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Mike Veilleux
Transforming B2B SaaS founders’ visions into real products
Mike Veilleux is the Technical Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at York IE, an advisory and venture capital firm for technology companies.13 He was promoted to Managing Director, Advisory in October 2024, overseeing York IE's Advisory as a Service platform.12
Veilleux has a diverse background in technology and business:
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Education:
- MBA from the University of New Hampshire - Whittemore School of Business and Economics
- Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute3
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Professional Experience:
- Co-founder and CTO at York IE since September 2019
- Previously held positions at Oracle, Dyn, and Elbit Systems of America
- Founder of GearFreedom, a sports rental gear startup3
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Expertise:
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Achievements:
- Helped reduce development costs for private-equity-backed Broadlume by 15%
- Served as an early-stage product leader for the launch of Winrate1
At York IE, Veilleux leads efforts to deliver comprehensive advisory services, helping startups grow responsibly and efficiently from early stages to IPO.1
Highlights
Are you investing in quality assurance within your engineering org?
At York IE, we always stress the importance of QA in our engagements – whether we’re working with early or later-stage clients. We’re big believers in baking quality assurance software professionals into all of our development squads.
Why is this important? QA teams can help you:
Ensure Product Quality: Thorough testing and quality checks help QA professionals identify and rectify any issues in the software before it’s released to end users.
Maintain Customer Satisfaction: QA analysts typically try to mimic customer behaviors in their testing. Both expected workflows and unexpected misuse are tested.
Limit Costly Bugs and Errors: Teams that spend more time identifying and fixing bugs early on spend 22% less time on unplanned work and rework.
Meet Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: A QA team can help reduce the risk of non-compliance penalties or legal issues in industries such as healthcare and finance.
Foster Continuous Improvement: As QA specialists get more ingrained with their engineering team, they’ll be able to anticipate roadblocks and keep you aligned with your roadmap.
I wrote more about how to structure a QA department, and what makes York IE’s QA approach different. Check it out in the comments!
Total addressable market is a great metric to show to your investors.
It's a horrible metric to build your product around.
The number 1 reason most startups fail is because they run out of money. And the biggest waste of money is building a product that nobody wants.
I've seen so many founders spend all of their resources on developing a general product that they think will appeal to everybody in this huge market they've identified. But they don't target it enough, and they don't get feedback from the people they should be targeting.
Then, when they bring the product to market, it fails.
Fortunately, there's a better way.
Instead of focusing on your TAM, focus on your MVA:
Minimum Viable Audience
Who are the people that could most benefit from the MVP you're building? Ruthlessly prioritize the features they need, get their feedback and constantly iterate.
This is the best way to find product market fit.
Not by trying to build everything for everyone at the same time.
