***The transcript for this video was prepared by a provider external to the CFI. The CFI does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of this service, such as the ability to transcribe specific words.***
SOPHIE ROSA
Good morning! Hello everyone and welcome to the webinar, Future You: Transforming Research Instincts into a Successful Business. This webinar will be in French but we have simultaneous translation available if you wish so please click on the little icon at the bottom or the three dots then look for the planet icon to access interpretation.
So hello, my name is Sophie Rosa and I'm Manager of Outreach and Stakeholder Relations at the Canada Foundation for Innovation, or as we usually call it CFI. First of all, I'd like to mention that the CFI respectfully recognizes the traditional relationship that Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Métis have with the land that all Canadians share.
Before we get started. I'd like to tell you a little about the CFI and why we're hosting this webinar series. The CFI is a funding organization that invests in research labs, equipment and facilities on campuses across Canada. This ranges from DNA sequencers and electron microscopes to larger-scale infrastructure, such as ocean-tracking networks and research vessels. In short, we've funded more than 13,000 projects in 28 years, so you can imagine that many of the research projects you can think of in Canada are probably using infrastructure we've funded.
The investments we make help attract the best researchers to Canada and prepare them to become world leaders in their field. This access to cutting-edge laboratories and research tools enables them to meet new challenges such as pandemics, food insecurity and climate change, to name but a few.
So, why these webinars? Well, the labs we support also serve as incubators for bold businesses. They're the spaces where undergraduates and graduate students conduct research, meet mentors and strive to turn their research ideas into thriving businesses. In fact, every one of the panelists we welcome today has studied or worked in a CFI-funded lab. And as an organization, we recognize the value of these opportunities and hope to inspire students to see the same.
For the flow of the discussion, we'll leave as much time as possible for the panelists to answer your questions towards the end. And if you think of a question while you're listening to the discussion, feel free to write it down in the Q&A section. The icon is at the bottom of your screen, and we'll try to answer as many of them as we can in the time we have together. Let’s now turn things over to our host Livia Gabou. Livia directs the entrepreneurial initiatives of the Centre d'entrepreneuriat de l'École des sciences de la gestion de l'Université du Québec à Montréal, which supports students, graduates and Quebec society in general. She has also created partnerships to foster innovative companies, and she’s in tune with the business community, she also facilitates access to the essential resources needed to succeed in Quebec's entrepreneurial ecosystem. So, enough for me.
Livia, the floor is yours, I'll leave the microphone to you.
LIVIA GABOU
Thank you very much Sophie and the CFI for inviting me today to moderate this very interesting webinar.
In fact, at the Centre, we work a lot with students. We meet students with different profiles and levels of study. Of course, researchers and doctoral students are extremely interesting students with whom we like to work, because they often end up with some very fine entrepreneurial projects. Today, we're going to meet three different panelists, with different profiles, who are going to share their experiences with us.
We have Caroline Boudoux, co-founder of Castor Optics, a Montreal-based company specializing in the fabrication of custom fiber optic components and modules. We also have Frédéric Leblond, co-founder of Reveal Surgical, a Montreal-based company developing Sentry technology which uses an optical phenomenon in the medical field. And then there's Sean Tassé, founder and vice-president of Lemny, also based in Montreal, a construction project manager, lawyer and engineer. He has created and developed businesses that have enabled him to acquire expertise in construction law.
So, to get to know the panelists better, I'm going to let them introduce themselves and describe their business backgrounds and profiles. We'll start with Caroline.
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Hello everyone! Thank you Livia. Thank you to the FCI for hosting us. My name is Caroline Boudoux. I'm a full professor in the Engineering Physics Department at Polytechnique Montréal. I did my undergraduate studies at Université Laval in engineering physics and then I went abroad for a few years. I did my doctorate in a joint program between MIT and Harvard Medical School in the U.S. where I worked on biomedical optics with the components that existed at the time. Noticing that we could improve each of these components to make better devices, I came back to Montreal, to Polytechnique, where I started my laboratory in 2007. In 2013, with Nicolas Godbout, co-founder, and Alex Cable, founder of Thorlabs, a large multinational, and Normand Brais, we founded the company Castor Optics, which licensed the patents we had at Polytechnique Montreal. Since then, patents have continued to be created in my laboratory with CFI facilities. And Castor contributes to its own research too. So, essentially, I'm now running two laboratories, a more fundamental one at Polytechnique and a more applied one at Castor Optics.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect. Frédéric?
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
Yes well, hello everyone, thank you for being here today. Thank you to the CFI for organizing this event. I'm also a full professor at École Polytechnique de Montréal, in the engineering physics department, and a researcher at the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal. My laboratories are in both places, so we have two research platforms. My background is a bit like Caroline's. I did a bachelor's degree in engineering physics at Polytechnique. However, afterwards, I did a PhD in theoretical physics, so that's something that took me in a slightly different direction from what I'm doing now. I learned things that are interesting and useful, but completely different from my current field. After that, I did a PhD in string theory, a post-doc at the University of Chicago, and then I had a stint in a medical imaging company in Montreal, where I was team leader for the development of mathematical algorithms for optical tomography. We can say a lot about this field here.
