Today, you can count the number of successful start-ups in the aviation industry on the fingers of one hand. But François Chopard is hoping to change all that. For four years now, the founder of Starburst Accelerator has been working to shake up innovation in the aviation industry with his start-up accelerator, and several of them, such as WinMS, Vaylon, Skylights or Safety Line, are making a name for themselves in the sector. François Chopard agreed to take some time out between two business trips to present this adventure to Le Journal de l'Aviation.
Could you give us a quick summary about how Starburst Accelerator came about, and what drove you to create this accelerator?
I've been working in the aviation sector for twenty years, mostly providing strategic consulting to major industrial groups, with a focus on innovation for the last ten years. Innovation started coming more and more from the exterior; SpaceX emerged, for example. I felt that there was a start-up ecosystem which was starting to develop, but that it needed some help. This gave me the idea to create this incubator/accelerator. That was five years ago.
What are your criteria for selecting the start-ups to join the accelerator?
We have several. We work with around thirty major groups, who each tell us their expectations, which are the basis for potential contracts. We then go and look for start-ups in those fields in particular. Then comes the maturity, the technological innovation and the quality of the team. Next, we get these start-ups to pitch to our selection committee, which meets once a month. Finally, our industrial partners assess these start-ups in real time during the pitch and this helps us finalise our selection.
How do you actually provide this help?
Our main mission is to accompany these start-ups, to help them not just to develop their products and their technology, but to really develop their business, since this is generally their weak point, and to develop internationally. We choose start-ups which are relatively mature, which have already developed a technology or a product. Then we'll get them to make a pitch, which means we sit them down in front of an industrial company - the term industrial company is quite a broad one, it may go from an aircraft or equipment manufacturer to an airline or maintenance provider, so we really do cover the whole spectrum of the aviation supply chain. We put them in touch with the right people for them to sell or test their product and show its added value. Here we help companies do business in their home country then use our network to develop internationally. This is what led us to open offices in Los Angeles in order to cover North America, to return to Munich to be more European and then to open an office in Singapore to cover Asia - this is an important aspect, especially for airlines, as this is where 70% of new aircraft will be delivered. And we wanted to have a more worldwide outlook to be able to source start-ups everywhere around the world.
Are your offices in Los Angeles or Singapore mostly intended to help local start-ups or to export European start-ups?
Both. Their primary vocation is to create local start-ups, in Singapore first of all, - but we want to find start-ups in India, Korea and Japan - and help them develop. But we are also going to be using this base as a platform to welcome European or American start-ups who want to develop in Asia. We opened Singapore last June and we have two or three start-ups from other offices which are setting up to develop the sector.
How long do you provide assistance to these companies?
It depends on how quickly the start-ups develop, but on average it takes 18 to 24 months. This helps them move from a stage where they've picked up a little bit of money from business angels (a few hundred thousand Euro) to their first institutional fund-raising operation with risk capital companies in their country to raise several million. This is what moves them onto industrialising their product and the commercial processes. This is how our investment fund was created. Its role is to arrive at the output from the accelerator to invest in the best companies and those which need it - as they don't all necessarily need to raise funds. The idea is to invest in the best and in those which have high enough growth potential to justify risk capital investment.
What advantage is there for major groups in using external innovation when they already have their own innovation departments which have been increasing in scale over the last few years?
Of course, traditionally major groups had their own in-house R&D departments. This is true for Airbus, it's what Safran has put in place, Thales has a major research centre near Palaiseau, and so on. They were used to developing their technology themselves. Then they noticed that it was difficult to remain on their own, so they started to use universities or laboratories, such as CEA, INRIA and ONERA. But these technologies in laboratories are at very low maturity levels, so they take a long time to reach the aeroplane. A start-up is ultimately a lab technology which emerges, which comes out, transforms into a company and which ends up maturing the technology to make a product out of it. It is at a slightly intermediate level, and in any case is more advanced than what happens in laboratories.
In addition, with the emergence of electronics, digital and all technologies, major groups are no longer able to control all these areas. They have made a certain number of choices and are supported by external innovation for the rest. Either this innovation comes from other industries and is gradually applied to their own, or it comes from laboratories. And this is what these start-ups represent.
Yann Barbaux, innovation director at Airbus, had emphasised last summer that the aviation industry did not like risk and that this was causing mistrust in relation to start-ups, but that groups were trying to develop their relationships with these young companies. Do you see any change?
It's true, and this is why there are aeroplane certification processes, reliability studies and so on. This takes place throughout an aeroplane's development process and it's already complicated enough putting any more spokes in the wheels with potential risks. But it is also true that over the last few years we have seen a company such as Airbus put a certain number of tools in place, in particular a dedicated purchaser.
Groups like to work with start-ups because it's a nice thing to do, it's innovative and it can provide ideas. But once we start talking about building 500 A320s a year, this means completely different industrial logistics with which start-ups can't keep up. So, purchasing in charge of the industrial process will tend to stop themselves, saying " no, we'll never be able to integrate it in time, so we don't want to hear about it". What happened in two stages is that technical departments and research centres gradually started to accept innovation from the exterior. Then purchasing departments and the supply chain also ended up agreeing to allocate a budget and to take risks to test these innovations which may potentially provide them with a competitive advantage in time. This means that this risk is being shared and accepted. There's still a lot to be done, but yes, things are starting to move. And some groups have a boss who is more inclined to this type of innovation than others, which is the case of Tom Enders at Airbus, Patrice Caine at Thales or Philippe Petitcolin at Safran who are proactive. On the whole, things are moving all the same: it's because these French groups were in the vanguard, but also thanks to these external innovations which we have been able to integrate.
What are your next developments and how quickly do you want to increase the number of start-ups in Starburst Accelerator?
Here, things are stable. Our objective is to have one hundred new start-ups per year pitch to our ecosystem and to select between thirty and fifty of them. As we accompany them over 2 years, we have an average of 80 start-ups with whom we work on a daily basis. Despite the offices we have opened, we have not made any plans to go beyond this because out of these 80 start-ups we are going to invest in eight or ten per year. If we were to select more, we wouldn't have the funds we need to develop.
In terms of the offices we have opened, we are going where there are potentially start-ups, which is mainly in the traditional aviation basins. So, we are going more and more often to Brazil, because of Embraer, to Canada for Bombardier, we're looking at what's happening in Tel Aviv, in Moscow and so on. Will we be opening any offices? We've not made a final decision on that yet because it also needs to generate income.
Could you imagine transposing the Starburst Accelerator model into an area other than aviation?
There are sectors which I am personally interested in because I feel that they make even more sense than aviation: energy, to create more new energy sources, renewable energy and food production. But I wouldn't have enough time in one lifetime to look after all three! Having said that, what we've put together in the aviation sector, an accelerator where over thirty worldwide groups have come together and sat down around a table to bring these start-ups to life, that doesn't exist in other industries: a sector-based, worldwide, multi-major group approach. We have been contacted by people from other industries who want to understand how this could have developed and to transpose the model into their industry.
At any rate, we've already got so much to do in our own field! And once again, I think we're only at the start. Elon Musk and SpaceX have opened up the way and shown what was possible. Today, there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are rushing to answer the call of the skies, whether this is in satellites, observation, communications or other areas. There are a lot of start-ups in launchers, supersonic is emerging and all new methods of transport, in particular with the concept of flying cars. While Airbus and Boeing have been saying that they weren't going to develop any new aeroplanes and that nothing would happen before 2030, I think that the opposite is true, that everything is going to happen by 2030. But the initiative probably won't come from them.
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