Young start-ups must not get drunk on figures with multiple zeros
Ivan Radja
For fifteen years, FiveCo, based in Mont-sur-Lausanne, has been bringing companies' dreams to life. The Raptor — a display stand that makes watches disappear — was created for Hublot. The Imperiali cigar box, sold for one million francs, was also their work. For director Antoine Lorotte, a start-up must grow wisely if it wants any chance of becoming a profitable SME.
For your company's 15th anniversary, you published a book collecting various opinion pieces. In it, you warn against the illusions the start-up world can create. Aren't start-ups indispensable? Yes, they are the lungs of a country. I am not against them, quite the contrary. However, the example of a few unicorns — start-ups valued at over a billion dollars — sometimes drives people to extremes. All anyone thinks about is flooding the market quickly and maximising their company's valuation. There is always the risk that a 25-year-old entrepreneur with a successful product dreams of becoming a multi-millionaire within five years. Young start-ups must not get drunk on figures with multiple zeros — it is dangerous. I always advocate a step-by-step approach, patiently conquering markets one at a time.
This is FiveCo's own policy — even though it was once a start-up itself. Absolutely. But we were very well advised from the start, by Genilem. New companies are not always well supported. Beyond the product and the patent, it is an extremely complex machine to launch. I advocate the creation of expert pools, bringing together various skills in entrepreneurial, legal, technical, and fiscal domains. When you start out, you are always a little lost. You must be careful not to lose sight of the real economy and the entrepreneurial spirit in its traditional sense. A simple and telling example: take the ranking of the top one hundred start-ups published by a French-speaking Swiss magazine, and examine the composition of the hundred jury members. If you remove the coaches, the venture capitalists, and the business angel networks, among others, you are left with a very small proportion of genuine entrepreneurs. That is a real problem.
What is a "real entrepreneur" to you? A leader capable of making decisions that do not primarily target short-term returns. Where are today's Bucherers, Bobsts, Camille Blochs, Schindlers, Kudelskis? These are companies several decades old — sometimes over a century — in family hands, with successive generations managing for the long term. I believe in the figure of the "patriarch", capable of investing in a given direction and imposing the idea that it will pay off in twenty years. Not in six months.
Is the Swiss economic fabric out of balance? No, the mix is good between start-ups, industry, multinationals, historic houses, and new ventures. But we must ensure that Switzerland does not become merely a library of ideas. It must produce, thanks to its skilled workforce. The Imperiali cigar box is proof of this — a model of complexity aggregating all watchmaking, technological, IT, and craft know-how, created with twenty-nine subcontractors, only one of which was abroad. Yet currently, too many projects and patents are developed here and manufactured elsewhere.
FiveCo works across very diverse fields — watchmaking, automotive, energy, and more. How did you establish your credibility? We are only ten engineers, all graduates of EPFL, including four end-of-studies prize winners and two valedictorians. That training fosters multidisciplinarity. Our clients often arrive with an idea — it is our job to bring it to life. That is how it worked with Xavier Dietlin, who imagined the Raptor display stand, and the fusion showcase behind which watches move following the visitor's hand gesture, again for Hublot. We work equally for start-ups needing rigorous studies to validate their business model, and for multinationals seeking an outside perspective on new concepts and products. The common thread is innovation.
You challenge several received ideas about innovation… Every innovation is born from a gap or a mistake. I will be a little provocative, but I genuinely believe you do not need to be an absolute expert in a field to inject innovation into it — quite the opposite. I believe in the power of the outside eye. A second received idea: you need to be free to create. That is an illusion reinforced by the imagery of the West Coast — table football, hyper-relaxed environments, office massages — all imagery likely to mislead young people launching a start-up. I am convinced that a framework, fertile ground, and daily discipline are necessary. Finally, I challenge a third cliché: that engineers are incapable of innovating. On the contrary, someone who is multidisciplinary, with a broad vision and an attraction to mixing competencies, is perfectly capable of creating and generating ideas — for example, by applying automotive technology to the medical sector.
What are the application areas opening up for you today? The Internet of Things, for example. We have expertise in a field that brings together battery challenges — particularly low power consumption — compact storage, and security, all while incorporating aesthetic design for large-scale production.
And the connected watch? I agree with Jean-Claude Biver when he says one cannot pretend to ignore this phenomenon. Switzerland is a country that wants to be high-tech and innovative — it would be unthinkable not to be part of it. The connected watch still has several flaws to correct. Durability is insufficient; these devices suffer from rapid obsolescence. Battery life always leaves something to be desired. Most are still tied to a smartphone, which is too cumbersome. And finally, they need to be differentiated. Today, smartwatches all offer virtually identical functions. Specific peripherals need to be developed to specialise these watches, so that the buyer thinks "this is the one I need" — rather than hesitating between several brands offering similar objects.