Then I was hired as a professor at Dartmouth, a university south of the border in the United States. I was a professor there for five years. After that, I was recruited by Polytechnique Montréal. Then at Dartmouth, which led me a little into entrepreneurship, I was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to make the transition from quantitative sciences to medicine.
I was an engineer who wanted to go into medicine, so I got a grant to go and work there, and my mentor, who was a neurosurgeon, showed me the practical aspects of how to make our research useful in the healthcare field. I'll talk about my companies later, as I'm a bit over my allotted time.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect, well thank you very much Frédéric. And Sean?
SEAN TASSÉ
Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here. Thanks to the CFI for organizing this event. My name is Sean Tassé. My educational background includes the École de technologie supérieure, or ETS. I did a bachelor's degree in construction engineering and then went to work as a project manager for various real estate developers in the Montreal area. At the same time, I continued my studies in law, so I went to l'UQAM to study for my law degree, with the obvious aim of mixing law and construction, which are now two fields that coexist on any construction site.
So I worked for various general contractors and then the pandemic came along. As luck would have it, my employer at the time, laid off people. That forced me into the world of entrepreneurship. I started with partners at the time, two companies that we sold: an online retail company, then a technology company that I'll talk about a little later.
I returned to the world of general contracting and construction to found Lemny in 2022, which is a company I founded with two other engineers from ETS, and we basically do multi-residential construction.
I am also a lecturer at ETS, where I teach the construction management course. It's a standard course that basically mixes engineering and law, which is really my field of interest.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect. Thank you very much to all three of you. So, as you can see, we're currently joined by panelists with quite diverse profiles, but also with a great deal of study behind them. Right now, I'm going to ask you a few questions that will help us find out a little bit about how you got to where you are today, and also to further explain the value of your companies and your business projects in Quebec.
The first question: can you tell us about a defining moment in your entrepreneurial journey? What inspired you to take the plunge and start your own business, and what steps did you take to prepare yourself for starting a business? Caroline, to you first.
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
In fact, we had quite a key moment. We went to a conference the first time when we had our first publication on these couplers. So of course we patented them, and then we went to a conference, a big international conference. When my student gave his presentation, there were five people in the room who came up to us afterwards and said: It's really interesting, it's innovative, we'd be curious if we could, to see if we could play with it, if we could have one. At the time, we said to ourselves we'll make five, send them to five places in the world, and then we'd see. It'll give us an idea of—we like to play with it, but do others find it useful and usable in their applications, in their laboratories?
The following year, we went back to that conference with a second prototype, an improvement. But the five researchers who contacted us for the first edition go to their respective conferences and, once again, five people raise their hands... But now we're up to 25 and, very quickly, we realize that it's not sustainable. We don't need to do a lot of calculations, to go into string theory... I think Frédéric agrees... that if we get into this exponential regime, quickly, we won't be able to just say: we'll do it on the corner of the laboratory, then send them off. That was one of the turning points in our thinking: the impact, it's nice to have a new gizmo in our laboratory, in our friends' laboratories but without mass manufacturing, without being able to really send it everywhere and then make it available, the impact is limited. So that's when we quickly thought about putting something together.
LIVIA GABOU
OK. Frédéric, for you?
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
For me, it's an exercise that I did, initiating the efforts linked to entrepreneurship on my side, then to commercialization, with a lot of reluctance from a certain point of view. That is to say, it’s after a lot of thinking about how I could have an impact... I say "I" but... how can we have an impact on society, on the people around us. Then, at some point, we were, I guess you could say, all good at research, Quebec researchers, Canadian researchers.
The idea is how do we go about making this impact, and what is required? And am I the right person to initiate these steps, and what would my role be? What I've come to understand is that the role of the professor who becomes professor-researcher-entrepreneur is a very important one in the innovation chain. Well, at least for the kind of technology I'm developing in my laboratory, i.e. technologies that never stop evolving and need to evolve the day you decide to market them. So you have to initiate certain stages, and then if you decouple the... let's say the founders, the initial researchers from that effort, well unfortunately, in many cases, it just won't work, and we already know that. We could already say that at the start of the adventure.
That's how I came to realize, with my experiences, precisely with my neurosurgeon mentor at Dartmouth, after a while, what it took to make research usable from a certain point of view, why we really had to favor technological developments. You can have... I'd say as a laboratory, more fundamental developments with a more distant impact, then more practical things, with a shorter-term impact. It was this aspect that I'd been working on at the time that helped me to understand a bit about how we should, what we should be encouraging in terms of research activities to have a rapid impact. And what would my role be? And I have to understand it. That was my big challenge, to understand "what's my role? My role won't be to raise funds, it won't be to... you know, there are things we can't do everything, and then there are things we're less, shall we say, good at doing. And we really need to add the right expertise to our teams.
LIVIA GABOU GABOU
Okay. Then, in the end, it was who was in charge of the whole thing, i.e. all the thinking about: well, I have to do this, I have to go on to such and such a stage, and so on. Who was the person who helped you get through the whole process?
