Meeting with Bastien Fabre
You set up Iris Lab while you were still students on the engineering course at ISAE-SUPAERO. What role did the Institute play in your desire to set up your own business?
As students, we already had the idea of becoming entrepreneurs. But at first, we didn’t see ourselves doing it straight after school… And then, being immersed in the ISAE-SUPAERO innovation ecosystem, we said to ourselves that it was possible! We started thinking seriously about it during our Final Year Project (PIE). There were three of us on the project at the time. Nicolas and I were able to bring it to fruition by creating our start-up, which was initially housed at ISAE-SUPAERO’s InnovSpace. We also benefited from the Lanceur d’Étoiles scheme [see box]. Finally, we received financial support from the ISAE-SUPAERO Foundation, the Alumni Association and extracurricular grants. The Institute and its ecosystems really helped us to create our start-up, and we’d like to thank them for that!
The technology you have developed is directly inspired by the knowledge you acquired at ISAE-SUPAERO. Can you explain how?
Our starting point was the observation that autonomous systems, such as logistics robots or drones, currently have very limited autonomy, and we set out to develop a wireless recharging technology. The idea came to us during our space studies at ISAE-SUPAERO, because space requires autonomous systems. We were fascinated by Space Based Solar Power, a technology that is currently the stuff of science fiction, but would enable us to harvest energy in space. Iris Lab’s project is to develop a technology for the wireless transmission of power by optical flow.
2024 seems to be the year for Iris Lab, which has been named one of Challenges magazine's "100 start-ups to invest in". How far has the start-up got in its development?
We’ve joined Agoranov, a Paris-based incubator specialising in deep tech, and are in the process of developing our second prototype. At the same time, we’re part of the Entrepreneur First S24 cohort at Station F. We want to start raising €3 million to launch pre-production with an industrial partner and finance the recruitment of engineers. The idea is to bring this pre-production model to market by 2025-2026. We have also recruited a CTO (Chief Technical Officer), Lakshman Srinivasan, who has a background in photovoltaic research, and interns. As for the award in Challenges, it was a great boost. Thanks to it, Iris Lab has gained both visibility and credibility.
What advice would you give to students who want to become entrepreneurs?
Let them try! And talk to entrepreneurs. When we were students, we got a lot of help from David Henri, the founder of Exotrail. Having the support and advice of someone who has been through the same thing and faced similar problems makes things easier!
The founders of Iris Lab
- Nicolas Bourliatoux, 25: CEO (Chief Executive Officer), a graduate of the ISAE-SUPAERO 2023 engineering programme specialising in Automation; internship at Exotrail and ArianeGroup.
- Bastien Fabre, 26: COO (Chief Operating Officer), a graduate of the ISAE-SUPAERO 2023 engineering programme specialising in Fluid Mechanics, with a double degree from HEC specialising in Finance.
Star Launcher, an initiative of ISAE-SUPAERO
The Lanceur d’étoiles (Star Launcher) scheme, which ISAE-SUPAERO helped to create, was publicly launched in March 2023. The aim of this consortium is to encourage the emergence and development of deep-tech start-ups in the aeronautics, space and defence sectors in the Toulouse Academy. It offers free, tailor-made support to beneficiary start-ups for a period of 3 to 18 months to boost their projects. ISAE-SUPAERO plays a major role in this, with six of the seven start-ups supported from 2022 coming from its ranks.
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