Helping Company Founders: INRIA’s Technological Outreach Strategy
by Bernard Larrouturou and Laurent Kott
The founding of companies stemming from INRIA started in 1984.
Over fifteen years, thirty-seven companies have been created by
researchers, engineers or young PhDs coming from INRIA’s research
teams. Twenty-six of them are still in activity today under their
own name and gather a total of over one thousand highly qualified
jobs.
INRIA’s commitment to foster the creation of technology companies
has been reinforced in the last two years. In addition to various
incentives and encouragement, INRIA now supports company founders
through post-doctoral fellowships and due to the incubator role
played by its new subsidiary INRIA-Transfert. INRIA also played
an essential role in setting up the I-Source-Gestion company that
manages the first start-up fund in France consecrated to the sector
of Information and Communication Science and Technology (ICST).
This commitment led to very satisfying results in 1998 and the
beginning of 1999. Seven technology companies stemming from INRIA
were created in just twelve months: Gene-IT, Liquid Market, Novadis
Services, Polyspace Technologies, Realviz, Saphir-Control and
Trusted Logic. These companies intervene in such diverse fields
as video digital special effects, software certification for smart
cards, catalogue set up for electronic commerce and genome sequence
processing, to name a few. The skills and technological basis
for several of these companies come from highly theoretical research.
Two years ago, it was not always evident that such research had
the potential required to enter the markets concerned today. Such
company creations thus are very good examples of the breathtaking
speed at which technological breakthroughs occur in ICST.
INRIA-Transfert
INRIA-Transfert is a company with a capital of13,2 Million Euros
created in 1998 that is a 100% subsidiary of INRIA. Its purpose
is twofold: to play a major role in the setting up of a start-up
fund in ICST, and to provide the reference structure for the incubation
of innovative company projects in software dominated information
technology. On the start-up side, INRIA-Transfert is the reference
stockholder in the newly established
I-Source Gestion company (see below), but has no direct responsibility
in the management of its start-up fund. Concerning incubation,
the essential task is networking, that is to say setting up a
network of professionals that INRIA-Transfert can call upon to
detect, appraise and consolidate creation projects. The objective
is to bring them to fruition in less than a year.
INRIA-Transfert is thus a structure that the project authors during
the phase prior to the creation of the company itself. INRIA-Transfert
provides help in the following steps:
- scientific appraisal of the project
- exchange of ideas to refine the project and narrow down the objectives
- search for financing
- market research
- verification that the final program proceeds as expected.
I-Source Gestion
The goal of this company is to finance the seed phase of technology
start-ups stemming from public or private research, operating
in the ICT markets. The first financing tool is a venture capital
mutual fund for an amount of 15,2 Million Euros and a duration
of 10 years. Funds come from the public sector (like the main
stockholder INRIA-Transfert and the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations)
and private sector subscriptions (institutional investors, in
particular the assurance company AXA, and venture capital companies).
I-Source Gestion develops a genuine ‘co-business’ approach with
the project authors it selects. Starting from a draft of the product,
team and business plan, I-Source Gestion works with them on the
formalisation of their business strategy, on the definition of
the first objectives and on the finalisation of the financing
plan. The goal is to make sure that the start-up takes off successfully
so that the start-up fund can disengage itself when strong growth
phases are reached. An active follow-up of the start-up is made
possible through a participation in the board of directors or
the supervisory board. The planned average amount of I-Source
Gestion intervention is on the order of 450,000 Euros in two instalments
separated by 12 to 18 months. Project selection is extremely demanding
on the marketing as well as technical level and I-Source Gestion
does not hesitate to ask the advice of various experts, including
INRIA scientists.
The first accomplished project that benefited from the help of
I-Source Gestion financing is the Polyspace Technologies start-up,
which specialises in the development and marketing of verification
and validation environments for on-board real-time software. The
company was founded at the initiative of Daniel Pilaud – formerly
at Verilog – and Alain Deutsch, an INRIA-Rocquencourt researcher.
Approximately twenty projects are currently under study. The objective
of I-Source Gestion is to help starting up some eight technology
companies per year over the next five years.
For more information, see:
Please contact:
Laurent Kott - INRIA
Tel: +33 1 39 63 56 02
E-mail: Laurent.Kott@inria.fr
