The Inria Fête des Startups

Every year, Inria Startup Studio (ISS) organizes Fête des Startups (its startup festival) for the Inria community. What’s that? A gathering proposed to the stakeholders of the Inria innovation ecosystem to “celebrate” the people supported by ISS to develop their startup projects.  Since 2019, ISS has selected and supported around thirty projects per year in one of its nine research centers, at the rate of one to two people per project.

The Fête des Startups was in theory the moment of gathering of this community (generally made up of the people selected during the year, those of the previous year and the twenty people who accompany them) and the ecosystem stakeholders.

In theory because the Covid years have undermined this ambition. The 2020 and 2021 Fête des Startups were organized virtually by video-conference and the 2022 edition was the first real meeting, organized in the magnificent Cyber Campus on the plateau of La Défense in Paris.

The format was the same: a gathering of individuals who were given the opportunity to present their project to the public, but also to listen to “keynote speakers” or experts invited to round tables on subjects relating to digital deeptech innovation and entrepreneurship, the heart of ISS.

The spirit remains festive, as illustrated by the portraits sketched each year by a guest designer. The pitches are intended to be benevolent and the interventions serious but light. For the pleasure of the past three years, we offer you here all of these sketches in pdf (years 2020, 2021 et 2022).

About 20 project pitch per year

and prestigious speakers for an enriching experience sharing.

In 2022, Pierre Haren – founder and CEO of Ilog until its sale to IBM in 2009 and its prior entry into the Nasdaq market in 1997 – recounted with passion and humor the entrepreneurial adventure, its successes and its accidents, as well as the funny than exciting unexpected.

Two round tables preceded this speech, a first on the financing of deeptech with experts Catherine Guillemin, president of SATT Sayens, Jean-Michel Dalle, managing director of the Parisian incubator Agoranov and Xavier Lazarus, General Partner of the venture capital fund – Elaia.

The second included entrepreneurs invited to share their adventure: Pauline Eveno (Syos), Daniel Gerges (who gave the point of view of the director of an incubator, Le Poool in Rennes), Fabrice Le Fessant (OcamlPro, , Origin Labs) – replacing Mehdi Medjaoui, Code is Law.

The event ended with the more institutional and remarkable presence of the CEO of BPIFrance, Nicolas Dufourcq, welcomed by Bruno Sportisse, CEO of Inria. The “Fête” does not imply lack of seriousness. Both emphasized the importance of entrepreneurship as a vector of impact for French academic research and we thank them for their presence and for the symbol and weight they represent.

The two previous editions also had their pitches and Keynote speaker, and for the pleasure of remembering, we mention:

• in 2020, Damien Tardieu, founder of Niland, sold to Spotify in 2017,

• in 2021, Théau Peronnin founder and CEO and Chloé Poisbeau COO of Alice & Bob, an emerging quantum computing startup, financed by the Elaia and BPIFrance funds.