Gait Up — The Spot 2018
Gait up is a successful company from Lausanne, a spinoff of the EPFL, which is specialized in motion analysis applied to sports and health.
We could meet Benoit Mariani, Founder & CEO, at his booth during The Spot 2018 and shared an interesting talk about the future of sports wearables.
The Swiss Unicorn: Tell me more about your startup; you sell motion sensors for sports and health applications as well as the algorithms needed to analyze motion measurements.
Benoit Mariani: We need the hardware, but it is not where the added value is. Everybody can have an accelerometer. The real plus is in the usage of the data. We create value and obtain precise data out of hardware that everybody has.
In an event such as this one, startups focused on health and sports data collection try to differentiate themselves from competition in different ways: some are hardware oriented and others more software oriented.
At Gait Up, you make sense of the data, you are specialized in data analytics.
Correct, but we see the startups present today as potential clients and not as competitors.
If a company develops a sensor for the ski industry, they can come to us to benefit from our expertise and our algorithms to reach a better precision. Our services are based on a licensing model. So, we are not focused on ski applications or any other type of sport in particular. We usually find a strong partner who is champion in its vertical and we offer him our libraries and algorithms. We have a B2B2C approach.
Gait up has 18 years of experience in motion analytics. Therefore people are happy to collaborate with us to accelerate the time to market of their products.
The understanding of the body motion and its analysis is always a bit different in each sport or application.
That is correct. As we worked in many domains, we can leverage our experience. We have a portfolio of 40 algorithms already available.
What do you want to achieve by participating in The Spot?
Spread the word.
We want to be visible; we want people to see our logo, our brand. We are looking for business opportunities and strong partnerships.
You touch different sports and applications .Was it difficult for you to find the right contact person in this B2B2C model?
Yes, it took us 4 years to develop our business model. We started by doing direct sales. As we were bootstrapped, we were selling low-volume, high-margin products to doctors and professionals. It is still part of our sales effort, but we are now scaling with our licensing partnerships.
There are many actors in this field at the moment. At some point, there will be a consolidation of the market. In which direction are motion sensors and data analytics headed?
These are interesting times. There was a hype with the first generation of gadget sensors. Companies like Fitbit have cracked the market. They sold many units and did some good and bad. People started to be used to wearing sensors and collecting data. But at the same time, they ended up questioning the usefulness of it. In the end, things like step counting are not something essential.
Now, the market is looking for more precision in the data collection and real added value. This creates opportunities, but it is a challenge as well as many people see trackers as just gadgets.
The reputation of such sensors and trackers need to be restored by showing applications with added value.
Yes, being evangelists are part of our work. We must communicate the fact that we work with pertinent data, with precision and that we can bring a real added value.
Your principal investor is now Mindmaze, the first Swiss unicorn¹. What kind of impact did it have on you? What did it unlock?
We had to adapt to a new mindset.
We were able to raise significant funding thanks to them. Now we are focusing on big opportunities. It is the Mindmaze way of work. You invest a lot, but you should be able to reach significant results. We had previously a more down-to-earth approach, very lean. We were working step by step, validating slowly each client. Now we learned another approach and we modified a bit our culture.
With great resources, we can ask ourselves how we can develop better products. We are now able to work on long-term projects even if the outcome in some cases is not always guaranteed.
Is there a risk for you to do too many things, to be less lean?
I would say that it is the opposite. As we were bootstrapping, we were very opportunistic. We had to follow the money. We had to accept some projects which were not in-line with our core competencies. Now we have the resources and the time to stay focused on the important thing. We work on few high potential projects.
Do you have any success or failure that you want to share about your leadership role in your company?
On the business side, having sold the company is a great success. But the real success is to have been able to build a team that is happy to go to work at Gait Up. Everybody was happy by the buyout; we did not leave anyone behind. This is my personal success.
If we talk about the failures, there must be 10 per day (laughs). But we do not focus ourselves too much on them. We organize a Fuckup Night at Gait Up once per year. Everybody explained what he failed, even the CEO. But none of these failures stop us.
I think that entrepreneurship is also a culture of optimism.
You cannot stop at the first setback. You cannot tell yourself that the market is not ready. These are just excuses.
[1] A unicorn is a startup company with a value of over $1 billion.
The Swiss Unicorn is an online startup media which focuses on Swiss startups. We publish interviews of different actors of the Swiss startup ecosystem.
