When Bertin Nahum launched his first medical robotics startup Medtech in 2000, he decided to settle in France’s southern city of Montpellier.
Almost 25 years later, he’s completed two successful exits and launched a new company, Quantum Surgical, in the same sector. Far from leaving Montpellier, Nahum’s instead contributed to making the city one of France’s hubs for medical robots.
“When I arrived in Montpellier, surgical robotics didn’t exist,” he tells Sifted. “Today, it represents 400 direct jobs.”
With 750 km between him and Paris, and in a country where most roads in tech lead to the capital city, Nahum says he’s often asked why he decided to keep the company in the south.
According to data released by Numeum, a union that represents French tech companies, just under half of all active startups in the country in 2023 were located in or around the capital. Paris-based startups also collected nearly three-quarters (73%) of total fundraising.
“I’ve often been told it’s strange to create a company like mine and not be near Paris,” says Nahum. “But it’s not a disadvantage, contrary to what people may think.
“There’s a life outside of Paris.”
Creating a medtech hub
Nahum’s first startup Medtech built robots that can assist with knee, brain and spinal cord surgeries. The company was listed on the pan-European stock exchange Euronext in 2013, raising €20m in the process.
Three years later, US-based medical device multinational Zimmer Biomet bought Medtech for €164m. Nahum says that, with all employees owning shares in the company, “everybody received a financial gain”. He stayed on at Medtech to lead operations for another year.
Zimmer Biomet also invested to grow the company — in its own home town.
“When Zimmer bought [Medtech], everyone thought they were going to bring everything back to the US,” says Nahum. “But instead, they developed the activity and now employ 250 people in Montpellier.”
In 2019, Zimmer announced a €20m investment to open a 5,000 sq m factory near the city; the building opened in 2021, and Nahum says that it’s now where the US company manufactures all of the robots it produces from Medtech’s portfolio.
A year after he sold Medtech Nahum launched Quantum Surgical with former employees of the company, including Medtech’s ex-general manager Fernand Badano, R&D leader Lucien Blondel and executive assistant Sophie Roca. Quantum Surgical focuses on robots that can assist tumour ablation operations in the abdomen and lungs.
It’s raised nearly €50m to date from investors including French banks Bpifrance and Caisse d’Epargne, as well as Hong Kong-based Ally Bridge Group. This year, Quantum Surgical also received a €30m loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
The company has just started commercialising its robot, which Nahum says is operating in a dozen locations in Europe and in the US. Customers include hospitals and cancer treatment centres; Nahum says that the technology helps practitioners carry out minimally invasive operations to destroy cancerous tumours in the abdomen and lungs.
Along the way, the founder won the prestigious Prix Galien — a Nobel Prize equivalent that rewards therapeutic innovations — in 2022.
The company employs 100 people in Montpellier, and Nahum says he’s now seeing the first signs of a founder factory. “Some of my old employees have created their own companies,” he says. “That’s easily another 50 jobs in the sector.”
“We’ve effectively created a hub for medical robotics in France.”
Opportunities outside Paris
Being far outside of the French capital certainly comes with challenges, especially to secure funding.
“Being in Paris is an advantage, because you’re in the middle of a funding ecosystem that doesn’t exist, or very little, outside of the capital,” says Nahum. “This is something I’ve really felt. You’re really outside of all of it.”
Nahum says that he is now beyond the point of searching for funding in France. He is raising Quantum Surgical’s next round, which, at a few “dozens of millions of euros,” will require support from international investors.
“Right now, being in Paris wouldn’t save me much more than a connecting flight,” he says.
There are also many benefits to being outside the capital, he adds — and increasingly so when it comes to attracting talent.
With new generations of workers who are seeking a life outside of large cities, he is confident that offering employment near Montpellier — just a dozen kilometres away from the Mediterranean — is set to become a key differentiator.
“The environment that we’re able to offer our employees is an asset,” says Nahum. “It’s easier to attract talent when we can offer a life project too.”
French tech’s diversity problem
French tech’s Paris-centralism isn’t necessarily a problem, according to Nahum. “It’s important to keep your strengths together,” he says.
But it’s necessary to keep in mind that many opportunities exist outside of the capital, adds the founder.
It’s not just about funding or recruitment: “From the start, creating a company outside of the ecosystem forces you to adopt a different mindset,” says Nahum. “Innovators are always people from the outside.”
Nahum says that this applies to diversity in a wider sense, whether of age, gender or ethnic origins; a challenge that French tech is still grappling with.
A study carried out in 2022 by French startup funding advisor Eldorado, which analysed the founding teams of France’s 33 unicorns, found only 4% were women; eight out of ten founders had a degree, of which more than half were from an engineering or business school.
That’s an innovation risk. “What kills an ecosystem is when everyone starts thinking the same way,” says Nahum. “Innovating means transgressing.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/bertin-nahum-quantum-surgical-interview/
