IntuiLab secures VC funding, opens first US office, grows executive staff
Expansion addresses increasing demand amongst design agencies and retailers for adoption of natural user interaction in their creative media and on the store floor
Toulouse, France – October 7, 2011. IntuiLab, a leader in the design, creation and deployment of innovative multi-touch experiences, today announced it has secured 1.2M€ (1.6M$) in capital funding from two investment funds – Midi Capital and WiSEED. This investor commitment comes just days after the opening of IntuiLab’s first US office, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The expansion will host global Marketing and North American Sales staff to meet the increasing demand for IntuiLab’s IntuiFace Presentation and IntuiFace Commerce products.
In support of this expansion IntuiLab has added two executives to its ranks. Geoffrey Bessin has joined IntuiLab as its Chief Marketing Officer, leaving IBM as a Senior Strategy & Planning member for the Rational software brand, concluding 13 years in various marketing, product management and strategy roles. Pierre-Henri Stanek joins IntuiLab as their Technology Evangelist and Customer Engagement lead, leaving Intel where he managed the sales roll-out for a new software product line in the European market. Before Intel, Stanek spent six years in IBM as a technical sales evangelist with worldwide responsibility for the deployment and usage of software development solutions amongst major industrial customers.
Bessin will head up US Operations out of the Cambridge office while Stanek will work out of IntuiLab’s recently opened Paris-based office, home to a brand new showroom demonstrating a variety of in-production retail applications built by IntuiLab and hosted on everything from tablets and touchscreens to interactive tables. Together, Bessin’s and Stanek’s addition reunites a successful team as they and IntuiLab’s CEO, Vincent Encontre, worked closely together during their mutual time in Rational.
“IntuiLab may have roots in Toulouse, France but it has global ambitions,“ says Vincent Encontre. “Demand for our multi-touch expertise and technology has increased 30% annually since 2007 with inquiries and customers coming to us from all over the world. We are very excited to now have a foothold in the US and to have added such great talent to our team. Our recent capital infusion will now enable us to take an even more aggressive path towards expansion.”
The explosion in demand for IntuiLab’s offerings can be traced to the now mainstream appeal of today’s mobile and tablet-enabled multi-touch experience. This has lead not only to the increasing technical ability of the majority but to an increasing incidence of device-mediated self-service. The general public is now a savvy public, encouraging both design agencies – working with conferences, convention centers, museums, hospitality venues, etc. – and retailers of all stripes – including consumer goods, real estate and finance – to pursue novel methods for embracing this change.
About IntuiLab
Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Toulouse, France, IntuiLab is a global leader in the design and development and deployment of surface computing-based applications for multimedia agencies and retail. Through IntuiFace, the company’s portable, scalable and extensible surface computing software platform, IntuiLab delivers and deploys applications that bring tangible returns on investment to its clients by providing their customers and users with a more natural, immersive and memorable interactive experience. IntuiLab is a Microsoft and 3M partner and has clients in a wide variety of industries such as consumer goods, banking, telecommunications and hospitality.
If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Vincent Encontre, please send an email to info@intuilab.com.