I’ve been building things since I was a teenager, but my memory for projects more than five years old gets fuzzy. The details blur together into a mix of late nights, pivots, and lessons learned.
OctHuber (2015-2018) — Co-founded a Montreal startup focused on new-tech and data-analyzed solutions. We built products and learned what it takes to ship something real.
Before That — Here’s something weird: before I was writing code professionally, I was negotiating with labor unions and sitting across from government ministers. At 21.
I was elected Vice-President of Paris-Sud University as a student in 2014. It was a full-time job. Studies came second.
What that actually meant: fitting in a team that was managing a €360M annual budget. Writing speeches roughly twice per week for 18 months. Picking ties at 7a.m. on Mondays. Getting my first apartment got ransacked by political opponents who also stole my SIM card from my work phone—student politics in France is no joke. Negotiating with people who had decades more experience and very little patience for a 21-year-old. Navigating bureaucracy that would make most startups look agile. Building consensus when everyone disagrees. Not cracking up when the President of the French Republic makes a joke about one of his ministers and she loses it.
We did some good things. We opened an “épicerie solidaire” (a solidarity grocery store), partnering with local shops to provide food aid for students in need. That part felt real.
The skills from that period—trying to read a room, understanding stakeholder incentives, making decisions with incomplete information—turned out to be more valuable than the title.
What I learned throughout the years: complex technology is only valuable if people can use it. Difficult conversations are usually the only way forward, even if most (myself included) prefer to avoid them. Stay close to the code, even when you’re in charge. Nothing replaces actually shipping things. Political experience gives you pattern recognition for organizational dynamics, but feels like a distraction from real life.
Honestly, I don’t remember most specific project details from 2014. I was probably building something interesting, but the details have faded. The skills stuck around, the specifics didn’t. If you need references from a decade ago, I’ll have to dig through old emails.