I turned 40 a few months ago and like many before me, I felt the time was right to make a few life changes.

In reality they had long been underway: as an entrepreneur, I’ve always been torn between building successful businesses and driving positive impact in the world. My first startup Jamendo was clearly more on the idealistic side, while Pricing Assistant and then my work at Contentsquare were more interesting business and technical challenges.

Still, a few times in my career I found a sweet spot between my values and the value I was creating: dotConferences was both a successful (albeit small) business and a way of contributing to the open source developer community through offline connections and Creative Commons videos. Similarly, impact investing has been particularly rewarding on both levels.

While I may keep seeking this sweet spot in future ventures, I’m fortunate enough to be able to take a different approach for now: remove the business side of the equation altogether and focus purely on contributing to the public good!

I spent some time exploring different opportunities to do just that, but I kept coming back to my belief that strong public services are the best way to reduce inequalities, build a more resilient society and protect the environment.

In France as in most of Europe, the public sector is in a difficult place. It still manages to provide an incredible array of services, infrastructure and support to most, but it faces many challenges, from shrinking budgets to attacks on its legitimacy and its sovereignty.

A common criticism of the public sector is that it is slow and inefficient. This may be true in some cases, but as citizens, we can choose to step up and help rather than just complain.

In my case, I felt that I could contribute to digital public services to make them more accessible, secure and efficient. It turns out that there are already many bright developers working on these issues in France through the beta.gouv.fr community.

Today I’m happy to announce that I have joined them as the CTO of La Suite territoriale, which aims to provide an open source online workspace to all French public agents. I believe giving them simple, efficient and secure collaborative tools will make a big difference in the way all public services are delivered, including offline ones.

I had the chance to meet the teams at DINUM and ANCT over the past few weeks and I couldn’t be more excited to start building with them. So far among old friends and new colleagues, I’ve only met people who are passionate about public services and who are eager to make a difference. I was even able to join them on a trip to Berlin to meet our European partners, which made me realize this could have an impact well beyond France.

I’m starting this new adventure with high spirits, though I know it won’t be a walk in the park. Wish me luck - I’ll keep you posted on the journey!