The figure of the hacker has long been repulsive. R&D looting, ransoms, personal data theft, jeopardized military or economic strategies, there is no limit to the damages hackers can do to society. But, what if we disentangled hacking from crime?

A hacker is someone who creatively overcomes difficulties. If you can fix your car engine with washing machine spare parts, you are hacking the automobile sector. A performant hacker, from a technical point of view, shall be extremely innovative with limited resources. What do you hack and for what purpose are the key questions. Because the best way to know if your fortress is impregnable is to be besieged and see if it holds, governments and companies are progressively accepting to work in partnership with “white hats” (legal, or ethical hackers) to protect themselves from outsiders’ attacks. The “Hack the Pentagon” competition rewards the hacker who would find vulnerabilities in the U.S. Department of Defense’s websites and software, among a selection of the world’s best hackers. It is a state of mind. Mr. Robot is our new superhero.

For long, companies have settled for their Chief information security officer (CISO) to take care of their full cyber-security. In a way, the CISO is just another hacker. But he is at the bottom of the food chain. The old saying (as old as the cyber-culture can be) was that he often lunches alone. His primary purpose is to scold you because you are never vigilant enough. But the truth is that staff mistakes can explain two-thirds of corporate attacks. Forget to update your programs, open the wrong mail, or download a flawed software, and you will pave the way to any Trojan horse waiting to invade your system. The CISO cannot control the people, and that is a fact companies tend to learn at their expense. When the WannaCry ransomware attack stroke last year, in May 2017, most of the computers affected were using an outdated version of Microsoft Windows operating systems. Don’t imagine your grandma was the target. Millions of computers got infected across 150 countries. None of the companies’ CISOs could do anything about it. The savior of the day was a 23-year-old British hacker, Marcus Hutchins, who stopped the WannaCry malware’s propagation.

Why are bug bounty platforms the only viable answer adapted to the contemporary cyber-reality? According to Fabrice Epelboin, co-founder of the French bug bounty platform Yogosha launched in 2015, this evolution can be compared with the competition between Uber and the old cab companies’ economic models. The digital transformation of the economy is a myth. There is no magic trick to turn a whole corporation into such a reactive, flexible, and modular shapeshifter as Uber. The tremendous advantage of a bug bounty platform (or a “hunting club” according to Yogosha’s branding) is that you can attract outstanding hackers to do what they do best and turn it into your own benefit. But how can you make sure that your hackers are reliable? “We only welcome hackers who have both passed an examination we conceived to spot the most appropriate profiles, and who have been co-opted by two members of the platform,” says Fabrice Epelboin. “You can be an IT genius; it is not sufficient enough to be a good professional. We look for people who can translate their expertise pedagogically into a language understandable to our clients, who need help to fix the loopholes the hacker found.” Yogosha (which means “defense” in Japanese) tends to use another vocabulary to designate this emerging business in Europe: the researchers.

The researchers don’t ransom the companies. They don’t even pressure their clients to negotiate their reward. Their bounty is calculated by a scientific and standardized measure, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). Most of the hackers of the World Wide Web are eager to participate to the greater good. In Europe, 70% of the hacking community is involved in the creation and improvement of open-source software, in accordance with the beautiful principle of Computerization for All (the final objective has not been reached yet, but on January 2018, the population of cybernauts hit 4 billion out of 5.5 billion of planet earth inhabitants of more than 15 years old).

Even if Europe still lags behind the United States in the cyber-security field, many institutions start to follow the new trend. Abertay University in Dundee (Scotland) recently launched its Abertay Cyber Security programme, a Masters programme in ethical hacking. The University of Valenciennes (France) also created a degree for ethical white hats.

Why is there such a need to form and deploy battalions of reliable hackers? Cyber-security is not a service anymore, it’s a process. As a company, especially if you have disruptive R&D going on, your antivirus software will not do the job. You will need the white hats to protect you, as long as human errors still limit security by design. The whole point of falling back on a community of hackers/researchers, and not just relying on one of them full-time, is that the crowdsourcing will permanently check your system, and not only once, on a time-paid mission.

Are the researchers the new knights of tomorrow? The Hack4Values movement seems to confirm it. White hats offer their hacking services to NGOs to make sure no humanist and non-profit organization, and those who beneficiate from their actions, would suffer from malevolent computer piracy.

