Fabien Vauchelles

Today, we meet Fabien, the mastermind behind Scrapoxy, the first open-source proxy aggregator tool released as Free Open Source Software (FOSS). An impressive achievement in its own right, but even more so when you consider that before joining the world of FOSS (+1800 stars on Github), Fabien was the CTO of a successful multimillion-dollar corporation. In this episode, we’ll try to understand the “why” behind Fabien’s decision to leave wealth for freedom, a decision he deliberated over ten months!

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Driven by Passion

Fabien started learning programming when he was only eight years old, inspired in part by his IT teacher's father. Fabien loved IT stuff, which might have meant average grades in other school subjects, but he didn’t care. He continued to fixate on computer engineering, learned different programming languages, and chose to follow his passion for engineering and entrepreneurship. 

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Even today, he mentioned that it is still his mantra. Both engineering and entrepreneurship go hand in hand for Fabien because they try to solve a problem. It’s about getting up in the morning and feeling excited, thinking about what problem he is going to solve today. And solve he did - not one, not two, but three industries before eventually shifting his focus to Scrapoxy. He started his entrepreneurial journey in the automotive industry right out of college as a young engineer - cars can be an understandable fixation for a curious person like him, so things easily ‘geared’ into motion!

But when that didn’t quite work out for him, Fabien shifted his focus to nightclubs! Again, an understandable curiosity of a young guy fending for himself in Paris! He didn’t outright own a nightclub but made software so that VIP people could book tables. However, Fabien wanted his cofounders to fully commit to the company to create a successful business. This divergent viewpoint should have been a dealbreaker from the start. Realizing this, he knew it was time to change things and start from scratch again.

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Pilgrimage Towards Happiness

The next part of Fabien’s journey was quite intriguing. As an engineer turned entrepreneur, his third startup was a dream come true for any startup CTO - raising $15 million in funds to grow the business. And grow they did! It soon became a large company with more than 70 people!

However, he didn’t feel the same zest waking up anymore. Solving problems in a scale-up meant managing too many people and not doing the coding he was so passionate about. It meant sacrificing his sense of happiness - and no way the Fabien we are getting to know would compromise that.

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Don’t get him wrong - he loves managing people and working with others to solve problems! But he knows his comfort zone, and that is to lead a much smaller company solving the key problems of an industry - and that’s how he decided to double down on Scrapoxy, a pet project he started on a whim almost a decade ago.

Eight years ago, he was only working with data center proxies, but today Scrapoxy can do so much more. You can manage ISP, residential, and mobile proxies all from one place. Fabien has made sure to keep Scrapoxy a free and open-source software, which Rayobyte greatly admires.

If you’re a scraper, you already know that you need a lot of IP addresses to try and access a website to gather data, and that’s where Scrapoxy can help to manage the IP addresses, limit your requests, and rotate them accordingly.

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Conclusion

Fabien has never been afraid of jumping into a new industry. In his own words: “When you are an entrepreneur, a lot of people say, 'You won't be successful. It will fail.' Yes, it might fail, but I’ve done everything I can. I have no regrets. That's how I'm learning. And perhaps at the point in time, in 10 years, I'll be happier than you.”

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The Rayobyte team wishes Fabien a world of happiness, and we can’t wait to see him taking on more challenges in his pursuit of passion!

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