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From an Advanced Master® to an innovative start-up: an entrepreneurial success story made at ISAE-SUPAERO

Publication Date

27 March 2024

From an idea to ... an innovative service

Presentation

Start with an idea and come up with an innovative service. This is the common thread running through the projects of students in the Advanved Master® in Innovative Project Management and Entrepreneurship (MGPIE, now IEM) at ISAE-SUPAERO. This was also the genesis of ELDA TECHNOLOGY, one of the nine start-ups housed at InnovSpace, the Institute’s incubator. Charlotte Brenac, Julie Aubert and Nicolas Guibal, the three co-founders, are graduates of the Advanced Master MGPIE class of 2022.

In just two years, ELDA TECHNOLOGY has developed a unique technology for mapping the snow cover in ski areas. The aim is to optimise the production of artificial snow and minimise its environmental impact. The Alpine resort of Serre Chevalier Domaine Skiable showed an interest in the technology as soon as it was launched. As a result, the start-up is aiming for sales of €150,000 by the end of 2024, rising to €800,000 by the end of 2025.

“We felt surrounded, supported and supervised!

Evolution

During our programme, we spent a lot of time studying the needs and potential of our project with two coaches involved in our course, Elvire Prochilo and Romain Buquet. This enabled us to adjust our initial idea to meet a real need”, explains Charlotte Brenac, Operations Manager at ELDA TECHNOLOGY. The members of the group also worked well together. “We had the same interests and we complemented each other. We got caught up in our own project”, recalls Julie Aubert, who is now Sales Manager.

The result was that, although neither of them had any initial plans to found a start-up immediately after graduating, entrepreneurship became an obvious choice. “At ISAE-SUPAERO, we felt surrounded, supported and supervised. That was reassuring for us”. Charlotte Brenac has even discovered a real attraction for the entrepreneurial adventure: “I like taking on challenges, and I realised that entrepreneurship made that possible”. For Nicolas Guibal, Operations Manager at the start-up, “this experience confirmed my desire to be an entrepreneur.

A partnership with teachers-researchers

ELDA TECHNOLOGY’s integration into InnovSpace has facilitated the transition from project to start-up. And it has provided its co-founders with a network and support for their guidance, thanks to the Lanceur d’Étoiles scheme and French Tech Toulouse. As a result, they were able to carry out their end-of-studies Advanced Master® internship on the ISAE-SUPAERO campus, within their own start-up!

And their collaboration with the Institute doesn’t stop there. “Today, we are working with Thomas Oberlin and Dennis Wilson, two teachers-researchers in the Complex Systems Engineering (DISC) department, to model snowmelt using artificial intelligence”, notes Charlotte Brenac. For this project, the three graduates have also expanded their team by taking on a student from ISAE-SUPAERO, Manuel Gestal, who is currently doing an Advanced Master® in Artificial Intelligence Business Transformation (AIBT).

Find out more about MGPIE/IEM programme

The Advanced Master® in Innovative Project Management and Entrepreneurship (MS MGPIE) is an ISAE-SUPAERO programme accredited by the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles (CGE) under no. 1188.

In one year, it enables young graduates with 5 years’ higher education and experienced professionals to simultaneously develop their innovative and intrapreneurial or entrepreneurial spirit, while acquiring expertise in the management of technological projects.

The programme will be taught entirely in English by the start of the 2024 academic year. MGPIE has thus become IEM: Advanced Master® Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management, and is in the process of having its accreditation renewed by the CGE.

Charlotte Brenac joined the MGPIE Advanced Masters® programme after completing a DUT in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and an engineering degree from INSA Toulouse through an apprenticeship with Thalès Alenia Space. “MGPIE interested me in specialising in project management. It was there that I discovered entrepreneurship, which was a revelation for me”.
Julie Aubert initially wanted to be an engineer in the automotive sector. After graduating as a general engineer from EIGSI in Nantes, she turned to the MGPIE Advanced Masters® “out of an interest in project management”. “I finally discovered my taste for entrepreneurship and said to myself: why not me?
Nicolas Guibal joined the MGPIE Advanced Master® after a DUT in Mechanical Engineering from the Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and an engineering degree in Materials Science from the Université de Technologie de Troyes, with an apprenticeship in a company in the medical sector. “I joined the MGPIE because I was interested in innovation, project management and entrepreneurship. It confirmed what I wanted to do.