Laurent Auret likes to say he has four children: two boys, a girl and a company. Yet it is the last, just seven years old, that is likely to sever its paternal ties first, he believes.
Most entrepreneurs clasp their first-born company close to their chest. Mr Auret sees things differently. Having just brought in a deputy managing director, he plans one day to relinquish control of Neosens to a trade buyer. In time, he expects to move on from the business, which creates and sells devices for detecting contaminants in the water systems of paper-makers, utilities and hospitals.
For a company that employs just 17 people, had its first sales in 2005, and generated revenues of only €300,000 in 2007, the idea of a multinational buyer sweeping in sounds like big talk. But Neosens is no ordinary business. It is a technology pioneer in a conservative industry where change is slow. Driving it from start-up to the brink of commercial success has taken seven years of toil for its 37-year-old scientist founder.
Sales of the company's monitoring solutions, which tell users about the levels of oxygen, biofilm or chlorine in industrial water systems, are expected to reach €1m ($1.4m) in 2008 and triple again in 2009. Finally, Mr Auret is seeing his scientific vision rewarded with commercial success.
An angular, scrawny figure with a deep tan, Mr Auret brings an acutely scientific approach to the entrepreneurial challenge. He has no formal management training, gleaning techniques from advisers along the way, as he has pursued a personal vision of the commercial opportunities for using multiple analytical processes on a single wafer of silicon - a microsystem - to transform sensor technology.
Fouling in industrial processes is a multibillion-dollar problem, yet traditional tests were often little more sophisticated than the litmus paper used in school laboratories to check for acidity. Monitoring systems were expensive, required a lot of maintenance and disrupted the industrial process.
Mr Auret realised that electrical sensors connected to computer programmes on a single microchip could provide far more sensitive tests to detect contamination before it becomes a corrosion or health problem.
Today, sensors developed by Neosens have vast potential for utilities, as well as in alerting staff to the risk of Legionella in the water systems of cooling towers, hospitals and other buildings.
It has been a tough slog, though. Raised in Périgueux, Mr Auret took his first degree in Toulouse in the physics of solids but completed his PhD in micro-electricalmechanical-systems at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, a world leader in medical and scientific research.
On returning to France in 1993, he joined Elta, a subsidiary of Areva, the French state nuclear engineering group. The 50-person company designs electronic systems for hostile environments, including devices designed to detect corrosion risks in nuclear power plant cooling systems. "I started out in research and development engineering," recalls Mr Auret. "I was a bit of a free electron. I had complete autonomy. I had my own budget. I answered directly to the chief executive."
By 2000 Elta had 200 employees, but when Mr Auret tried to convince his boss his microsystems work could be used much more widely, he got the cold shoulder.
He raised his frustrations with a close contact, Daniel Esteve, director of the electronic research systems wing of the state-run Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). "He said to me: 'the only solution is that you start your own company'." It was an idea that had never occurred to him.
Mr Auret says: "I went straight to my boss and said to him 'I am setting up my company in the water-monitoring sector, and if you want to be my first customer I shall be delighted'."
Mr Auret's parents were deeply shocked that he would give up a safe job. But his wife Muriel, a laboratory analyst, was strongly supportive, as were 20 or so family and friends who backed him with their savings.
On 20 June 2001, he moved into the regional scientific "incubator" unit in Toulouse - one man and a computer. His first recruit was a graduate from Toulouse business school to work on marketing. "I knew the commercial preparation was going to have to start at once, alongside the research and development," says Mr Auret.
For the next couple of years, the company financed itself largely through winning awards, including a €200,000 national innovation prize in 2002. It moved home three times, arriving at its present quarters in a sun-blasted business park at Labège, on the outskirts of Toulouse, this spring.
Development work was financed by a €1m funding round in 2004, drawing money from venture funds ICSO Private Equity and IRDI. That was followed in February this year by a €2.5m round that brought Sofinnova Partners, Capricorn Cleantech Fund from Belgium and Galia Gestion to join them. "The ambition has always been high, so I was willing to bring in outside investors," says Mr Auret.
When he started out, he planned to sell portable test kits direct to users, vaunting his advanced technology. But companies wanted continuous monitoring and were more interested in reliability than technical prowess.
In response, Mr Auret reinvented the business model. Partnering with big chemical or water treatment companies enables Neosens to access big markets. Utilities such as Véolia Environment or Suez Environment, and systems makers such as Alfa Laval have the potential to open doors to their customers worldwide. It is an approach that is common among small German engineering firms, but rare in France.
This summer Mr Auret hired a deputy managing director, Thierry Brisard, a former marketing boss at a big US water treatment company. Mr Auret will remain chairman, overseeing strategic development, but wants to be more involved in product development. So he will work in partnership with Mr Thierry to maintain the company's growth.
Too often, says Mr Auret, scientists found a company then restrict its growth by refusing to bring in outside investors or managers. "I find it rather sad if you don't want your baby to grow."
But what will he do if he sells Neosens to a trade buyer? At 40, he is rather young to retire. "Creating a company is like a virus," he says. "Nothing stops you creating another."
Anglo-Saxon concept in a land of creatures d'enterprises
Laurent Auret, founder of Neosens, believes Europeans can learn a lot from the US in managing university spin-offs. "In the US there is a strong entrepreneurial culture, and every university has an incubator," he says. "A researcher who has patented an idea can move in, and if it doesn't work out he moves back downstairs to resume research."
Europe remains a place where entrepreneurial failure carries a stigma: "If you fail in setting up a company in Europe, it is a great big black mark against you. Companies and research are still too separated. It is going to take a generation to change this."
For scientists who choose to set up on their own, though, a creative approach is as important as analytical ability. "Every day I reset the counter at zero. You have to question things again every day. Every day is like starting anew. That's a creative step."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
