# Tristan Berguer

> Product Lead for AI and B2B SaaS · Interim CEO at Taplio · ex-lemlist · co-founder of NiceCactus. Based in Perpignan, France. Looking for Product Lead, Founding PM or Senior Product Manager roles focused on AI, B2B SaaS, growth or zero-to-one product development.

I build products people pay for, as a founder, a PM and an interim CEO.

Over the past decade, I have built and scaled SaaS products as a founder, product manager and interim CEO. I talk to customers, turn evidence into product decisions, prototype when speed matters and lead teams toward measurable business outcomes. At Taplio, I helped grow ARR from €5M to €7M in three months while reducing first-month churn among new trial users from 93% to 40%.

## Contact
- Contact: jobs@tristanberguer.com, or LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristanberguer/
- GitHub: https://github.com/minipouce
- X: https://x.com/TBerguer
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tberguer
- Malt: https://www.malt.fr/profile/tristanberguer
- Go Fractional: https://www.gofractional.com/member/tristan-berguer
- Site: https://www.tristanberguer.com (English) · https://www.tristanberguer.com/fr (French)

## Pages
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/cv: the full résumé as plain, single-column text.
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/cv/startup: the same résumé weighted for a founding or early-stage role.
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/cv/scaleup: the same résumé weighted for a scale-up or large-company role.
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/cv.json: the same résumé as JSON Resume, for machines.
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/prd: a product requirements document for hiring him: problem, target users, success signals, how he works best, the approach for the first months, risks.
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/changelog: a dated shipping log of everything he has launched.
- https://www.tristanberguer.com/fractional: how to hire him for freelance product missions or as a fractional CPO — product audit, activation and retention, positioning, zero-to-one, prototypes he builds himself, AI features, interim product leadership. Remote from France on US hours, from two weeks.
- https://notebook.google.com/notebook/2322c46f-6d28-4d6f-941a-f35357daa18c/artifact/1ccb6daa-53bb-4244-a41e-a8a6569504bd: a public NotebookLM briefing built from these pages, for readers who prefer a single summary.

## Availability
- Open to full-time roles: Product Lead, AI Product Manager, Founding PM, Senior Product Manager.
- Also available for freelance and fractional missions, remote from France on US hours, from two weeks.
- Bookable directly at jobs@tristanberguer.com, via Malt (French companies) or via Go Fractional (US teams).

## Work authorisation
- French citizen. Remote work from France needs no sponsorship.

## Selected results
- €5M → €7M ARR, in three months (Taplio)
- 93% → 40% first-month churn, new trial users (Taplio)
- 1.5M registered users in 18 months (NiceCactus)
- €12.5M raised across two companies (NiceCactus · Carimmat)

## Companies founded or co-founded
- **Buska** (Operating, 2023–): Co-founder & CTO. Buying intent, found in public posts. Started in November 2023 alongside the lempire role as a general social listening tool, then pivoted to lead generation: the same signal, a different buyer, and a market with a budget line for it. Rebuilt end to end and relaunched in April 2026, growing MRR by roughly 40% month over month over the five months that followed. Scans 30+ platforms in real time and scores every mention 0 to 100. https://www.buska.io
- **Senthor** (Maintained, 2025–): Co-founder & CEO. The AI crawler paywall. Detects AIs reading your pages and lets you allow, limit, block or monetise them, without hurting SEO. https://www.senthor.io
- **Private MRR** (Open source, 2026–): Author, open source. Live revenue across Stripe accounts. A self-hosted Android and Node.js system that aggregates revenue across several Stripe accounts in real time, built on signed webhooks, SSE, Firebase push notifications, SQLite, Docker and restricted-key security. Open source, and the clearest single answer to whether I can still build. https://github.com/minipouce/private-mrr
- **Atyla** (Live, 2026–): Co-founder. Visibility inside AI answers. All-in-one platform to measure and improve how a brand shows up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. https://www.atyla.io
- **uwait** (Live, 2026–): Founder. Get paid while AI thinks. Chrome extension that shows a curated ad during the 3–8 seconds ChatGPT or Claude takes to answer, and pays you a cut. https://www.uwait.co
- **BeeSecure** (Shipped, 2025): Founder. AI security co-pilot. Scans a codebase, finds vulnerabilities and gives clear steps to fix them. Built solo in 11 days during an international hackathon. https://beesecure.io
- **Beelink** (Shipped, 2025): Founder. B2B Chatroulette. Log in with LinkedIn, match with founders, recruiters or investors, talk on video. Coded in 48 hours. The first payment landed before development was finished. https://www.beelink.io
- **PressPilot** (Live, 2023): Founder. AI-written press releases. Writes professional press releases and distributes them to thousands of journalists in a few clicks. https://www.presspilot.io
- **NiceCactus** (Founder exit, shares sold, 2017–2019): Co-founder & CPO. Esports SaaS for players and teams. Platform helping esports players and teams train, organise and attract sponsors. 1.5M registered users in 18 months, €12M raised, nearly 100 employees, and the first esports insurance with AXA France. I exited by selling my shares in 2019. https://esport-management.com
- **Carimmat** (Closed, 2019–2023): Founder & Product Manager. Dating by license plate. Consumer app launched in France in 2021. 200,000 registered users, €500k raised, a five-person team, national TV, radio and press coverage, and a Smart Mobility Award at VivaTech. https://www.carimmat.com
- **Lootingg** (Ended, 2022–2023): Founder & CPO. Invest in gaming talent. Back esports players the way you back companies: the better they perform, the more the investor earns.
- **Peenut** (Ended, 2020–2021): Founder. Short-form takes on the news. Mobile app for expressing yourself on news and current events in short format, organised by category.