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
Often, in the different companies, I would say that the keystone was really related to finding, either someone who could play the executive role at the operations level, a seasoned professional, or to act as a mentor to someone who is going to... who is quietly becoming one. Both... We've done both in our two companies.
Then there are completely different paths. But we need the support of someone who's, I'd say, full-time on the job.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect. Sean, how did it go for you?
SEAN TASSÉ
It's very different for me. I've always had an interest in entrepreneurship, I mean ever since I was very young, I always had the idea that I was going to work for myself eventually. But coming from a family of mainly doctors, education was something that was highly valued in our home. So I set myself the goal of studying until I was 30 like a doctor does.
What I decided to do was study engineering, and then go to law school? So I did a lot of studying, a lot of undergraduate research if you like, a lot of applications. You know, at ETS we do lots of different labs, lots of testing and all that... So a lot of knowledge. Then I worked full-time during my law degree, to gain expertise on the job market as a project manager.
As I mentioned earlier, the pandemic arrived, and the employer I had decided to dismiss a large part of his human resources out of fear. He basically said to us: We'll let you go and pick you up again in a couple of weeks. For me, at the time, I had a bachelor's degree in engineering, experience and I was a member of the Ordre des Ingénieurs. I had my title. I had my law degree, I was fully educated, and then someone decided that I was worth more dollars than I was bringing in. Then you no longer had a job. And that was a big slap in the face for me. And it was at that very moment that I decided it was never going to happen again, and that I was going to take my own steps as an entrepreneur.
I'm convinced that it takes that moment of stopping to be able to think, to come up with ideas, and then to start moving towards a project that you're passionate about and that you want to undertake as an entrepreneur. Then, what I did was to go back to some people, in fact two brothers, with whom I had worked for their father. The father was, well... is still a real estate developer. The two sons were about my age. And then I made friends with the rest of them.
When I... I got laid off, we started brainstorming ideas and came up with an idea that we were going to start a reusable mask company. That was at the beginning, the beginning of the pandemic and being surrounded by these two people, that their father has always been an entrepreneur, and that they, around the table and at the Christmas party, don't talk about medicine, they talk about entrepreneurship all the time.
It's clear and precise to them that there are no two paths in life. It's you're one and it ends there. Being surrounded by these two people allowed me to launch this company. We sold $3.5 million worth of reusable masks in one year. We had the busiest Shopify of the year.
There were logistical challenges, supply challenges, all that. But I learned so much during that time. I knew I wasn't going to want to have an online store for the rest of my life. But the experience of going into entrepreneurship gave me all or at least some of the tools I needed to then go into the business I knew I was going to keep for the next few years.
LIVIA GABOU
Interesting, entrepreneurship that comes along at just the right time and we didn't expect it. Yeah, it's interesting!
You've all had the opportunity to work in laboratories and with state-of-the-art equipment. What did you take away from this experience in terms of new skills or ideas that formed the basis of your business projects? Frédéric I'll let you get started?
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
Well, thank you very much. You know, as a university professor, I think the people here should know that the equipment in our laboratories is funded by the CFI. It gives us the opportunity, obviously, to do several things with these instruments so that we can test ideas, for example. I think some of the entrepreneurs here will probably agree that, before anything works, you have to try a hundred of them! For example, a lot of our companies are very data-driven, so amassing large data sets in order to do proofs of concept for different things.
In our case, it's developing diagnostic tests [INAUDIBLE] of data. The CFI's facilities enable us to develop the tools to acquire this data, to seek funding around this to pay our staff, to go to hospitals, to patients, to get these data. From this, we're able to develop predictive models for example, which can be used in the context of these companies. Of course, without that, we can't do anything.
The other important aspect, which Caroline mentioned earlier, is intellectual property. In our sector, it's important to have a strong intellectual property portfolio, upstream of the entrepreneurial effort, for investment purposes, to secure investments among other things, and then I would say to ensure an easier path for innovations towards commercialization of course, but also to have this equipment that enables us to acquire data.
This data is often difficult to acquire and cannot be done by other people. So, intellectual property from a certain point of view is important, but to be able to run quickly to collect data, to get ahead of our existing competitors with high potential is absolutely priceless. So for me, that's what counted a lot in the development of our companies.
LIVIA GABOU
Caroline, you wanted to add
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Well, yes. I'd like to pick up on what you said, Frédéric. We started one company a little over ten years ago, and we're in the process of starting another now. And it's true that we often buy equipment for a given experience. But as the labs do this, we create a fleet around us, right? So much so, that I've got a student who... we're doing a new fiber optic thing... then he says: I think it can be used for that. And then, in the evening, we thought...how would we test it. We'd need a laser like this, a laser like that, then a laser like that. And then we go round and round... and we end up finding them, but in a few days. And so quickly, we are able to say: "It works, let's try something! So you don't have to have access to this cutting-edge equipment. We also have, in my laboratory which I bought thanks to the CFI in the beginning, a lathe... A lathe for making diamond-tipped lenses. It's exceedingly rare! But it gives us the flexibility to try out extraordinary shapes, to let our imaginations run wild, but really! Then, the students here learn with the new equipment. It's the brains of our local students. To be able to say: absolutely, the sky's the limit and more. To be able to tell them: if you have an idea, maybe not in my lab, maybe not just in the department, but we're taking a look at the equipment pool in Quebec, in Canada. We always manage to find someone who can help us quickly test an idea. Then, if it works, well, we can... after that say OK, let's go further! Or, even more importantly: kill the idea. Say Oh, it doesn't work. But it's not working, because I've put three or four things back together. It doesn't work because I took the best instrument. It doesn't work. We kill the idea. We move on to something else. In both cases, it's critical. And we were just mentioning that the CFI has been around for 28 years, right? We've been accumulating state-of-the-art equipment in Canada for 28 years, and we're always able to find someone to let us test an idea, continue with it or kill it, depending on the results. And that's critical.
