Face of Velixo for January 2020: Gabriel Michaud
At the very core of Velixo, you will find the creator and driving force, Gabriel Michaud. Having launched his first application at just 17 years of age, Gabriel now has over 20 years experience in tech and particularly the ERP industry.
Every person has a unique story and often in a fast-moving world, we don’t take the time to get to know those around us. So to begin the new decade, we spoke with Gabriel to find out more about his vision for Velixo, his highlights of 2019 and what excites him most about the future.
Tell us a little bit about yourself…
As long as I can remember I have had an interest in computers and programming. I started learning BASIC in elementary school (I didn’t even own a computer back then). Rather than building video games, I quickly set out to build business applications, launching my first commercial product at 17. This is what eventually got me into the ERP world, and here I am more than 20 years later, still enjoying what I do and learning new things every day.
What motivated you to create the Velixo product?
My first foray into Excel-based reporting was around 2003. I was leading the development of a new ERP application and the product manager had this great idea (which was initially meant to be a way to release faster) that we should add a few functions to Excel instead of trying to roll out our own financial report writer. I think it makes a lot of sense – many financial report writers are based on this row/column model and try to emulate spreadsheet, yet they never remotely approach the simplicity and usability of Excel. Seeing how Acumatica lacked a similar solution I knew that the opportunity was there to build something similar. And I made sure to apply all the lessons learned from my first experience building an Excel-based report writer!
2019 was a big year for Velixo. Can you give us a recap of the years highlights?
- The demo during the keynote at the Acumatica Summit in Houston in front of 1,500 customers and partners. Our growth accelerated after that and I’m extremely grateful to Jon Roskill and everyone at Acumatica for inviting me!
Gabriel presenting at the Acumatica 2019 summit.
- Our participation at the MYOB Enterprise Partner Conference in Noosa — we have amazing partners in Australia and New Zealand, they are extremely committed to the product and it was the first opportunity for me to meet them. This is also when we announced our partnership with Alchemex, our distributor for this market. The Hawaii Nights Cocktail party featured the Velixo Mai Tai and the Alchemex Pina Colada!
Gabriel at the MYOB conference with Alchemex Director, Chris Millar.
- Awesome new team members: Mathieu, Sabine, Lauren, and our Alchemex colleagues Guy, Chris, Diana and Allan
- 600% growth and +67 Net Promoter Score
In your opinion, what’s the best feature of Velixo?
Smart Drilldown. You can hear jaw drops whenever I demo it 🙂
To watch a demo, click here.
What is your favourite thing about your job?
Learning something new every day. Getting in the zone creatively and channeling ideas into new products.
Favourite holiday destination?
I have visited more than 25 countries in the last few years and really enjoy off the beaten path experiences – some readers have probably heard of my trip to Mongolia with the kids. It’s hard for me to name a single favourite destination, there’s so much to discover in the world.
It was a thumbs up from the kids, for the Mongolia trip.
What are your goals for 2020?
- Continue enhancing the product incrementally based on market needs and customer feedback
- Double the number of Velixo customers while maintaining excellence in service
- Launch into new markets.
On a personal level I want to continue having a balanced lifestyle, exercising 3 times a week, sleeping well every night and taking time off once in a while to re-energize. I encourage everyone around me to do the same and I think it’s key to the success of the business – but more importantly to live a longer, better and happier life.
With technology advancing so fast, what are you most excited about for the future?
I’ll name two (very different) things: CRISPR-Cas9 and autonomous vehicles.
(Want to know what CRISPR-Cas9 is? Click here)
To find out more about how Velixo can help you, click here.
From our entire team at Velixo, we would like to wish you all a prosperous, healthy and happy 2020.