Three senior operators. Being small is the point, not the compromise.

• 
  Founder, CTO

  Laurent

  A software engineer with more than twenty years of technology projects behind him, as a developer, a lead, and a CTO. Started inside the IT departments of French media, telecoms and banking, at TF1, Bouygues Telecom, Orange Business Services, SFR and BPCE among others. Founded Cœur du Web in 2019.

  He runs the fractional CTO engagements and the interim assignments himself, and designed the products we built for ourselves, which is how we demonstrate we can carry software to a market rather than only ship a project.

  Full backgroundLinkedIn
• 
  Lead frontend

  David

  Interface and front-end architecture, from a single component up to a design system. Uncompromising on performance, accessibility and whether the code will still be maintainable later.

  Laurent's partner for more than twenty years across successive companies. When a product has to still be pleasant to use two years in, that is his work showing.

• 
  Lead tech

  Clairmont

  Architecture, backend, infrastructure, integrations. He lays the foundations that hold when a system starts taking real volume. Pragmatic about stack choices, inflexible about what gets deployed.

  Full time on Cœur du Web for four years. On high-criticality engagements he works alongside Laurent, or owns the scope outright depending on its shape. When a client hands us a sensitive migration, he structures the technical answer.

Five answers, including where we are the wrong choice.

• You are in Paris. How does that work for a US company?

  Paris is six hours ahead of the US East Coast and nine ahead of the West Coast, so our afternoon is your morning. That overlap is real working time, not a courtesy window, and it is when standups and decision calls happen. What it costs you is that an afternoon question on your side gets answered the next morning. For a fractional engagement built on scheduled sessions rather than instant availability, that is usually a non-issue. For work that needs someone reachable at 4pm Pacific, it is a real limitation and you should weigh it.

• Three people. What happens if one of you is unavailable?

  Documentation is mandatory at every stage of an engagement, specifically so that continuity does not depend on one person being reachable. On high-criticality work two of us are assigned rather than one. We also cap how many engagements run in parallel, contractually, before signing. We turn work down rather than dilute what is already committed, which is the part that makes the cap mean anything.

• Why should a US company hire a French firm at all?

  Only for reasons that survive scrutiny. The senior people are the ones doing the work rather than fronting it, which is not the norm in this market. The engagements are fixed fee with the risk on our side. And several of our references are public institutions, so they are verifiable rather than assertions. If what you need is a US-based team on your timezone with US client references, we are not it, and we will tell you that in the first conversation rather than the third.

• Do you work in English day to day?

  Yes, in writing and on calls. Documentation, code, commit messages and specifications are produced in English on English-language engagements. Our accents will be audible. Our written English will be clear, which for technical documentation is the part that matters.

• Are you a development agency or a consultancy?

  Both, and that is deliberate rather than a hedge. We advise and we build, which means our advice has to survive the implementation. A consultancy that never ships can recommend anything. We cannot, because we are the ones who then have to make it work.