Life Story of Paul Fervoy- A Journey of Tech Innovation and Leadership

In this edition of “The Executive Outlook,” we have the privilege of speaking with Mr. Paul Fervoy, a visionary leader in the tech industry. As the Executive Director of Siftia, a dynamic startup at the forefront of technological innovation, Paul brings a wealth of experience and information to him during a conversation. Beyond his role at Siftia, Paul has experience of serving as a professor at LEAD University, where he revitalizes the curriculum for Digital Marketing and E-commerce students, ensuring they are equipped with the skills needed in today’s fast-paced digital world. His passion for implementing change and acquiring new skills through technology is evident. Join us as we explore his journey, insights, and vision for the future.

During a conversation, Paul shared his journey, explaining that he has been working in the tech sector for 30 years and is currently serving as Executive Director of Siftia, a data product engineering startup. He highlighted the phase when he had just finished university and was awarded an internship to work for the then ex-president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias who had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Paul worked for the Arias Foundation from 1993 to 1995 when no Internet was yet available. The technology used in this first job then was UUCP, Unix to Unix copy protocol, the predecessor to TCP/IP.

After his internship, as TCP/IP gained traction – a new technology called the Internet began to flourish. To apply his knowledge, he worked for a regional Central American foundation to extend the reach of technology in NGOs in the region to help them connect to the Internet, learn how to use it, and apply it to social development objectives.

Paul shared that in 1997 he created a web development company with a couple of partners where they specialized in helping companies connect their backend systems to the Internet. In 1998 the company began using Google’s search engine on websites and then in 2003 Paul and his team became more focused on digital marketing for companies, such as Google’s new Adwords for website promotion, content promotion, and eventually service sales and customer acquisition.

According to him, in this period, what he liked the most about this work was the chance to collect and observe the interaction between users and these websites. So, in 1997, his company started collecting data and using web server log processing to understand user behavior on websites. In 2005, the company turned to using the Google Analytics tool to do web interaction analytics and specialized in digital analytics services.

Paul said that in 2014, he began attending Google Partner events in California and met partners from different regions of Latin America – Mexico, Peru, Chile, among a handful ofothers. He got to know these other Google partners and they started working together. Eventually, some of those, including him, joined in to create a new company named Extendo.

Paul recounted a challenging time during the pandemic that severely impacted the digital marketing industry. At the time, Extendo had about 80 team members, but the company had to downsize. This led to the spin-off and creation of a new company, Siftia, in Costa Rica. This spinoff is now focused on developing data-driven products and currently offers data engineering services to the healthcare sector in the United States.

After this highly inspiring conversation, Paul shared some exciting highlights of the challenges he faced during his journey.

The most significant challenges he faced in Central America in the 1990s – When the Internet was part of the telecommunications industry, that industry was highly regulated. Many of the telecommunications companies at that time were government-owned. There was much debate about which services the businesses could provide. Can they provide hosting for a website? Can non-government companies allow people to connect to the Internet? Can companies provide the services that would allow people to make a phone call that doesn’t go through the government telecom? So, all these issues came up, and Paul and the team were getting in trouble because they would do things, and then the government would say, you can’t do that.

To solve this challenge, Paul joined other companies and began creating an IT Business Association of internet services providers. This initiative merged with another business in the IT and eventually became CAMTIC, the premier business chamber representing the tech sector in Costa Rica. CAMTIC works on the issues that affect the technology sector including guiding government regulation, developing human talent, and promoting the growth and exports of local IT companies. He became a board member of that chamber and then promoted to the President. Despite being a foreigner, it was constructive for him to be a part of a community.

By spreading light on his typical days, earlier, when he was a president of the chamber Paul said he stays engaged in meeting with people, understanding and solving challenges together, gaining knowledge, finding solutions. Paul loved his chamber responsibilities. His routine was different, but now it has changed. Now he is very much focused on growing Siftia. So, his day today starts with the project team’s scrum sessions. He takes department meetings and focuses on administration, marketing and business development in the morning. In the afternoon, he tries to have time to do his work and assigned tasks, promoting the organization, and contributing to the local industry through articles or debates. He also gives classes at a university. So as his workday ends, he usually does some university work. Paul takes his university job as a responsibility, partly to help teach the next generation and impact what they will learn. Also, he likes the energy of the students.

When asked what aspects of his job excite him the most, Paul replied, “The biggest excitement always comes when it’s time to deliver a project to a client. When you finish something, it looks great that your client is happy. There’s nothing better than that moment for a company, successful delivery”.

He further defines how Data Strategy is vital in any organization. As per Paul, it is hard to have a good strategy if you don’t have good information. So, every strategy begins with research. You must research and understand what the market and competition are doing and what trends there are in the marketplace. Most of all, you need to be aware of what your own clients or similar clients are experiencing and what their pains are that you could solve.

Paul’s company provides valuable information to clients in the healthcare industry by helping them understand how both clinic staff and patients interact with their applications. Through a user-friendly product dashboard, clients can see what features are being used, which ones are not, and where users might be encountering difficulties. This information helps clients identify the usability and effectiveness of their applications and guides them in making improvements. The goal is to ensure that these digital tools complete their purpose efficiently and flawlessly. It increases the overall user experience for both staff and patients.

In his words, business strategy is about understanding, if not predicting, what clients need and then finding ways to serve that need. That’s what strategy is all about, and data is the tool to do that.

According to Paul, the significance of digital platforms in business growth is part of technology convergence. The first step of this understanding is that the customer is the center of these tools. So, put the customer in the center. Secondly, you need to change the competencies of the people who work in your organization. They must share information across departments. They need to focus on tending to the customer. They need to use data for their different roles. In his words, “the way that we want to understand digital transformation and the change in business today is how we use data with these powerful computing tools. These amazing new machine learning and intelligence models, and large language models make better use of data, put the customer back in the center of our organizations and then organize the business around that. That’s really the moment that we’re living in. That certainly presents a lot of new challenges for companies to do that”. Paul’s definition of digital transformation is the convergence of a series of technologies – data, the cloud and machine learning – significantly change how businesses operate.

Paul Fervoy is an inspiring personality with great experience, knowledge, and achievements. How he handled challenges and turned them into reality reflects his courage and passion to prove himself. He believes in sharing and applying his knowledge by attempting new things. Click here for more inspiring life stories of tech leaders.