With the recent announcement of the Brandery class of 2016, we are excited to feature each company in its own blog post! Each day we’ll post a new blog highlighting one of the startups in this year’s cohort. As we are officially two months out from Demo Day, get to know the names and faces behind the company!
Today we’ll be highlighting Atumate, formerly known as Atumsoft!
Pictured (left to right): CEO, Olivier Lemaitre; CCO, Fontana Carl; CTO, Andrew Carl
(not pictured, VP of Engineering, Brad Conyers)
What does your company do?
At a time when wireless connectivity makes life easier and tasks more efficient in countless ways, most scientific labs are behind the curve. The problem is every machine is an island. It’s commonplace for scientists to operate cutting-edge instruments in not-so-cutting-edge ways. Until now.
Atumate is a turnkey IoT device empowering any scientist to access any instrument from anywhere in wireless range. Thankfully, the time-intensive method of physically walking from instrument to instrument to run operations and collect data is obsolete. Atumsoft gives complete control. Untethers access to data. And frees the scientist to focus on science.
What attracted you to apply to the Brandery?
While looking at accelerators and funding opportunities, the Brandery stood out to us as one of the top startup accelerators in the US, and everything we need for the stage where we are as a company. The pace at which things move and the abundance of networking opportunities are exactly what a quickly growing startup like Atumate needs to succeed.
How did the team come together?
Andrew Carl (co-founder, CTO) and Olivier Lemaitre (co-founder, CEO) were tech-freak friends that were passionate about playing with computer hardware and code. As Andrew was teaching Olivier some innovative new ways to use programming, in addition to their mutual laboratory experience, the idea of connecting outdated labs with IoT started. We added Fontana Carl and Brad Conyers to round out our experience in design and programming to win a local AngelHack Hackathon with the idea. The team then went on to do great in the global AngelHack Competition in San Francisco, taking home the biggest prizes, and finally returned to Cincy to turn their winning idea into a reality.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned at the Brandery, so far?
Branding and understanding how to reach the world is a powerful thing. Using this newfound knowledge, we have learned to tell our story in a better and more compelling way.
What do you like the most about Cincinnati?
Being a part of the growth of #startupcincy and the community is huge. Everyone loves to help and the interest in what startups are doing is only growing. It is a privilege to be a part of such an active and tight community. And of course, FCC games are great.
Did you have an “aha!” moment?
The big aha for us came when working on some code, realizing that any complicated problem can have a simple, elegant solution.
The pictures used in this blog post were captured by Zackariah Cole, visit his website at http://www.zackariahcole.com/.
