Bastien Fabre, co-founder of Iris Lab: "Thanks to the ISAE-SUPAERO innovation ecosystem, creating a start-up became a reality!”

You set up Iris Lab while you were still students on the Ingénieur programme at ISAE-SUPAERO. What role did the Institute play in your desire to become entrepreneurs?

Bastien Fabre : As students, we already had the idea of getting into entrepreneurship. 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. 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 for that we thank them very much!

The technology you have developed is directly inspired by the knowledge you acquired at ISAE-SUPAERO. Can you explain how?

B. F. : We started from 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". What stage has the start-up reached in its development?

B. F. : 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 are 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?

B. F. : Give it a go! And talk to other entrepreneurs. When we were students, we got a lot of help from David Henri, the founder of Exotrail. It makes things easier to get support and advice from someone who has been through the same thing and faced similar problems!