LIVIA GABOU
OK. Very interesting. On average, if we had to find out, how long does it take for you to... Well, there's the research, and then there's the marketing aspect. On average, how long does it take to get lost in such innovative companies?
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Shall I go for it?
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
Go Caroline!
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Well, there's start-up and then there's maintenance. Then, I'll also say, there's the first start-up and then there are the others. I was lucky enough to start the first co-created company with Nicolas Godbout and right away we had extraordinary partners and fabulous employees. But, in the beginning, it was clear that I was working two full-time jobs at the same time because [INAUDIBLE]
Sean, you mentioned something super important. You say I'm going to study until I'm 30. But I didn't have an MBA and I don't have any entrepreneurs in my family. I had no idea. So, when I say I had two full-time jobs, that means I was doing my job as a teacher and in the evenings - I was single, no kids - I did the "I'm learning about entrepreneurship" job with extraordinary mentors, who took the time to really answer our questions and all that... So the first [company] is like doing your MBA at the same time as you're working... So the first company is two full-time jobs. After that, I felt comfortable saying: OK, we can start others, but with students, and now I'm the one doing the mentoring. So now, the next generations are the students who are starting [the project] and I'm kind of the stage manager. You know, I give guidance here and there, a little to the left, a little to the right, but I'm never going to run three companies... You can't have three full-time jobs, now with a family and all that, it's something else.
In the beginning I had the time, because, you know, in that time, you put in the time. You know, I had no constraints. If I had to do 8 hours at university, plus 8 hours at Castor, that was fine. And now... now I have a bit more experience, so I can... And Castor's bigger too. Castor is a real company with real directors. So now, I'd say it's a few hours a day on Castor all the same, but that can easily be added to a job as a teacher, rather than saying 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., which was a lot. Frédéric or Sean, I don't want to uh... I'll let you go.
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
I'll leave it to Sean, I think it's his turn to talk, and then I'll have a few additions afterwards.
SEAN TASSÉ
I can speak for the installations. But you know Frédéric, Caroline, I'm not into applied work like the rest of you, pure research. All I can say is that in my academic career, mainly at ETS, to have situations... and it's very practical at ETS, for those who don't know, it's an engineering career path that's different from Polytechnique or Concordia. We're very applied with internships and all that; we do a lot of lab work, a lot of practical work.
Regarding the facilities, I remember arriving at ETS and saying: Wow, everything's new, everything's beautiful, everything's state-of-the-art. And then there’s the expertise in bituminous coatings, in concrete. You know, it's really very, very impressive to see the labs, then to experience them and do the labs, then to be evaluated on your lab reports, to do the various tests, to see them visually, to create them in front of you, then to make the scientific findings in front of you... You bring it all home.
It's a way of thinking that I think is unique. I'm convinced that everyone should do a bachelor's degree in engineering. I think it's... It gives you a way of reasoning, a way of thinking where you go through all the data in front of you, then you take it, you organize it in a way, to then find the solution you're looking for.
And I think it's thanks to... precisely... all these laboratory research situations, which are in fact part of these university courses, that we can then have the necessary tools to be good entrepreneurs. It's not easy to be an entrepreneur, and it's even harder to be a good and successful one. I'm convinced that being educated and then having these experiences in these cutting edge establishments, makes for greater entrepreneurial success.
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
Then, Livia, to answer your question about time, because... in addition to what was said before... it depends a little. Companies have events in their lives that will require different contributions of time from someone, like a founder or a foundress for example. You know, like the role, at some point you settle down a bit, let your company go and then you have to come back, come back from time to time. For example, crises with strategic partners that can only be managed by more senior people, things like that, a given moment It could be months at a time, involved in a file, to help the company at that level. For example, a financing problem, a reduction in employees, then bringing the company back because there's less [INAUDIBLE] in the company. You have to come back, you have to give, you have to contribute more.
So Caroline was talking more about the beginning but after that it depends on the style of the company. We're medical companies, so it's medical products, it's a long time before we sell anything. So the idea is that we depend a lot on financing, on rounds of financing before having passed all the regulatory stages towards a product. There are stages in the company's life when it's like a little bird in its nest all by itself, emerging from the egg and then you can be eaten by anyone. That's why the founders are so important. You have to set up the framework at that point.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect. But every entrepreneurial journey has its challenges. What were the main obstacles you faced in your transition from research to business? And how did you overcome them?
