Y Combinator, Checkr works with more than 3,000 customers.
Co-Founder
2015 - 2016
The On-Demand Conference is the first conference covering the on-demand economy. Along with Tradecraft and co-host Semil Shah, we are bringing some of the most successful and interesting founders and investors in the on-demand economy - a space that is currently re-shaping both work and local commerce. For our first event, on May 19th in San Francisco, we welcomed founders of the following Companies: Instacart, Postmates, DoorDash, Sprig, Munchery, Checkr, Lyft, BloomThat, and many others, as well as investors from Sherpa Ventures, Greylock, Homebrew and RRE - as well as more than 300 paying attendees. For our second event, on September 15th in New York, we welcome founders and executives of the following Companies: Handy, Airbnb, Uber, Breather, Postmates, 7-11, 1-800-Flowers, Checkr, Reserve, Managed by Q, WorkMarket, Zirx, and many others, as well as investors from USV, Greylock, RRE, Collaborative Fund, Female Founder Fund, David Tisch, and Charlie O'Donnell. Learn more at: www.ondemandconference.co
Founder and CEO
2013 - 2014
About SixDoors: SixDoors is a gift delivery platform where consumers can choose from items from 70+ stores in San Francisco or Chicago, and get delivered, same day anywhere in the city. Tasks and Accomplishments: - Leads product vision, marketing (online, offline) and hired a great team of 7 talented individuals. - SixDoors raised $600K from prominent business angels, and enjoyed very strong customer satisfaction as well as significant growth. - SixDoors was featured on major local and national publications (TechCrunch, Pando Daily, SF business Wire, ABC 7, CCTV, 7x7, UrbanDaddy, InsideHook) as well as in the App store. - SixDoors partnered with 70+ stores in San Francisco and Chicago, as well as with the Kimpton Hotel chain. - SixDoors eventually sold its assets to 2 great Companies: GrubMarket and BloomThat.
VP Product Management
2012 - 2013
About IQ Engines: IQ Engines was the leader in image intelligence software (computer vision) for mobile product search. Initially hired to find new customers for the mobile product search API used by leaders such as Old Navy, eBay, SAP, Tesco etc.. Transitioned into VP Product Management role after. Tasks and Accomplishments: - Identified a new market opportunity for IQ Engines that allowed the Company to be positioned as a key technology platform for large consumer photo players (Yahoo, Apple, Dropbox...), and to be eventually acquired for 3x their Series A valuation by one of them: Yahoo in August 2013. - Defined and lead product roadmap of Smart Album API - an API that allows photo repositories to improve how consumers browse, search, and share photos. - Managed a team of 5 high caliber developers/PhD in Computer vision, AI and Machine Learning (ML) - Lead sales efforts for the product among the top 25 photo repositories with amazingly positive reaction to the product. Two of its potential customers eventually bided for the Company to acquire it.
Co-Founder and VP, Business Development and Strategic Accounts
2008 - 2011
Since 2009: As a VP, Business Development and Strategic Accounts, I defined and lead VirtuOz business development initiatives including partnerships with leading SIs, consulting firms and ISV/VAR both in Europe and in the US. These partnerships helped us close several accounts, including one of the largest telco in the world. I also managed VirtuOz largest accounts as a "Global Account Manager" with the support of the amazing professional services teams of VirtuOz in France and in California. We managed to grow our presence with our largest account by an order of magnitude, while creating a true partnership culture between the two Companies. Between September 2008 and February 2009: As the Interim General Manager and VP, Sales of VirtuOz, I managed the development of VirtuOz activity in the US This included: - pipeline development - sales cycle management and deal negotiation - sales administration - team hiring for the sales and client operations team - team management Achievements: - Hired a team of 6 Prof. Services professionals in 1 month from France, organized their training in Europe before bringing them back to the US office. - Positioned VirtuOz as a key vendor to transition Microsoft ASA Clients - Managed VirtuOz set up in the US (Finance/Admin/HR/benefits/offices leasing...) - Grew customer base, client satisfaction, customer profitability and revenue per customer - Exceeded plan (+150%) - Built pipeline of opportunities that resulted in another closed deal in Q2 2009. - Closed more than $16M worth of business for VirtuOz
Co-Founder, VP. Business Development, and General Manager, Skaaz
2005 - 2008
During VirtuOz initial hypergrowth year (+4500%), I was wearing two distinct hats: I headed Marketing, and Global Business Development - In charge of France marketing initiatives (lead generation, PR) - In charge of International expansion, key accounts, and VirtuOz distribution strategy. Signed 3 of the top 4 VirtuOz accounts, exceeded sales objectives and signed 3 major deals in 2008 over 6 months, in the US from France, worth multi million dollars. As the General Manager of Skaaz Project team, I : - Created, hired and managed Skaaz Project team (up to 10 FTE), from product idea to successful launch (650K users after 18 months) - Signed business development deals to promote Skaaz with leading French TV network (M6) for online and national TV advertising. Skaaz was the first French social network of Avatars (Skaaz) that could learn, chat on MSN Messenger or on the web on behalf of their "owner", and that got a full fledged virtual goods shop. It was in essence part IMVU, part Facebook, part virtual agents with cute avatars. Skaaz closed in December 2008 to allow VirtuOz to focus on its more lucrative B2B activities.
Co-founder
2003 - 2005
Joined core founding team a few months after they launched the Company while they were still in garage mode. VirtuOz developed chatbots for customer support - before everybody started to talk about it. We developed customer support bots as well as conversational commerce bots. VirtuOz was an early leader in AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) Helped the CEO-founder develop the product offering and go to market strategy during bootstrapping mode, while I was working for eBay. Achievements: - Positioned VirtuOz as a world leader by making it to the Red Herring 100 in 2004 - and the only French Company to make it to the list - Created VirtuOz business model and helped on the negotiation of the first large Enterprise Client (Voyages-Sncf.com) that lead to VirtuOz Series A financing
Education
Investments
Latest Articles
Bots: F8, the beginning and the end
Talks about Startup, Venture Capital and Chatbots
Will your company exist in a post-Uber world?
Opening Remarks at The San Francisco On-Demand Conference, May 2015
Talks about On-Demand Economy, local commerce and future of the workforce