## Roles
- 2025-03 – present: Founder & Product Engineer at Independent. A focused year building and validating AI products end to end, from customer discovery and architecture through code, deployment, pricing and go-to-market. Results: Senthor, a paywall for AI crawlers: co-founder and CEO, my main focus from September 2025 to April 2026. Validated the opportunity and explored fundraising before pausing active development based on market timing; Relaunched Buska in April 2026 after rebuilding the product and its positioning, then grew MRR by roughly 40% month over month over the following five months; Launched smaller products to test new markets quickly, including Atyla and uwait; Private MRR, open source: a self-hosted Android and Node.js system aggregating revenue across several Stripe accounts in real time.
- 2024-09 – 2025-03: Product Manager, then Interim CEO at Taplio. Joined as Product Manager in September 2024 to help rebuild Taplio after lempire acquired it, and was promoted to Interim CEO in December, with revenue already falling. Results: Led a five-person team and set the product direction for the turnaround; The seven-day trial converted users to paid before the product had delivered enough recurring value: 93% of new trial users churned within their first month; Studied the behavior of long-term customers, interviewed retained users and rebuilt activation around the workflows most closely associated with retention; First-month churn among new trial users fell from 93% to 40%, and ARR went from €5M to €7M between December 2024 and March 2025, without raising prices or increasing acquisition.
- 2023-02 – 2024-10: Product Manager at lemlist. Joined lemcal’s initial three-person product team, a Calendly competitor built around ultra-personalisation. Results: Owned product, positioning, marketing and acquisition within the initial three-person team, working alongside the engineering team; Took the product from concept to €50k ARR within six months of launch, by making the booking page a piece of personal branding rather than a utility; More than 1,000 existing Calendly users switched to lemcal; Ran the go-to-market and the launch campaigns.
- 2019-09 – 2023-01: Founder & CEO at Carimmat. A consumer app that matches people by licence plate. Founded, funded and run from concept to 200,000 registered users. Results: Owned product, go-to-market, acquisition, fundraising and company operations; Built and managed a five-person team; 200,000 registered accounts, €500k raised, national television, radio and press coverage, and a Smart Mobility Award at VivaTech; Stepped back from day-to-day operations in early 2023 to join lempire.
- 2017-05 – 2019-05: Co-founder · CMO, then CPO at NiceCactus (Exited 2019). Co-founded as Esport-Management, later NiceCactus. Esports SaaS in Sophia-Antipolis, helping players and teams turn professional. Results: As part of the founding team, helped raise €12M and grow the company to nearly 100 employees; As CMO, directly managed an eight-person marketing team whose campaigns, partnerships, events and media operations acquired 1.5 million registered users in 18 months; As CPO, set product vision, priorities and quality bar in daily partnership with an engineering organisation of roughly 60 people; Helped create the first esports insurance, with AXA France; Exited in 2019 by selling my shares. The company continued without me.
- 2016-04 – 2017-12: CMO, then CTO at Riskattitude. Natural-hazard startup. Ran marketing and communications, then moved into a part-time technical role and built the Risk@lertes mobile app and website while launching NiceCactus. Results: Joined NiceCactus full-time after its funding round.

## Skills
- Product: Customer discovery, Activation and retention, Product strategy, Pricing and monetisation, Zero-to-one, Product-led growth, Go-to-market, PostHog, Stripe, Figma
- Leadership: Cross-functional leadership, Product turnarounds, ARR growth, Churn reduction, Fundraising, Hiring and team management, Multi-team product leadership
- Engineering: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, React Native / Expo, Python, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Docker, LLM products and agents, Scraping and data pipelines

## Also
- Award: Winner, Smart Mobility Award, My Global Village at VivaTech, 2021.
- Industry first: Built the first esports insurance, in partnership with AXA France.
- Esports: Former professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player.
- Author: “Le langage décrypté des gamers”, a dictionary of gamer slang. More than 1,000 copies sold.
- Music: Songwriter and composer.
- Open source: Private MRR, a self-hosted Android and Node.js revenue dashboard, published in full.
- Audience: 14,000+ followers on LinkedIn.
- Video: I document how I build and launch products on YouTube.