SEAN TASSÉ
I think that in my case, finding the right team is a must! I remember reading somewhere that to start a business, you need an idea, you need money, you need the right timing and, above all, you need a good team. And the people who finance projects look very closely at the team and how well it complements each other. I can tell you that with my first two companies, I experienced certain frustrations, certain situations… That meant, when I founded Lemny with two associates, I knew exactly what I needed in a partner to be successful in the company I was looking for.
Still, to this day, we're in our fourth year of operation, communication between the founders [is key] to deliver the goods, then you know, making sure that everyone paddles in the same direction in the boat. You know, you don't want someone paddling in a different direction? That's a very important thing. Of course, the money, the financing... You know, I may have "[INAUDIBLE]" my companies, which means I financed them myself with my partners... And then you know we had strategies, we were able to get money into the company very quickly. What we did was mainly sell consulting services. We sold our time, so we had one of the co-founders selling time, which brought money into the company, while the others continued to push the general idea, the main idea of the project. So, we worked as a team to try and bring money into the company, to enable us, in the end, to start running the financial machine that is critical to the survival of the company.
LIVIA GABOU
Caroline?
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
In fact, Frédéric and Sean and I have just seen two completely different business models. One where you go... It takes a few years to sell a product, so you have to finance it. The other is to get money right away, from day one. For me, that's what the biggest challenge was to convince us to start a business.
I come from a family of academics. I've spent my whole life at university. When I was little, my parents wondered what doctorate I was going to do. I was six years old and they were stubborn about what doctorate I was going to do. We never talked about business in our house. It was something I didn't know anything about. And then I was lucky enough to have a mentor who persevered and finally made me understand that there are as many business models as there are recipes for spaghetti sauce. So, before starting the company, we had to spend a year finding a business model in which we were comfortable. Then, of course, the business model evolves. You know, it's not fixed. But you know, on day 1 you have to say: Ok, I have to at least be comfortable with this paradigm. And yes, it's bound to evolve, it's going to change, it has indeed changed. But be comfortable on day 1, with that model.
Sean listen, it resonates so much when you say "the team", it's all about "the team" and not being afraid day 1, to say: what are your values? What's your end game? We're four founders, co-founders... If among the four of us don't have the same values or at least values that are very similar, but we have the same ambitions, well then, we've got plans for it to be awesome. And the four of us took... I still remember the meeting, you know, we sat down, it lasted 2 hours where we took the time to say: what are we trying to build? What are we trying to deliver? What's it going to be? What's the baby? What's the beast? Then, once you've decided on your values... Values are not a big deal. When we talk about a "mission statement", or a statement of values, it's not a big deal because every time you come to a crossroads, you have to go left or right? It's your values that help you make decisions. So, when you have similar values, everyone has more or less the same decision, and that greatly limits a lot of frustrations, misunderstandings and...
It took a year to say to ourselves that we were going to start a company, to find a business model, to find the legal structure that would make us happy. Once we were up and running, within six months we were putting money into the company. Time enough to get started, because we had to build the manufacturing infrastructure. It's not a tool that we could but, it's a tool we had to develop. Six months to build it and prototype, test and certify it. But we had sales in six months. Not a lot of sales there… But sales in six months. So, it's a model, it's a different model. We had seed funding in 2013 and we believe that our growth has been based on our revenues since then. It's a different model, there are hybrid models. But there are really a lot of models, and this is where I say... I love it!
Sean, I'm going to hold on to this all day, but I've educated myself to 30! You know, it's not necessary to have... but I love it when you say I'm going to educate myself. Then, at some point, you take action. It's important to have both! But that's it. You have to educate yourself on a business model, there are plenty of them, and congratulations to all of you who are here today, that's what you're doing right now, you're looking for inspiration on different types of business models, there isn't just one.
LIVIA GABOU
Frédéric?
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
Yes, because Sean and Caroline talked about the team. Indeed, I mean... It's a question of... I think it's important to have a diversity, we'll say, a diversity of profiles, of opinions, on the team to have frank and concrete discussions as the company evolves. But you have to be very careful. It's a question of not having, for example, a person in a position of authority in the company who slightly derails the efforts of others. You know, in all spheres of life, that can happen... But that can be dangerous.
When it comes to financing, it's the same thing. That is, investors... It can be tempting at the beginning, in the very early days of a company, to accept funds, for example, because you want to get started quickly, you're in a hurry, it's hard to raise money. But it's important at every stage that the interests of investors are well aligned with those of the people running the company, whether early or late in the company's evolution, because that can create friction. It can create friction at a given moment, if for example, you have a type of investor in a company who hasn't realized the extent of the risks associated with the investment because perhaps you’re investing in a high-tech with a competitive landscape... There's good growth potential, etc., but still there's a danger at the investment level... If investors haven't realized, one, it can create tensions. If investors haven't realized, one, it can create tensions, and two, they won't reinvest in the next investment round. That's why it's important to get the profiles right.
