A baby monitor for boats

Interview with Mathilde Argaud,
CEO, Largowind

“Even though I grew up inland, sailing has been my passion since childhood,” says Mathilde Argaud.

But owning a boat and living far away from it can be stressful. “Before leaving the harbour, my dad would spend half an hour checking and rechecking that the boat was securely attached. And at home, especially when there was a storm, he had no way of knowing if anything had happened to it. So when connected objects started to arrive, we thought that they might bring a solution.”

In 2015, Ms Argaud and her father came up with the idea of Connected Rope®: a device that would provide real-time data to owners when attached to the moorings of their boat. With the data being accessible at any time via a smartphone, tablet or PC, the product would be a kind of “baby monitor” for boats, alerting them as soon as there was an incident. Ms Argaud was working in Austria at the time, but moved to a new position in Luxembourg shortly after with the ambition to pursue her start-up idea in parallel. Together with two colleagues, she set up Largowind to develop and market Connected Rope®. She also applied for Luxinnovation’s Fit 4 Start programme that offers 16 weeks of coaching and early-stage funding to ICT start-ups.

“Fit 4 Start turned out to be a big boost for us.”

“The regular coaching sessions helped us progress, and being surrounded by other entrepreneurs dealing with the same issues as us made me feel that I was not alone,” Ms Argaud says enthusiastically. “The financial injection of €50,000 was of course valuable to develop a prototype of our product, but the most important was perhaps that I had experienced people around me who trusted me and believed in my idea.”

Largowind is currently finishing the R&D phase of its project and has just raised another €50,000 of private financing that will match the additional €100,000 offered by the Ministry of the Economy to successful Fit 4 Start graduates. These funds will be used to finalise the development of Connected Rope®. “We expect to have a product that could be commercialised by the end of the year,” Ms Argaud says. The next step will be to test it under real conditions and start the pre-sales campaign. “Our aim is to work with dealers in supplies and equipment for boats all over the world. So far we have participated at two major nautical fairs to present our idea, and the response from both potential distributors and final clients has been very positive. People are also signing up on our website to become beta testers of the product.”

“Fit 4 Start turned out to be a big boost for us.”

“The regular coaching sessions helped us progress, and being surrounded by other entrepreneurs dealing with the same issues as us made me feel that I was not alone,” Ms Argaud says enthusiastically. “The financial injection of €50,000 was of course valuable to develop a prototype of our product, but the most important was perhaps that I had experienced people around me who trusted me and believed in my idea.”

Largowind is currently finishing the R&D phase of its project and has just raised another €50,000 of private financing that will match the additional €100,000 offered by the Ministry of the Economy to successful Fit 4 Start graduates. These funds will be used to finalise the development of Connected Rope®. “We expect to have a product that could be commercialised by the end of the year,” Ms Argaud says. The next step will be to test it under real conditions and start the pre-sales campaign. “Our aim is to work with dealers in supplies and equipment for boats all over the world. So far we have participated at two major nautical fairs to present our idea, and the response from both potential distributors and final clients has been very positive. People are also signing up on our website to become beta testers of the product.”

The main challenge for Ms Argaud at the moment is taking the right strategic decisions for her company’s future.

“I have an engineering background so I feel quite confident about the product development process, but I have a lot of questions regarding financing, legal issues and so on,” she explains. “Fit 4 Start gave me a great network of people I can rely on to find answers. I have also discovered the wealth of expertise and contacts that Luxinnovation offers. Antoine Hron at Luxinnovation has for example helped me with several introductions to facilitate our search for investors.”

According to her Fit 4 Start has gained an excellent reputation, also outside Luxembourg’s borders. “My friends in France are very interested when I talk about the programme, and recently a friend who is setting up his own start-up asked me to coach him to make a really good Fit 4 Start application,” she says. “The programme improves with each edition, and it really opens new doors and opportunities for young entrepreneurs. I would not have been where I am today without Fit 4 Start.”