# Erwan Gallo Everyone’s looking for a unicorn. Here’s the story of a chimera. [Interactive story](https://erwangallo.com/) · [CV](https://erwangallo.com/cv.md) · [Selected work & references](https://erwangallo.com/work/) Once upon a time, in Brittany, between the countryside and the sea, a curious kid was born. His name was Erwan. Pronounced Air One. R1 also works. But this is probably not why you’re here. So let’s skip a few chapters. I’ve always liked unfamiliar territory: new places, new ideas, things I didn’t yet know how to do. That curiosity took me through law, finance and blockchain, and filled my shelves with over 1,500 books, comics and manga. Along the way, I worked with founders for the Solana Foundation through Superteam France, its official French delegation, and led ecosystem partnerships at Ledger. Then AI gave me another way to put those experiences to work: by building. Ideas in my head, in my notes, in the air, could finally become things I could test, break, understand and improve. Almost like magic, like alchemy. So I started practising. First, a Telegram bot for myself. I was meeting people at events and needed a better way to exchange details, keep the context and follow up. That experiment became Cliccc: a tool helping sales teams turn real-world encounters into shared information and follow-ups. I built the first versions, tested them in Paris, New York, Dubai and Singapore, and turned the bot into a web app. I headed north, into the Helsinki cold, for Slush, where I was selected for the Anthropic × Lovable hackathon. I came back with a win. That was the sign I’d been looking for. I left Ledger. To go all in. 2026 started in a rush: I joined Founders Inc.’s Artifact program and ended up spending three months in San Francisco. Fort Mason became Fort Maison. I didn’t come home with everything I’d hoped for, but I came back with plenty of lessons and new skills. Back in France, I wanted to keep that pace, that energy, that constructive competition. Hackathons became my laboratory: unfamiliar tools, new directions, tight deadlines, and one clear goal: win. Over the following months, three more first-place finishes followed, along with a second place and two finalist spots. Then came a chance to revisit Cliccc, with a twist. At the OpenAI Codex × Mollie hackathon, I challenged myself to rebuild the idea from scratch in one day with Codex. PoCodex turned IRL sales and networking into Pokémon-inspired battles. Won 2nd place. In order to work more efficiently: keeping project context, decisions, reusable workflows and skills organised across sessions, with checks for what agents can do and what they produce. I’m building ErwanOS. Less friction and human repetition, more time building. There’s a time for battles, and a time to pass on what you’ve learned. A chance encounter took me to ORBIT’s Chief of Staff Hackathon in Stockholm as a mentor and juror. More than fifty operators, business challenges under pressure, and six lessons from my experience building with AI. With a few cooking references. I’m French, after all. Making unfamiliar things understandable was already part of my ethos. Through Harry Potter in Muggle to Wizard. By exploring Gucci’s Web3 strategy* or taking apart Starbucks’ loyalty program. Through technical explainers with Only the Zest. *Bonus: After the Gucci report was published, Gucci and Kering reached out. People were asking me how to make AI useful in their own work. That’s why I started Briques.ai: to help teams and individuals do more with their own expertise through AI, drawing on what I’d learned across different fields. Today, that includes a family-owned sawmill. A different atmosphere from a San Francisco coworking space, where precision and knowledge of the craft matter. I’m building around their workflows and the software they already use. Adapting the technology, checking the results, and helping them understand how it works. Adoption starts with understanding. And with meeting people where they already work, not asking them to work around the technology. Somewhere along the way, the pieces started fitting. That’s the work I want to keep doing: building with founders and teams, getting into the technical details, and helping more people put the tools to work. Maybe a unicorn, for sure a chimera. Got a question, an idea, or a project in mind? [Reach out](mailto:contact@briques.ai), and let’s see what we can build together. ## Links in the story - [Founders Inc.’s Artifact program](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erwan-gallo_any-sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-activity-7437890170248540161-bcgj) - [two finalist spots](https://erwangallo.com/cv/) - [PoCodex](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erwan-gallo_pocodex-2nd-place-openai-erwan-gallo-activity-7480302101802225664-ZNfy) - [ORBIT’s Chief of Staff Hackathon in Stockholm](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erwan-gallo_how-to-win-a-hackathon-briques-erwan-activity-7462162603822321664-_Olg) - [Muggle to Wizard](https://paragraph.com/@sorcier-eth/from-muggle-to-wizard-the-magic-of-web3) - [Gucci’s Web3 strategy](https://medium.com/@M3LAB/gucci-pioneering-the-web3-luxury-consumer-experience-b162e80675ec) - [Starbucks’ loyalty program](https://medium.com/@M3LAB/starbucks-odyssey-from-pay-to-rewards-to-engage-to-earn-loyalty-programs-89633aa3cbda) - [Only the Zest](https://onlythezest.substack.com/p/polygon-x-immutable-better-faster) Contact: mailto:contact@briques.ai