After completing his deployment in Afghanistan, Laboulle decided to switch gears and took up a one-year management traineeship with a consulting company. The experience proved to be formative in solidifying his resolve to join the private sector, despite the challenges faced; his first assignment was in the retail sector, where the business of parsing the intricacies of consumer psychology was a world away from his task-oriented, military-honed communications style.
While most tech founders and CEOs might have cut their teeth studying computer science or competing at hackathons, Toku founder and CEO Thomas Laboulle had a different start. Following his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, he entered the workforce by joining the Belgian military where he served from 2008 to 2010 as an infantry officer.
“If I had two lives, I would have dedicated one to a career in the military. But you only have one life, so you need to make choices. At some point, my curiosity for the business world pushed me to try out the private sector,” Laboulle told The Edge Singapore.
