Upperion – Enabling Today’s Use of Tomorrow’s Innovations
Human relationships and making the impossible possible. That’s the most significant value Upperion is deriving for their customers and beneficiaries. It’s a great mission as well.
What Is Upperion and What Does It Do
Upperion SAS is a French organisation that invests in B2B innovations in ICT, MedTech, Biotech, and Industry 4.0 as a seed investor. Upperion also connects innovators with industrial companies to empower their innovative transformation such as digital transformation or the data analytics culture.
“We love projects that take care of humans: better health, risk prevention, facilitation of living and learning conditions,” shares Dr. Frédéric Daumas, Co-Founder and Chairman of Upperion.
Personal Background and Discovery of the Incubator Ecosystem
Mr. Daumas has a PhD in biophysics. During his research years, he was able to get acquainted with lasers, biology, electronics, code development, and nanoprobes. One can find almost everything in the bat cave of the MI6 Q Lab. There, he also met his wife.
After getting his doctoral degree, Frédéric quickly faced the challenges of the entrepreneurial world and discovered the incubator ecosystem.
“The courage of entrepreneurs that take risks to create value is still amazing even after 20 years have passed in this ecosystem!” proudly says Dr. Daumas.
These two key facts together helped him bypass the rules. He does not like rules at all even though he admits that they can be good for some people.
“The ability to break rules is what gives us, humans, an advantage over Artificial Intelligence (I am not afraid of AI for this reason): a machine is created to follow the rules, not humans,” shares Dr. Frédéric Daumas whose personal values revolve around challenges, empathy, humility, and curiosity.
Biggest Impact and Achievements of Upperion
Upperion Sas’ biggest achievement so far is the 95% success rate in the survivability of companies they support. For comparison, the French national survival rate for innovation companies is considerably lower – at about 70%.
Another noteworthy achievement of the organisation is the fact that COVID-19 did not impact their own investments.
“As an example, we have invested in ASYSTOM, a French predictive maintenance company that uses edge computing and machine learning to monitor production lines with an industrial grade. They help people to remotely operate maintenance. Their digital capability was useful during covid-19 crisis”, shared Frédéric.
That’s pretty impressive given that most of the world has been negatively influenced by the global pandemic.
Connection with InvestHorizon
The connection with InvestHorizon is natural, and has two important dimensions for Upperion and its CEO:
“On one hand, as a former EU|BIC manager, I am always interested in sharing experience and knowledge with other entrepreneurs. On the other hand, as investor, it is always interesting to take part in such programmes to find new investment opportunities,” concludes Dr. Frédéric Daumas.
Useful links:
