Giving birth to a startup, the first nine months of Wattsense

A recap of what we have accomplished in these past months.

For 13 years working in the climate equipment industry, I had witnessed first hand the strengths and weaknesses of that vertical. I always wondered, why was there such a gap between the innovative, fast-paced software industry and the late adopter’s climate engineering world? While software technologies evolve at warp speed, the Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning (HVAC) segment is still mostly working with technologies created in the 70s and 80s, which I had a hard time understanding.

That’s why following a three-month stay in a Berlin incubator I realized there was a missing link between the software industry and the HVAC sector. As a response to this, I founded the startup Wattsense in October 2017. We aim to help close the gap between HVAC, Building Management Systems (BMS) and the software industry. We want to connect apps to BMS through our plug and play interface, and by doing this, we will help reduce the global energy consumption and waste.

By January 2018 Wattsense had already its first members Hervé Paudrat, VP of Electronics, Louis Rubet, VP of Embedded Systems and Florence Baudry CFO, as well as its first prototype. In February after receiving feedback from our first prospects, we did a pivot and extended our focus to a broader goal: from just HVAC to complete Building Management Systems.

A big game changer for us was the month of April when we raised €730,000 in our first equity funding round. In addition to “love money” received from friends and family a group of business angels also took part in this round. Continuing our development, in May we welcomed three new members to our team, Software Engineer Mohamed Belaouad, Ph.D. Mohamed Zenadi, and HVAC expert Quentin Garcia.

June arrived, and so did the time to start preparing for our beta launch. In addition to that, we welcomed two new members to our team, Web Developer Murilo Boareto Delefrate, and Communications Manager Ana Victoria Torres. A bigger group also meant a bigger office, so we moved from 60m² to a 250m² workspace in Dardilly, near the city of Lyon, France.

In the upcoming weeks of July, we will be busy working on our private beta launch, presenting as well as testing our product and solutions with our customers. We will also welcome the 10th member of the team to fill the Senior Software Engineer position.

The first nine months of Wattsense have been exciting. We can’t wait to upgrade our interface and features around the feedback we receive from this current phase.

If you want to know more about what we are creating, shoot me an email at contact@wattsense.com