The Recoset Team

Recoset’s team of visionary engineers and programmers have developed some of the most sophisticated predictive modelling tools on the web. We’re small, fast; young and smart. The company is backed by Real Ventures and BDC Venture Capital.

Nicolas Kruchten, Eng – Head of Product Engineering

Nicolas is proud to be an adaptable, generalist software engineer. He has applied his mantra of using the right tool for the job in a variety of domains, from transportation systems modelling to distributed evolutionary algorithms to mobile phone network performance analysis. Nicolas’ passion for technology and artificial intelligence started when he was 14, programming virtual robots in Reverse Polish Notation and real robots in assembler. This drive led him to study Engineering Science at the University of Toronto, where he specialized in Intelligent Transportation Systems. Today his interests include data visualization, control systems, economic modelling and agile methods, and he still tinkers with hardware at home, recently having modded his espresso machine to be controllable from his iPhone. He also firmly believes in engineers’ ability and responsibility to make a positive difference in the world, and was an early contributor to the Engineers Without Borders movement in Canada.

Sean Braithwaite – Software Developer

Braithwaite Patrick Sean is a performance artist and hacker living and working in Montreal. He is a self-taught programmer. His code is remarkable for its beauty. It has a pleasing emergent structure or pattern, not surprising given Sean’s intense interest in the art and mathematics of topology. Sean uses computers to make art and loves the idea of melding computers to life in seamless ways. Some believe he is from the future.

François Maillet – Machine Learning Specialist

François is a computer scientist by day and a musician by night. He obtained a Master’s in Computer Science from the prestigious University of Montreal LISA lab, where his research focused on using machine learning to solve music-related problems such as auto-tagging and playlist generation. He helped create a web-scale music recommendation platform for Sun Microsystems Labs in Boston, developed an audio-finger-printer for Eloda in Montreal. In 2008 François released a rock and roll album, although no one at Recoset has ever seen him play live, on account of his laid-back Québécois modesty. His latest invention is a program that can take an MRI image of someone’s brain and tell whether or not they play music professionally. Unfortunately, it cannot predict platinum-level success. Yet. He believes Sean is from the future.

Jeremy Barnes – Founder and CTO

Jeremy is an engineer, researcher, computer scientist and runner, in that order. He started programming when he was 10. By 14 he was soldering customized components into his computer’s creaky logic board. Today Jeremy’s specialty is the use of Machine Learning to solve real-world problems using real-world data. He is a data athlete. He loves nothing more than discovering and taming wild datasets, although he also has the stamina for vast terabytes of data crunching.

Before starting Recoset, Jeremy was a founder and tech lead at Idilia Inc, where he helped develop natural-language disambiguation technology for queries, documents and ads. He was responsible both for the overall architecture of the system and for inventing many of the linguistic algorithms and the core architecture of the technology. The latter was built on top of a fast and flexible machine learning library called JML (Jeremy’s Machine Learning library) that grew out of his university thesis. He has two patents pending on the key ideas of Idilia’s system.
Before joining Idilia, Jeremy graduated first in his Engineering class from the Australian National University. He was awarded the University Medal for his Engineering degree, and subsequently offered a prestigious Regent’s scholarship for a PhD at the University of California. He turned it down for the chance to implement his ideas at Idilia.

Jeremy is a fierce competitor in both the programming and sports worlds. He recently placed second in the international GitHub data analysis contest, and 3rd in the AUSDM data mining competition. He has hiked to Everest base camp, trained with Tour de France winner Cadel Evans, and may still hold an under 10 club 1500 meter record in his native Australia. A recent father, Jeremy thinks often about how the technologies he develops may be used to make the world a better place.

James Prudhomme – CEO

James is a seasoned executive with more than 15 years’ experience in the digital media eco system. He describes himself as a creative, resourceful, innovator. He has an unparalleled hands-on experience with ad networks and real-time ad-exchanges coupled with an appreciation for how data is changing the industry.

Before joining Recoset, James held a variety of increasingly senior positions in the digital media industry, including stints at Yahoo, AOL, Sympatico / MSN and as the General Manager of Advertising.com Canada. After leaving Ad.com, and before taking the plunge in to a start up, James consulted to many of Canada’s leading digital publishers including Yellow Pages Group, Rogers Digital Media and The Globe and Mail. As a consultant James helped the sr executives at these companies understand and leverage the opportunities in today’s data-driven, real time advertising eco system.

Board of Directors

Steve Abrams - Partner IT Venture Fund, BDC Venture Capital

Steven Abrams is a partner in the IT Venture Fund. He joined the BDC in 2001, after almost nine years in investment banking with Scotia McLeod and two years as CFO of an interactive advertising agency. As a director in corporate finance, he participated in many IPO’s, privatizations, M&A advisory mandates, and equity and debt financings for companies in sectors including technology, transportation and telecommunications. For an Internet company, he raised a first round of venture capital, did three acquisitions, two start-ups, and helped grow the company from 20 people to 145.

Mr. Abrams holds an MBA in Finance from Cornell University and Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill University.

JS Cournoyer – General Partner, Real Ventures

JS Cournoyer is co-founder and General Partner with Real Ventures and Montreal Startups, Montreal-based venture capital funds investing in great entrepreneurs building world-class companies. He’s also co-founder of Founderfuel, a Montreal-based accelerator for web, mobile and software startups. JS is also an entrepreneur, having co-founded a number of companies over the years in the software and Internet space. He is the proud father of 5 wonderful children.