Clarity Over Tooling: Velocity & Building Teams Without Drama with Loïc Houssier // CTO @ Superhuman MailFrom acquisition carve-outs to 100ms interaction rules: Engineering velocity through team clarity, not tool proliferation

What drives execution velocity—better tools or better clarity? Loïc Houssier, CTO of Superhuman Mail (post-Grammarly acquisition), argues that most velocity problems stem from unclear team missions, not inadequate tooling. He shares hard-won lessons from steering DocuSign's French acquisition through complex carve-out negotiations and building Superhuman's offline-first architecture with a 100-millisecond interaction rule. Loïc discusses engineering metrics that actually matter (PR per engineer per week trends over absolutes), when to resist microservices (until it's genuinely painful), and why promotion frameworks determine product quality. Technical leaders will learn how vertical team alignment eliminates dependencies, why guild structures maintain consistency without blocking speed, and how European safety nets create underappreciated opportunities for technical risk-taking.