Goodbye MLstate, goodbye Opa

Tides come and tides go.

Two years ago, I accepted to join MLstate, to take lead of the R&D group, and turn Opa from a promising early-stage demo into a world-class technology. And I am happy to say that we succeeded. Certainly, there are still many things that we would like to improve in Opa, but looking back on those two years, I am proud of the work we have accomplished, of the number of topics upon which we have pushed forward the state of the art, and even of many of the mistakes we have made, because they have expanded our understanding so much.

Now, after two years at MLstate, I am leaving. Our work is accomplished and I do not feel that I can contribute in any meaningful way to what MLstate has now become, nor that today’s MLstate can keep me excited and interested any longer. In the past few days, Opa has been featured on Lambda the Ultimate, on Hacker News and on Slashdot. Small and large high-tech companies have tried and enjoyed the technology. What better time than this to set sail and say goodbye to these two exciting years of my life?

As of today, I am not the Head of Research & Development, Chief Scientific Officer or Technological Evangelist at MLstate anymore. I will keep a distant eye on Opa, but I will not design or supervise its future versions. Mathieu Baudet, our COO, is replacing me as the supervisor for the development of Opa, while Adam Koprowski is replacing me as Technological Evangelist. Mathieu is a very intelligent security researcher and I am sure that he will impose a new style to the Opa team, and Adam is a bright and enthusiastic researcher/developer, and certainly the best person at MLstate to carry on Opa advocacy.

I would like to thank my University for supporting this foray into the exciting world of start-ups. I would like to thank our CEO for recruiting such a talented team. I would also like to thank Mehdi Ben Soltane, our CFO/HR director, who managed to do his job with a nice and welcome pinch of humor, even in the toughest of times. And mostly, I would like to thank all the R&D team: Maxime Audouin, Mathieu Barbin, Vincent Benayoun, Anthonin Bonnefoy, Raja Boujbel, Quentin Bourgerie, Sébastien Briais, Valentin Gatien-Baron, Louis Gesbert, Nicolas Glondu, Hugo Heuzard, Adrien Jonquet, Mikolaj Konarski, Adam Koprowski, Laurent LeBrun, Sarah Maarek, Grégoire Makridis, François Pessaux, Guillem Rieu, Pascal Rigaux, Norman Scaife, Rudy Sicard, François-Régis Sinot, Cédric Soulas, Quickie Squeaky, Hugo Venturini, Frédéric Ye, and all our successive generations of interns[1]: you are the best team I have ever had the chance to join, it really was an honor and a pleasure working with you all and I hope that those among you who have chosen to remain in MLstate have as much fun working under Mathieu’s leadership as I had working with you all.

Time to set sail! My next missive should arrive from the next port.

[1] Sorry, I do not have the list of interns at hand. But do not worry, I enjoyed working with you, too 🙂