The Venture Leader Cleantech creating composite materials to facilitate sustainable distribution – Venturelab

The Swiss National Startup Team welcomes new members: A jury selected 10 startups for the Venture Leaders program dedicated to the cleantech sector. During their roadshow, the Venture Leaders Cleantech will meet international investors and industry leaders and access industry-specific expertise and networks to grow their companies. Allow us to introduce you to each of the Venture Leaders Cleantech 2022 ahead of the October 2022 roadshow in Munich: Meet Cohades Amaël, the CEO and co-founder of CompPair.

Name: Cohades Amaël

Location: Lausanne

Nationality: Swiss

Graduated from: EPFL, Ph.D., 2018 

Job title: CEO and Co-founder

Number of employees: 9

Money raised: CHF 1.3 million

First touchpoint with Venturelab: Venture Kick in 2019

Explain in one or two short sentences what your startup does and why:  

CompPair brings healable and sustainable composite material solutions to the market to improve circularity.

 

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?

I completed my Ph.D. in self-healing composites from 2014 to 2018. That’s after the end of the Ph.D. that we made the breakthrough. And simply looking back at the years of hard work building such technology, and to industrial people in composites that told me “you are sitting on a gold mine”, this was more than evidence to jump that step and launch CompPair to have a positive impact on the composites industry.

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?

CompPair’s development will benefit from the Venture Leaders program in a multitude of ways. First, the timing of this specific process is in line with our internationalization expansion goals. Secondly, we are opening a Pre-Series A investment round, to be closed in early 2023. Via the Venture Leaders investor roadshow, we will be in front of potential investors for this round and able to run the relevant networking. With this funding round, CompPair’s team will be able to grow, in both the new product portfolio and Business Development departments. Finally, the location of the Venture Leaders program is a very good fit with our activities, due to a strong German ecosystem in our industry.

Who does your product or solution help, and how?

Composites are widely used in many industries such as aerospace, wind, and sport. However, a major limitation of composites is their sensitivity to damage; current repair solutions are costly and time-consuming, and recycling is still mostly inexistent. CompPair developed a new composite material able to repair itself and be better recycled, bringing circularity to this industry. Our technology acts during the lifetime of products, helping manufacturers, consumers, and the planet. For manufacturers, CompPair makes production more efficient and brings a sustainable and quality differentiator to the market. For consumers, CompPair saves time and money with fast repair keeping the integrity, performance, and weight of the products. For the planet, CompPair reduces waste during production and repair while extending the lifetime of products and recycling them better.

 

What are you most excited about at work right now?

This must unfortunately stay secret! But we have great applications coming and seeing our products that 2 years ago were made at a lab scale, now into warehouses of major companies in large quantities, is highly exciting!

How did you build your team?

I would say the network is the key at first. We launched the project more officially in 2019 with Robin, my associate, but in parallel, I was following the business concept course from InnoSuisse and that’s where I met Nicolas, now our CBDO. Cecilia, our lead R&D was at that time in Master Thesis with us, and she stayed. Paul, our lead in operations and application support, has joined as well from our network, and actually was an advisor for us, before joining! Now that we are growing more and more, building the team still comes from network relations and open applications, but also from interns that we have and that we hire later. This last element is very efficient for us as they are trained at the end of the internship and then can join the permanent team with high efficiency.

 

Which market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup? 

We are entering a large and growing market: The global composites market represents $100 Bn and has grown by 40% since 2014. Despite fast growth, the composites market suffers from damage events (projected to cost $22 Bn by 2026) and a lack of recycling efficiency. CompPair solves both issues. We can basically go everywhere composites are applied and that’s the beauty of what we have developed. However, we have a specific strategy for our market penetration which consists of focusing on three particular verticals: (i) leisure; (ii) wind; (iii) aerospace.

What are your key achievements to date?

In a short two years, CompPair has metamorphosed from an EPFL spin-off producing small samples to an industrial-scale product, with strong public cases announced such as Decathlon, Salomon, and ArianeGroup. Thanks to our 1.3 MCHF seed round, the company has strongly reinforced towards a future scaling phase. Now totaling 19 members, we have expanded the Application, Business, and R&D teams, all of which have hit impactful milestones. CompPair has received a high number of recognitions: Solar Impulse labeled solution, Top 100 Swiss Startups, ESA BIC CH, winner of the Prix Strategis 2022, and JEC Startup Booster, along with other company and innovation awards.

What is one thing not many people know about you? 

What I am doing outside work and activities to disconnect! Some sports for sure, but a passion for music concerts as well.

What is your favorite podcast and why? 

There is not one specific, but I really like podcasts from founders for founders. I really find the inspiration I need in running the day-to-day business at CompPair.

 

How did you come up with the name of your startup? 

Actually, a lot of people are asking why this name: it’s a mix of Composite and Repair, CompPair! While looking for a name, the URLs, trademarks, etc. were not taken and that’s where CompPair was born, like a piece of evidence.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder? 

Every day I see a reward! But two things are specifically rewarding for me: (i) seeing the products developed now coming by trucks and giving rise to incredible products on manufacturing lines; (ii) seeing the team growing, this is so wonderful to see that we started at a few and that we are now growing, growing and growing!

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder? 

There are again a lot! But one thing I remember quite often is the following quote: you need to quickly agree to disagree. It applies to many situations where the answer is not straightforward.

Venture Leaders Cleantech is organized by Venturelab and supported by Alpian, AMAG, EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich, EY, Helbling Technik, Romande Energie, Canton Vaud, and VISCHER and Venture Leaders alum Patrick Maillard.

 

Inspired by nature, CompPair brings the healing capability of our flesh to composites: composites are now able to fully heal matrix damage in 1 minute. We help our clients build better products, that … Read more