#14: Jean-Francois Morizur

Radical Departures

Episode 14 - Jean-Francois Morizur - CAILabs: Bending light for better network bandwidth

Key Points:

• Born in a research lab at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, created partnership with the university for license

• Found new application for shaping light - can expand fiber capacity by 400%+

• Working with SAFRAN, who also led the latest round of financing

• No longer need to rewire older fiber, saving time, money, and complexity

• Sell via integration partners, expanding globally

• Currently hiring for many positions in engineering, commercial & internships

The initial research lab tests were hoping to find uses for manipulating light for the field of microscopy, though the joint research teams from France and Australia ultimately concluded that no, it was not going to work. Thanks to one of the professors at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Jean-François had kept in contact with the team and was convinced that despite the results of the initial study, something interesting could come out of that research.

It may not have yielded results for microscopy but instead, that research provided the backbone for what became CAILabs, a startup that works to shape light, which can provide enormous time and money savings for existing fiber networks and beyond.

The business case for CAILabs is immediate and obvious: instead of replacing existing, older fiber LAN networks in factories, hospitals, etc - a process that can be painfully long, requiring significant paperwork and an often challenging process - customers can instead implement the CAILabs product, which can reduce bottlenecks for local networks.

Jean-François Morizur is yet another example of a startup founder in a very technical market who has an amazing ability to explain his solution in easy to understand terms for mere mortals. (Edouard Alligand, CEO of QuasarDB who joined us in Episode 7 was another.) He is of course a very deep technical person - he has a PhD in quantum optics, after all - but he’s also a smart business leader who is highly engaging.

During our discussion he explains their target audience and their plans for global expansion, including the age-old question of whether to put the US office on the east coast or the west coast. It’s a topic worth spending time exploring, rather than rushing into a choice to move out west just to be in the Valley.

Moving forward, CAILabs is seeking to hire new members for their team, both in engineering and the business side of the company now that they’ve secured a new round of funding. They’re also getting a lot of customer traction, so there is a lot of opportunity here for people interested in working on a very innovative solution with smart people.