December 15, 2025
Co-founding SyncAI SA
In 2024 I co-founded SyncAI to help Swiss SMEs access practical AI tools. Our first products, Athena and Themis, proved that AI tools can be simple and valuable.
SyncAI booth at the SVC Prize 2024 exhibition
Introduction
In 2023 I co-founded SyncAI SA with Lucas Nicollier and Christian Degouy, the CEO of Bugnard SA. Our conviction was simple: artificial intelligence would transform business, but Swiss small and medium enterprises risked being left behind if no one built tools tailored for them. SyncAI was our answer to this gap: a startup focused on creating accessible, practical AI-powered software for SMEs.
Building the Company
From the beginning, SyncAI was more than a software project: it was a startup. That meant thinking not just about code, but also about markets, users, and strategy. With no external funding, every decision was a trade-off between ambition and pragmatism.
My role combined both technical execution and entrepreneurial responsibility:
- I designed and developed the user-facing side of our products.
- I worked as a co-founder to shape the company strategy, validate assumptions, and push the team toward tangible outcomes.
Building SyncAI taught me how to:
- Define a minimum viable product under tight constraints.
- Validate ideas directly with merchants through interviews and feedback.
- Balance different co-founder perspectives while keeping alignment on vision.
- Navigate the uncertainty and pressure of an early-stage startup.
Products
During my time at SyncAI, we initiated two product lines that embodied our mission of making AI useful and affordable for SMEs:
- Athena: a SaaS platform for e-commerce price optimization, built during an intensive summer at the 42 Oléron campus.
3/1/2025
Building Athena, an ecommerce product manager & repricer
- Themis: a tool designed to help SMEs make sense of their internal data (details in the dedicated post).
3/1/2025
Launching Themis, an AI assistant for lawyers
Each product was an experiment in validating a market hypothesis. Together, they served as proof that AI could be packaged in a way that was both approachable and valuable for small businesses.
Challenges
SyncAI faced the classic challenges of an early-stage startup:
- Limited resources, requiring us to prioritize ruthlessly.
- The need to ship quickly while maintaining enough quality to be credible.
- Aligning three co-founders with different strengths, perspectives, and long-term visions.
These challenges were as much entrepreneurial as technical, and they shaped my growth as both a developer and a founder.
Reflection
Ultimately, I decided to leave SyncAI when I realized that my long-term vision no longer aligned with the rest of the team. It was a difficult choice, but also one of the most valuable lessons of the journey: shared vision is as important as execution.
Even so, SyncAI was a defining chapter for me. I co-founded a company, built real SaaS products from zero, and gained first-hand experience in entrepreneurship, product strategy, and startup dynamics. The lessons I learned at SyncAI continue to guide how I approach both technology and business today.
