Synopsis

We thought the participation of a small deep tech structure in the European flagship event on the subject deserves a little feedback in terms of experience and results. Internal mobilization, new meetings, commercial leads. Flashback on a busy week at Vivatech.

Logical

When the Anabasis team asked itself the question if it should participate (or not!) in Vivatech 2022, the answer was posed in very simple terms. Should a young company present in artificial intelligence, a pioneer in the field of explainable AI, already having a solid customer base and ambitions for the technical and commercial development of its flagship product "Karnyx" attend one of the world's main tech meetings? I admit that, posed like that, the question is somewhat rhetorical!

Anabasis, after a successful track record (but not without the detours inherent in any breakthrough innovation approach) is indeed at a turning point. After having developed our Karnyx suite of explainable AI for very demanding clients, in particular the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, the moment seemed favorable to take the plunge, to test our products and our approach to modeling and management of business-centric data with an audience that did not know us. With first of all our specificity as a leading player in the field of explainable AI. This audience a priori sensitized to deep tech, the Vivatech show offered it to us on a silver platter. And we were not disappointed !

From the preparation, we felt that we were going to evolve during the 5 days of the Show, in an environment welcoming to small tech companies: posters, villages of "tripods", proximity to places of traffic: conferences, media zone, etc. .

Well noticed

Before the show, we developed a video in one minute and 30 seconds describing our activity. It's not easy to sum up man-years of R&D and the benefits of knowledge engineering in Anabasis sauce in a few seconds. I let you be the judge by viewing the French and English versions:

From the start of the show, we were struck by the scale of the event, which brings together both the small and the big players in the sector. In brief: breakthrough innovation.

The casting between the actors themselves on the one hand, and the ecosystem (consultants, bankers, etc.) was balanced. We realized this very quickly through visits to our stand.

Another observation: many visitors were very well prepared. When you see a group of people crossing the whole village to come and see you directly, you say to yourself that these are people who do not pass by your stand by chance!

Very present in certain parts of the administration, defense or aeronautics, we were surprised to see that our knowledge engineering approaches aroused a certain interest in other sectors: energy, IT, legal. Even actors who knew us, but had not identified the full potential of our approaches and technologies.

Useful

Anabasis is engaged in a vast change of scale. We have now demonstrated our ability to model a wide variety of business areas: defense, accounting, aeronautical maintenance, food processing, health. Even better, our customers recognize our ability to make these models dynamic, rules-based but also (and above all) consumable by humans (HMI) and by machines (PCs).

New challenges await us now:

• Process increasingly dynamic data without jeopardizing the performance of our tools.
• Make it even easier to exploit our knowledge graphs and models so that the promise of explainability that characterizes our AI is not an empty word.

Among the players who came to see us, about a third were players in the financial and technical ecosystem of innovation: banks, innovation agencies, specialized firms. A third were potential tech competitors or partners. The remaining third were potential customers.

A good forty leads have thus been identified and are in the process of being exploited. Among the latter, some are on the way to being decisive contributors to our development next year, whether in terms of turnover or technological development. Among the post-show meetings, some have given rise to projects that are being started right now!

Participation in a fair of this type also has other hidden virtues

• Mobilize all Anabasis participants, from logistics to participation on the stand, to post-show meetings, including actual participation on the stand. If it's not cohesion, it looks like it. Without forgetting that training to present what we do in simple terms is an exercise that is both useful and necessary!

• Arouse interest among recruitment targets. No, I'm not talking about the tsunami of student visitors who swept through the show on Friday afternoon in search of internships, offers, etc. Although... Beyond that, some of the people who came to see us are those whom we are delighted, both professionally and personally, to have met.

Conclusion

Vivatech remains a general meeting place for players who, like Anabasis, have a vocation to serve almost all sectors with breakthrough innovations. The leitmotif is, and remains, innovation.

Without wanting to make comparisons and even less comparative advertising, Vivatech clearly stands out from two other types of events:

• Exhibitions centered on a specific theme or sector. In this case, the tech component comes in support of a set of use cases and risks taking a back seat to the detriment of the exchange between professionals of the deep tech ecosystem around questions that are specific to them.
• Trade fairs built around a major actor (eg government). In these cases, the exchange between pros runs the risk of being overshadowed by an ocean of injunctions and debates. To the point of wondering why participate as a VSE / SME, apart from the fun (but limited) side of telling ourselves that we are going to spend one or more days participating in a mega show.

This first participation of Anabasis in Vivatech will have finally fulfilled its promises: a logical and noticed presence, a useful participation - in short, a good return on the agreed investment!

Richard Roll

President and Founder, Anabasis Assets

Credits (photos):

• Pedro Lastra
• Zachary Nelson
• Krzysztof Hepner