Plato was founded in 2017 with the goal of bringing together the engineering community to share knowledge and best practices. The mentorship platform for engineering leaders is powered by an impressive and curated community of mentors from leading tech companies around the world including Google, Facebook, Lyft, Slack, Netflix, and Spotify. In the words of John C Crosby, "Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction."
Mentees benefit from access to powerful 1-1 mentorship sessions, networking opportunities, and resources to drive their personal and professional growth. Plato is an essential tool for organizations that want to unlock the full potential of their engineering leaders, while also improving team performance, employee growth, and employee engagement.
Cofounders Jean-Baptiste Coger and Quang Hoang were originally working on a completely different business venture. They had actually secured $2M in seed funding for their original project when all of a sudden, on the same day, their team of three engineers quit. Upon reflection, they realized that they were not equipped with the skills, support, or previous experience to properly support their engineer hires. After countless conversations with peers, it was clear that they were not alone. With founding engineer Rémi Denoyer joining the team in May 2019, they were ready to deliver a solution to this problem.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Cofounder & CPO
Jean-Baptiste (JB) Coger originally studied industrial design, and then went on to complete his master's in aeronautics systems and automation at the prestigious Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE), which is where he met Quang. After graduation, the duo decided to pursue entrepreneurship and began to develop a mobile application (Birdly) to help others manage their expenses. Although Birdly never fully came to fruition, it did bring in the initial funding that they needed and the journey led them to the idea for Plato. JB leads customer success and operations at Plato. A connection builder at heart, the relationships that he's nurturing are undeniably at the core of Plato's success. As CPO, he is also now pouring a great deal of time and energy into product development.
Cofounder & CEO
Quang Hoang is highly educated, having earned his first master's degree in engineering with a specialization in both financial engineering and energy systems from ISAE-SUPAERO. He also completed an MBA in business and strategy at HEC Paris, followed by a master's degree in innovation management and design at the esteemed École Polytechnique. Along with his cofounder JB, Quang developed the first AI Slackbot - Birdly - back in 2015, which caught the attention of some of the biggest names in tech. When Birdly was accepted to the Numa Accelerate and then the prestigious Y Combinator, the co-founders knew they had struck gold. However, through the twists and turns of developing Birdly, they discovered that they lacked passion for the finance app and decided to pivot the entire business. Plato was born with the goal of helping engineers and product leaders to build better teams. As CEO, Quang leads by example, overseeing the company's operations, while also sustaining great company culture, clear vision, purpose and direction. He is passionate about unifying and uplifting the engineering community, and knows from personal experience just how valuable strong mentorship can be.
Founding Engineer & Software Engineering Lead
Rémi Denoyer is a machine learning engineer who earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in physics with a specialization in machine and deep learning from the renowned École Polytechnique. He then went on to complete his master's of engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Although Rémi is not a cofounder of Plato, he has been an essential member of the founding team, as he joined the company when it was still operating out of a garage. Brought on initially for his technical skills and ability to learn quickly, he created key algorithms that lay the foundation for the company's success. At Plato, automation is key, and Rémi developed a cutting-edge neural network approach, using ML, that is responsible for using data to match mentors with mentees. Furthermore, automation was a significant element of the company's ability to survive the global pandemic. In addition to his technical innovation, Rémi has also helped to navigate business strategy, process optimization and contributed to the streamlining of the overall customer experience. Nowadays, he leads data science for Plato and is an asset to the business.
Although the journey to developing Plato was full of twists and turns, the team of more than 100 employees is now operating full steam ahead. The mentor team has grown to over 1,500 strong, and engineering teams around the world are finding immense success as a result. Backed by a star-studded group of investors and advisors - like Nicolas Dessaigne, Mathilde Collin, SaaStr, the Slack Fund, and Y Combinator - Plato is now valued at $100M. The company is set to launch Plato 2.0 next month, and plan to share the details at their largest annual event, Plato Elevate at SaaStr Annual 2022. As their founding team shares, "Teams that grow together, evolve together."
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