Also, a clear and precise obstacle, which is also related to financing and that can easily be seen in a company, especially at the startup stage, is losing focus on the company's activities. For example, at a given moment, you might say: well, cash flow is difficult, so we're going to take on a contract to develop something that's a bit perpendicular to the company's primary objectives. But we have money in the company. That can take us to the wrong place. A strategic partner, for example, with whom we do a deal, a big development deal and then at some point, it takes us somewhere else, but we hadn't planned on it. And then we don't develop what we were supposed to develop in relation to our growth objectives. These are things that can... well, that have created problems for us in the past, and that we need to avoid.
So that also brings up the idea of having mentors, people who accompany companies, who are very, very, very... I'd say "experienced". It's very important to have a good team, a board for example, that evaluates every six months, with the executives who [INAUDIBLE] how it's going, to assess the stakes and the dangers, things like that.
LIVIA GABOU
So you really need support. You're not on your own when it comes to money and making decisions, and it's very important to get advice so that you can retain some control over the choices you make for your business. Then... when, for example, we're at the stage of looking for partners, maybe that's a question for Sean… You said it was a challenge, but how do you go about it? Has it ever happened to you, for example, where someone has joined the team, wanted to join the team and then ended up not staying. What do you do? Do we have to sign confidentiality agreements before meeting a friend? How does it work at the very beginning?
SEAN TASSÉ
Me, I [LAUGHS] my two associates will say that I lied to them individually when I pitched them the idea! I said that the other was ready to jump and then, on the other side, the other was ready to jump. And then they said: Ok! well, if he's going, I'm going. So... No... To answer your question about the NDA [non-disclosure agreement], I think the important thing is to share ideas. We need to talk about it. That's what I tell a lot of entrepreneurs. Talk about your ideas? Brainstorm! Talk about it with your uncle at the Christmas party, talk about it with as many people as possible! NDAs, I mean, the day you actually apply your NDA, you're going to be at a much more advanced stage than the embryonic stage you're in right now.
Having ideas is easy; executing them is another matter. So, to come back to the associates, you know, I think that... What I achieved in my first companies, I had associates who had good "skill sets", it wasn't the world... You know, they were very, very competent people and I still work with them on different projects. But what Caroline said, "think with the end in mind". They didn't have the same "end game" as me. They came from a wealthy family, they came from a family that, you know, didn't necessarily need the project to be an end success to... know, it was more like a... They had time to give, it was the pandemic, they could give some, then it was like... Me, it was my full-time job. And I don't have a cushion. You know, I'm here... So... Thinking with the end in mind and aligning the vision with your associates, is a very important thing.
The way you do that, I think is by trying to expose yourself to as many people as possible, to network, to find people with whom you have good communication, to go to events. I took part in the entrepreneurs' network at ETS, it’s called "RETS"… Brainstorm with people, talk to people, meet people, increase your network. The bigger the network you have, the more chance of success you're going to have. I mean, knowing people is so essential in entrepreneurship.
Back to my partners, right now. It's given a that they're people I've worked with in my life, who are people... There's one I've known since I was seven and he's a former pilot in the armed forces, he's got a master's degree in physics and then after that, he went back to ETS, after he got out of the forces. He’s seven years older than me and we crossed paths again at the time. And then I met the other one during my internships at ETS. Once again, he was older than me, seven years older. He was my "best man" at my wedding. It's all a case of coincidence. Honestly, there's no... I'd be curious to hear from Frédéric and Caroline how they met their partners. But you know, it's really about being curious and meeting as many people as possible. I think that's the best way to find good partners.
LIVIA GABOU
Frédéric, Caroline, you wanted to add a point?
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Maybe to answer Sean's question, how we met... As I was saying, I used to do, well, I still do, but... entire pieces of equipment. And we were using optical fibers that had been developed for telecoms, which don't necessarily have the same requirements as those needed for biomedical optics. So I came to Montreal to work, in particular, with Nicolas Godbout, whose laboratory assembles fiber optic couplers in a more fundamental way, based on telecoms, but they have the expertise to put any fiber together to make couplers. So I came here to... I wanted to continue making equipment; then, like Frédéric too, I was doing laboratory transfer work; I was at Sainte-Justine and again at Harvard.
It was with Nicolas and his team that we developed couplers, so naturally Nicolas became a privileged partner. Nicolas and I are co-founders of the company and it's really interesting, [because] the company is two-headed. I represent the market, I'm the end user and so I know the whole network. And because I come from the United States too, I know the whole network of the first users, the first customers, the first, "the friends and family" who are going to buy you, who are going to take your business from you in the first place. Then Nicolas, he's really the person who... well, who's the Fiber Whisper there! Who can really concoct any coupler. So I tell him I think the market would be interested in having a coupler that looks like this, a coupler that looks like this. And he makes it happen. So the company is still very two-headed, like that, because you've got Nicolas, who's behind all the R&D, and then I'm behind all the market stuff.
And then there's Kathy and Lucas now, who are the two directors… Director of Operations and Director of Business Development. And it goes on like that. We also have an investor, strategic partners. That's important too. It's not just financial investors. We refused money at the start, we only took investors who brought a strategic component.
