The company
Ownward — operators, AI agents, a 20-year network
Ownward is a Swiss autonomy-first transformation company based in Basel. The model is deliberately different: no bench, no juniors, no man-days. A senior operator who sits down with you, augmented by a team of AI agents shipping in production, backed by a network of specialists built over twenty years. With my team of AI agents, I help you perform better — and take back control.
Meet the whole teamThe founder
Julien Cyr — Operator, not observer.
The business-minded technologist. I speak both the language of code and the language of P&L.
Basel, Switzerland · EN / FR / ES
It started at 12 — running the family network like a small company, my first Active Directory installed in my bedroom, “for fun”. The obsession never left: understanding how complex systems connect and scale. It just evolved — from configuring servers, to architecting mission-critical infrastructure, to building and running organizations as a C-level executive. What never changed: I think in systems, I build for humans. Ownward is that trajectory turned into a promise: I've spent 20 years owning systems, P&Ls and teams. Now I help you own yours.
1 · France, 2009–2016
Absolute rigor — mission-critical infrastructure
Cloud architect for defense, banking and healthcare — zero-tolerance-for-failure environments (24/7 hospital migrations, sovereign cloud, ISO 27001/HDS). Founding team of a high-security cloud provider; created and ran a telecom business unit with full P&L; board member across a 4-entity tech group.
“Good enough” is never good enough.
2 · San Francisco, 2015–2022
Hyper-growth — Silicon Valley
Founding team member of Holberton (San Francisco), Day 0. From architect to Chief Engineer to global operations to GM of a white-label SaaS line (“OS of Education”, full P&L) to Chief Innovation Officer. Campuses deployed on 5 continents, $20M raised, company acquired; graduates hired by Tesla, Google, LinkedIn.
Standardize, automate, ship every day — playbooks beat heroes.
3 · 2022–now
Turnaround & transformation — back in Europe
CEO within France's 5th-largest employment group (€1.5bn): grew an entity from <€100K to €2.5M+ revenue, opened 6 sites; then CEO of the group's multi-brand education arm — 4 brands, 17 sites, 300+ FTE, ~€20M revenue — building shared services from scratch and leading a group-wide AI transformation. Member of the group's Strategic Digital Committee.
Transformation is an operating discipline, not a slide deck.
Industries operated in
Defense · Banking · Healthcare · Cloud & Telecom · SaaS · Staffing & Education
Roles held
Engineer → Architect → Chief Engineer → Global Ops → GM (P&L) → Chief Innovation Officer → CEO
Scale handled
24/7 critical infra · 5-continent rollouts · €20M P&L · 300+ FTE · $20M raised · M&A
Craft kept current
Ships code weekly · 30+ active repos · AI-agent development (Claude Code) · MCP-certified
Twenty years building and running systems taught me to connect technical decisions with the people doing the work. Ownward brings that experience to your team: build useful tools together, share the knowledge and support their evolution. Automate repetitive work, strengthen human judgment and help people contribute. Own your tools. Own your pace. Move onward.
Our future SaaS products
We also build tools you can make your own.
Alongside tailored delivery, Ownward is developing two independent products, designed from scratch for multiple organisations, clients and activities.