The team behind la machine

Paul Guyot

Paul develops la machine's software. In Erlang. I met Paul when he was returning from Japan where he had just finished his PhD in Artificial Intelligence. It was the Nabaztag era—we were selling tens of thousands, but the servers often crashed. Paul walked into my office. Ten minutes later, I went to see my partner Rafi Haladjian, to ask him to meet Paul—immediately. Paul accepted the CTO job and in just a few months, the server problems disappeared.

If you want to know more about la machine's software, Paul gave a talk on the subject in Berlin in October 2024.

Alexis Malbert

I heard about Alexis Malbert through my daughter Violette and I immediately hoped he would agree to work on la machine. It's impossible to summarize his work here, so I'll copy/paste his "baseline" and bio (sorry Alexis!).

"Sound inventions and interventions! Alexis Malbert (aka Tapetronic) is a French artist, inventor, musician, performer, animator, researcher and publisher who works as a creator of new sound reproduction media. Often critical of our media society, he stands at the crossroads of genres, from music to visual arts, from piracy to pranks..."

In short, Alexis is in charge of sound and that's no small thing.

Elium Studio

Elium Studio is one of the greatest design studios. Founded by Marc Berthier, it's a studio with over 40 CES Awards and a Time magazine distinction. But what are they doing in this venture? Well, this idea of remaking the useless box dates back more than 10 years and since then I've regularly told and retold Pierre Garner that he and his team should design, once and for all, perhaps, this invention. He agreed and it resulted in... la machine. Thanks to Thibault, Jonathan, Frédéric and the whole team.

Pascale Moise

Pascale Moise has been a web developer since the dawn of time. Between passion and craftsmanship, she designs her sites with lots of ❤️ too. She has developed hundreds of them. She's at the helm of the multiplié site, the e-commerce part and la machine website (this one).

Pascale also has a secret weapon: she knows how to develop Minitel applications and co-invented a device called MiniMit that brings the Minitel back to life. What's it for? Nothing.

Philippe Debadier

Philippe took care of la machine's electronic board. A board that may seem trivial to make but which has many pitfalls and must be carefully designed if you want it to work for a long time.

But Philippe is not just an outstanding electronics engineer (he designed the Nabaztag's electronics 25 years ago), he's also a competitive ultra-trail runner, an extraordinary teacher and an exceptional volunteer firefighter.

Benjamin Rossignol

At the end of 2024, I was stuck in marketing and didn't know where to start when suddenly, Benjamin Rossignol, an outstanding visual storyteller with whom I had already worked, popped into my thoughts. He was obviously the one who should create the visuals for la machine! In just a few weeks he produced dozens of incredible visuals and concepts, of which you can see a tiny part on the site and in the advertisements (but there are also concepts for posters, merchandising, packaging, commercials....).