Christophe Baralotto, co-founder and manager with Michel Féraud of Provence Technologies, one of the iconic innovative businesses in the Technology Park which was created in 1998 following the completion their PhD in organic chemistry, has the profile of a serial entrepreneur. After numerous achievements of international magnitude (world patent application in 2006 for a novel process for creating methylene blue) and various awards that acknowledged the development of Provence Technologies and its affiliate Provepharm (Image Entreprise 2011 Prize), Christophe Baralotto has invested into the digital economy sector by creating the MailinBlack Company in 2003, which specialises in antispam technologies and is chaired today by Damien Neyret.
Interview taken from Provence Promotion’s website www.investinprovence.com
In what circumstances was Mailinblack born?
Christophe Baralotto: Originally the goal was B2C oriented. By the end of 2005, considering the sector’s needs and our new development strategy toward B2C, we achieved an initial “love money” round of funding to recruit a sales manager, thus optimising the distribution of our service supply. In 2007, our turnover had tripled and we decided to continue our growth by opening the first Mailinblack sales agencies, further to a second round of funding with business angels. Today the MailinBlack head office is in Marseille and our team of 25 employees is evenly distributed between Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux. To date some 3,000 customers, including 99% of companies, rely on us. Despite the recession, the company’s 2009 turnover remained in line with that of 2008, i.e. approximately 1.5 million Euros. 2010 will be much better as we expect a +50% increase due to our excellent customer-loyalty rate (> 90%).
