Mobapi at the Disruptive Energy Program in Houston.
Mobapi spent a week in Houston, from 14 to 18 October 2019, with Business France’s Disruptive Energy Program. Five days to prepare a pitch in English, then deliver it to oil & gas industry players and to investors.
For this first edition of the programme, eight French start-ups were selected on the strength of their applications, all with solutions for industry. We were hosted at The Cannon, a campus for energy start-ups that opened a few weeks ago.
The first two days laid the groundwork. Three experts gave an overview of the energy sector in the United States, then workshops had us rework our pitch in English: the problem, the solution, the benefits. A panel of lawyers, then French entrepreneurs who came to talk about setting up in the United States, filled in the rest, from intellectual property to fundraising.
Three pitches in two days.
On Wednesday afternoon, each start-up had fifteen minutes to present and ten minutes of questions, in front of representatives of oil & gas companies. On Thursday, two sessions with investment funds, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Vincent Reboul, our CEO, presented Mobapi: monitoring industrial equipment at remote sites, from a distance.
What we put forward fits in a few words: a platform that uses very little bandwidth, a unit that keeps the data when the link drops, and read-only access to equipment, old and new alike.
Three pitches back to back is hard going: the whole delegation came out of it tired.
What we take from it.
We designed Mobapi for remote sites in the tropics, where the network is weak and budgets are tight. The pitch to the oil & gas companies confirmed that this approach also has a place in the American market: in West Texas, a lot of equipment is still very isolated and needs simple, low-cost remote monitoring.
We come away very pleased with this programme run by Business France: five packed days, speakers who get straight to the point.