There's guy, Alex Cable, who's basically our distributor. He invented Amazon before Amazon. So he was distributing optical parts all over the world, "next day delivery" before 8 a.m. the next morning. It was fabulous. That was before Jeff Bezos, but for laboratory parts. They're the ones who distribute our products. We find that extraordinary, because my idea of shipping components all over the world is to take them, put them in the office next door and then "Pfiouuuu"… Thorlabs takes care of putting it all over the world. I don't need to worry about that, so that's extraordinary.
Alex Cable came along with this expertise and his distribution and then Normand Brest, a serial entrepreneur in Montreal who was a teacher at Polytechnique at a time. The time came when Polytechnique asked him to choose, saying: you can either be an entrepreneur or a teacher. He decided to become an entrepreneur, and in retrospect, it was an excellent decision for the whole community. In fact, his interest was to say: I'd like to help two teachers become entrepreneurs but remain teachers. And so that's what brought him in, in addition to the money of course, which is always welcome in the beginning to create… to start the company, but which helped us navigate this ecosystem. So that's how we built the team.
It's very, very two-headed, in the sense that there's... There's someone who's very... You know, there's the Minister of the Interior who really manages to make the components, then bring them in with specifications that are unrivalled anywhere else in the world. Then there's the Minister of the Exterior who says: I think it can go here, it can go here, you find markets, the market it's going to and who can buy it.
So that's how we came to form .
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
For my part, I co-founded two companies, a surgical company called Reveal Surgical, and a diagnostics company called Exclaro. I went to see a neurosurgeon by the name of Kevin Petrecca when I arrived in Montreal, before starting my position at Polytechnique. I told him I'd built this system. One, are you going to use it? And if it works, what do we do with it? Kevin said: OK, yes, for sure. Then right away, when I arrived, we implemented the system. Six months after my arrival, he started using the system, he did 17 patients. We published an article. Six months later, we had founded a company. But of course, we'd founded a company, but in all our naivety of what was coming? What was really realistic and achievable? And all that. Obviously, it didn't fit. We weren't doing so badly. But nevertheless, that was the story. And then for Exclaro, it's a little different. I was approached by someone who was in the real estate business, but who made a big impact on COVID, supplying equipment like masks. He approached me and said: I want to start something related to the diagnosis of COVID-19 and all that... I heard about your studies... At first, I was very reluctant, but the profile wasn't typical in terms of... It wasn't a natural association, for me in terms of how I wanted to operate. In the end, it worked out really well. We founded the Exclaro company.
That's how it happened. It's like... These two... These partners are important. As Caroline mentioned earlier, the other type of medical partner that's absolutely critical is the opinion leaders who will use the tools afterwards. It may seem like nothing, but it's really hard to build that network where you have to... For example, we're developing a tool for neurosurgery. Well, I have to get all the neurosurgeons in Canada that I know personally and in the United States to make sure, to make sure that we don't reach a point where we have a nice tool, it's FDA-approved, but even if it works great, nobody's going to use it because for reasons that are absolutely, totally subjective. So this is another type of partnership that must be cultivated upstream.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect. One more question. How does innovation, ultimately your innovation, contribute to building a better future for Canada? Sean...
SEAN TASSÉ
Well, we build housing. I mean, we all know that there's a housing crisis right now in Canada, in Quebec, and building housing in 2025 isn't like it was in the 1990s. Contractors and subcontractors are becoming increasingly sophisticated. And then there are the constraints too, in connection with requirements such as Novoclimat, carbon-neutral requirements.
These are projects I'm currently working on. I'm currently building a 119-unit project in LaSalle, worth about $30 million, and it's a carbon-neutral project. So it's one of those issues. You have to, you have to have... you have to be sophisticated. It's not the local "Clin-clin" who can say: I'm going to do a project of this scale. You have to have people who can read expert reports, energy reports, challenge mechanical engineers, challenge structural engineers, to be able to balance the developer's desire to make money against the climate requirements, the scientific requirements that have been put in place to ensure that the project is sustainable, trying to make housing innovative, greener, more ecological for the future. So I consider that my direct impact, and this is what I love about what I do as a company, is that we're not just shuffling paper. I'm on a construction site every day. I'm in the trailer with my project managers, with my superintendents.
Then, at the end of the year, I'm able to see exactly what's been built on the lot. You start with a greenfield site and after that, you see 119 units being built. That's exceptional. Then you can see the people who are moving and the impact it has on the living environments we're creating. It's fantastic.
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Not to mention that you create jobs too. You create housing, but you also create jobs. You know, that's something.
SEAN TASSÉ
A lot of people work on a construction site. Lots and lots of people. A lot of people.
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
That's right. And, technically, not only do I have a job, I have a pension. You know, I'm a university professor. That's cool, but “so what?” At one point, the reason we started Castor was to create jobs here. We train engineers, we train biomedical engineers, we physics engineers, but they have to be able to land here, too. That contributes to the ecosystem, creates jobs. It's a dead end. And then, through the agreement, our distributor moved one of its factories to Canada, to create Thorlabs Canada. That also represents dozens of jobs. So, creating jobs here... In any case, for me, the part that gets me excited is that innovation is fun. The signal-to-noise ratio of images is much better thanks to fiber, and it gives a much better signal in the agri-food sector. Then we use it in Lidar, and our fibers are used everywhere. Now that's fun. But in Canada, we create jobs. And these people pay taxes. It's true, they are the [INAUDIBLE] who come to create taxes here. I find that trippy. Excuse me, Frédéric, I interrupted you.
FRÉDÉRIC LEBLOND
No, it's true, jobs are really important. It's... what really excites me about entrepreneurship, and how... in connection with innovation and the technologies developed in the laboratory, it's really the impact we can have on human health, for example, and also on the delivery of care to save costs for Canadian taxpayers. Let me give you an example: the diagnostic test we're currently developing, it's a test that, in society, if you're at high risk of getting lung cancer, so you're a smoker, there may be genetic factors that make you at higher risk, you have to have regular X-ray screenings of your lungs, for example, to see if anything develops over time.
But these tests are not very specific. In other words, there are many cases where we say: there's something there, but we don't know what it is, and then we send the patient for a biopsy or surgery, which are expensive and stressful for the patient. So the diagnostic test we're currently developing, for example, increases the specificity of existing X-ray tests by 25%. It can reduce patients' anxiety by telling them: well, you don't have it, so come back six months, come back in a year and then it's okay, your risk is low. Instead of having an intrusive operation like a physical biopsy to go and get a sample. That's really where I think we can... In any case, the technologies... Ours are an example.
But in Canada, there are plenty of researcher-entrepreneurs or researchers in general who are going to be entrepreneurs or who need to be made aware, to have the resources to ensure that their technology can be brought into the real world, if you like, towards real applications. This is a difficult part, but we still have a long way to go in Canada, but it's difficult. We have to work hard on it.
LIVIA GABOU
Perfect. And all in all, to help... no doubt to help ideas come into the world, where is the last very important place to find mentors? Where did you find your mentors?
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
By chance. Then, in fact, I'll tell you the opposite Livia, I'll tell you where you can't find mentors? You can't find mentors when you're sitting at home in front of the TV. They're not there, they're not there. So mentors... I found my first mentor at a scientific conference. I went for a walk around the exhibit, where all the salespeople come to talk about their new products. Then I got interested in a new product and someone came up to me and said, "What do you think? We chatted for an hour, and at the end, when he gave me his card, I realized that he was the co-founder of the company. I was really interested in where this new product was going and we had a scientific discussion. And then the other mentor at some party where we were celebrating a grant application. Then I think we were celebrating a little too hard. Then, as this person was interested in the celebrations, he came to join us and asked "What's innovation? And I said: Ah well, it would be fun to market it. But it doesn't matter where it happens. There's a lot, a lot of serendipity in my case... luck. But what I can tell you is that 100% of the time, mentors are hard to find when you're sitting at home in your living room. You have to... You have to try things. You have to walk around. You have to have been to the meeting. You have to participate. You have to... You have to get involved, because it's very rare that they're hiding behind a TV set.
LIVIA GABOU
Frédéric? Sean?
SEAN TASSÉ
I completely agree with Caroline. You need to expose yourself to as many things as possible, as many situations as possible. I'm convinced that if you're in a comfort zone, you're in the wrong place. You constantly have to be in a zone of discomfort. Then it's in the discomfort that you progress. So that's exposing you to situations where communication may be a little awkward at first, but then it helps to bring about other discussions.
Expose yourself to as many situations as possible. And especially when you don't have a family, especially when you don't have other responsibilities. Me, I'm living... I've got two young children now. I think back to... You know, my 20s and 30s, I did, and I say to myself, it would have been impossible to do everything I did with two young children.
So you know, I say to myself: it's time to do it. I had a feeling that it had to go fast and that I had to do a lot of business. But I think that feeling, today, I look at it, and I say to myself: Oh my God, I'm so glad I had that feeling and wanted to expose myself to as many things as possible.
Then there are the jobs, it's... engineering degree, law degree... It's two completely different spheres in my head! One's super Cartesian, the other's very gray and it's all about interpreting vocabulary. So it's a matter of exposing yourself to things, and in exposing yourself to things, you meet lots of different people. These people will then become your mentors. For me, the mentors I've met have been through my internships at ETS, and then after that, through the different jobs I've had over time, I've met mentors who have been exceptional. They taught me things that I would never have been able to experience without them. They guided me along my path, which is why I am where I am today, so...
LIVIA GABOU
Look, time is running out. So I'd like to thank our three panellists for giving so much of their time and so much of their science in this brief hour. Many thanks to the Canada Foundation for Innovation for welcoming us and offering us this time to speak. And I hope, for the few of you who may have been curious, that this has helped you to say to yourselves that, basically, you've got to dare.
You've got to get out there. You also have to use the knowledge you have at university to create your own businesses. Networking is very, very, very important. Dare to discover your mentors everywhere. Dare to ask questions, dare to share your ideas. And above all, make sure you build a good team. So on that note, I wish you a pleasant afternoon, and I look forward to seeing you again in future editions.
CAROLINE BOUDOUX
Thank you.
SEAN TASSÉ
Thank you.
