Benjamin Rolland

Co-created with my two partners the world's first game merging real and virtual in actual labyrinths, with an avatar replicating all player movements. Our technology, presented at CES 2019, integrates into existing laser game centers.

This adventure allowed me to consolidate my skills while developing new ones necessary for managing a company:

•Innovation Funding

Joining BIC Montpellier in 2018 gave me access to numerous training programs and the innovation funding ecosystem.

I secured over €500K in funding from a Business Angel, CREALIA, and banking partners. I have directly managed and obtained R&D tax credits (CIR) for 3 years.

•Agile and Efficient Team Management

I participated in defining the product vision for a mixed reality competitive shooting game as a Game As a Service for leisure venues.

I managed a multidisciplinary team (Game Dev., Art., Game design, operations) of about fifteen people and oversaw deliverables in Agile mode.

•Commercial Strategy Definition

I defined the business model for our products after market and competitor analysis, managed communication with partners and clients, and oversaw the deployment of a pilot site for franchise development.

•Marketing

I completed several marketing and digital marketing training courses to define our product marketing mix and increased a partner's revenue by 80% by managing their Ads campaign.

•Business Development

I identified and converted prospects and signed two new partners in the midst of a global pandemic.

•Crisis Management

We navigated the pandemic despite a commercial launch just one month before the first lockdown.

CREATION OF A RANGE OF TECHNOLOGICALLY DISRUPTIVE INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT COMPARED TO THE COMPETITION

For 8 years, I developed my ability to achieve a lot with few resources. In this SME of about fifteen people, facing competition that had been established for over 60 years with 100 times more human and financial resources, we were able to address a new market segment thanks to our innovation capacity. In 2010, I created the concept of the world's first mask photolithography equipment using UV LEDs.

Thanks to a combination of several technological breakthroughs, my small team of multidisciplinary engineers (optics, electronics, IT, mechanics, materials) and I developed a machine 10 times cheaper and more compact than existing products, while maintaining comparable performance. We thus made these equipments accessible to a large number of research laboratories, thereby increasing the size of the addressable market for our company alone.

This first machine paved the way for two other models with more features, the development and industrialization of which I oversaw, and which helped make Kloe a recognized mask aligner manufacturer, awarded with an prize in 2025.

It was thanks to continuous scientific and technological monitoring and a pursuit of efficiency driven by necessity that we were able to ensure innovative and rapid developments.

As Product Manager, I was responsible for requirements gathering, planning and task definition, time tracking for R&D tax credits (CIR), annual performance reviews, technical development (opto-mechanics and partly electronics), user experience design, customer relations and feedback collection, production industrialization, and setting up technical support for after-sales service.

R&D design and testing of integrated optical components (waveguides). Development of assembly and encapsulation solutions for integrated optical components. Implementation and testing of fiber optic sensors. Numerical simulation in wave and geometric optics and design of optoelectronic and optical systems.