Success Breeds Success: Tempow Shows How French Tech Pays It Forward
On a sunny Friday afternoon, Vincent Nallatamby, a rangy, shaggy-haired 20-something, is taking a break inside a coffee shop in Santa Clara, California, hidden in the shadows of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and the company that put the Silicon in Silicon Valley: Intel, where he had just paid a visit. The recent grad is two years into his first job, which also happens to be his first startup as a budding entrepreneur. It’s the end of typical long week of trade shows and business meetings, darting up and down the Bay Area peninsula via Uber and CalTrain, and he looks no worse for the wear. In between showing a visitor an impromptu demo of the product that his company, Tempow, just introduced — easy enough with a pair of Bluetooth speakers and smart phone that appear from his backpack — he talks casually about technology trends in his market, raising capital, finding good engineering talent and exit strategies.
All in a distinctive French accent.
Nallatamby is one of legions of French entrepreneurs who ply the Silicon Valley and other global tech hot spots, pitching customers, partners, investors, analysts and the press. They are the new face of French Tech, with confidence and ambition that belies their years, and with a firm commitment to build something similar, maybe bigger and better, at home.
“Silicon Valley is great. It’s a unique place and there is a lot to be learned by being here. We have to have a presence here,” he says looking out over the sprawl of glass and steel. “But being in France is an advantage for us. I can get things done faster and more efficiently. I can build an elite team there. I know it’s a global market, but we will always have our roots in France. We have what we need there to succeed: talent, money, support.” He pauses, and almost with a hint of defiance, says: “I don’t need to move my company to the U.S.”
A Startup Movement
What strikes one about this latest breed of French entrepreneur is that despite their maverick attitude, they never quite seem to be alone. Even though the French audio startup he co-founded currently has only a small team of engineers, Nallatamby moves and talks like there’s a larger mass of support behind him, perhaps an entire country. Call it a movement, or revolution, a renaissance, fraternité — whatever it is, success breeds success and this new spirit of confidence is fueling a generation of French Tech startups like Tempow. Nallatamby reflects on the state of French startups: “In France, the technology ecosystem is maturing and really beginning to help each other. Engineers aren’t afraid to share ideas and investors have more confidence. We have a ton of connections, even outside of France, and we all help each other. It makes entrepreneurs more ambitious and we’re starting to see the results of that ambition,” he says.
Tempow, fresh off its break-out moment at the recent IFA event in Berlin, is a perfect example of that ambition and underscores that success that can only result from a close-knit environment. Started less than two years ago while he was still a student at France’s prestigious ESSEC business school, Nallatamby and a couple of friends built upon a novel idea to connect and sync multiple wireless audio speakers with a single Bluetooth connection. With Tempow’s patented approach, users can connect up to four speakers at a time to the same device, a huge improvement over the traditional one-to-one Bluetooth protocol limit. Their ambitious vision: to become the Dolby of Bluetooth audio.
Money & Talent: Keys to Success
Armed with the concept and a prototype, Nallatamby and his co-founders set out to do two things: find talented engineers and raise the capital to launch the company.
France has always had a deep talent pool, skilled in the mathematics-intensive area of algorithm development and audio technology. Tempow was able to quickly find like-minded programmers and developers, even if their backgrounds might be slightly unorthodox. They count a former pastry maker and a philosophy major among the core team, and were able to tap into the burgeoning talent pool of Paris’ famous Ecole 42 coding school to find the best C and C++ programmers who could hit the ground running. The fact that two of the founders were skilled and hands-on programmers themselves helped the recruiting effort as well.
As far as raising capital, Tempow’s B2B software model didn’t require millions, but more than a circle of friends and family might be willing to offer up. The team turned to the emerging French angel community, tapping into a group that largely consisted of second and third generation entrepreneurs who had already achieved some degree of success themselves. These included the likes of Loïc Le Meur and Eric Setton, both of whom had been through multiple startup cycles.
“I really got the sense that we take care of our own when it came to funding and advice in general. The angel community in France is a great source for French startups. The experience is there for the taking for people like me to learn from. And, they understand the need to ‘pay it forward’ and give something back to the tech community here,” notes Nallatamby. “In the past, I felt like there was a lack of mentors in France, but that’s changing, as our experience shows.”
Going Global from the Get-go
Despite his success in quickly ramping up Tempow in France, Nallatamby knew that the team needed a global perspective. Indeed, the target market for the technology — device makers that want to add multi-speaker Bluetooth connectivity to their products — didn’t really exist in France. So hitting the road to tech outposts like Shenzhen, Seoul and San Jose was essential.
The French network crosses the Atlantic, and Tempow benefited from a stint at the seed fund The Refiners, which specializes in helping French companies navigate the complexities of Silicon Valley.
“We are a small French startup, so getting introductions to big companies was key. We got a lot of that from our colleagues in the French tech community,” he says.
Nallatamby values the international experience as it has given him a deeper understanding of local market nuances. For example, the American market tends to see the value of multi-speaker connections for outdoor use like parties, at the beach, etc. On the other hand, in Asia, the use model largely revolves around connection to personal earpieces, particularly for sharing audio on subways and public transport.
The founding team also was able to absorb the intangibles of other tech ecosystem, especially Silicon Valley, and apply those to how they built Tempow. Or not.
“People in Silicon Valley like to say ‘don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is a good thing.’ Hey, I don’t want to fail. I want to be successful. I think there is still a fear of failure in France, but I’m not sure that is bad thing. We are still ambitious. We still take risks.”
Off and Running with Motorola Win
The road warrior mentality paid off and Tempow just announced a first major win: an agreement with Motorola (Lenovo) that will see its unique Bluetooth capabilities incorporated in the new line of Moto X4 phones. It’s a big deal for a virtual unknown to have landed such a partner. The phone was rolled out to rave reviews at IFA and the multi-speaker connectivity feature is splashed across the headlines of the top tech media like TechCrunch and CNET.
With the newfound notoriety, Nallatamby finds that his calls and emails are more likely to be answered. Tempow is busy courting other big name suppliers of mobile devices, portable speakers, home appliances and wearables. The future is bright and he happily foresees paying his success forward, just as those that helped Tempow get started did.
As he packs up his speakers and heads for the Caltrain to San Francisco, Nallatamby challenges others to do what he and his team have done.
“The opportunities are there for French founders. They just have to get started, just do it. The government has done a good job enabling startups to succeed. They’ve done enough. It’s up to us to take advantage of it.”