Hacking the Loophole was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is it utopian to have such a beautiful dream? How can we feed 9 billion individuals without destroying the planet even more by increasing the use of agrochemicals, low-regulated GMO, or upward wastage of water? On the one hand, global population is increasing drastically since the 1960s. If we are 7.55 bn nowadays, we are about to be more than 9.77 bn in 2050, and 11.18 bn in 2100.

The repartition of the population will not be homogeneous. Asia will keep dominating when Africa will take off to reach the same number of inhabitants by the 22nd century. The rest of the world will continue to grow slowly or stagnate.

In the meanwhile, the planet has been losing a third of its arable lands during the past 40 years, primarily because of the degradation of the soils.

Such demographic pressure imposes to reinvent the technics of agricultural production. Many efforts have been led in the past thirty years to transform farming practices. Fundamental changes in history have long corresponded to agrarian revolutions. Genetic and chemical progress have superseded mechanical innovations. But we are living the limits of the uses of chemical inputs. Too many damages have been done to the environment and the people — directly or indirectly. And the paradox is that the agricultural returns keep decreasing since the 1990s. Now, no one is afraid to say that the future, even in farming, is digital.

The assertion is strong. It disputes the Big 6’s hegemonic position (BASF, Monsanto-Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, and Dow Chemical Company). We might not need their biotechnologies anymore. At least, new technologies are expanding on their market. We might not even need to dry water tables out because now, we have the technology to help us understand what the earth needs to give its best and feed us all. A data-driven approach to agricultural practices is more accessible since the cost of digital technologies keeps falling, and applications get more and more farmer-using-friendly. The formidable development and increasing affordability of tools made to capture and analyze information (satellites, databases, IOT, decentralized computing power) provide a unique opportunity to transform our practices.

Wehave discovered a specific technology that might revolutionize it all. The French company ITK (Intelligence Technology Knowledge)launched a suite of decision support tools that allow predicting in advance the needs of your crop to grow optimally with minimum use of inputs, resources, and water. This solution addresses high-income countries with high technology readiness as well as fast emerging markets in developing countries. The future will be global, or it won’t be. The primary cause of food losses in developing countries is mostly due to financial, managerial and technical limitations in harvesting techniques, storage and cooling facilities in severe climatic conditions, infrastructure, packaging, and marketing systems. A data-driven approach provides tools to distinguish between externalities and erroneous processes, which would spur the farmers to embrace scientific practices. ITK’s services are based on a fast machine-learning model fostering real-time management of the crops and cattle since the living is by nature continually evolving. The weather stations interconnect the data collecting on the fields. The firm also equipped 300 000 connected cows to apprehend the care, the nutrition, and even the calving. ITK’s strength is to propose solutions to reduce both the costs and the risks for the farmer. He will optimize his use of resources and reduce the consumption of external inputs. The whole point is not to heal when the damages are already done, but to prevent them from happening in the first place. Can you read the future? Yes, we can. We don’t have to undergo the wrath of Zeus anymore. ITK’s models provide an analysis of what is going to happen according to what you do. “We don’t prevent, we don’t heal: we predict the future. Beyond the comprehension of the cause of a problem, our technology can determine in real time the consequence of each action,” claims Eric Jallas.

Are we going to be able to feed 9 billion people within 20 years? The challenge is crazy and yet compulsory. Let’s try and do it like heroes, without destroying the planet, so that the 9 billion generation can find solutions to feed the 11.5 billion people expected for 2100.

Can You Predict the Future? The New Crystal Ball is an Algorithm was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Webdrone is an anti-cybercrime solution, monitoring platform, and investigation service. Their expertise, experience, and know-how in the areas of business intelligence and cybercrime have enabled them to develop a versatile tool for monitoring and fighting against various forms of cybercrime.

Olnica supplies unique and innovative authentication systems, capable of protecting the property of companies and governments. They combat counterfeiting, fraud, misappropriation, and theft, with Molecular DNA, specific fluorophores, connecting detectors, cloud, or digital breadcrumb trails.

Startups specialized in B2B primarily position themselves as large companies’ suppliers, whatever the industry. Nevertheless, major firms tend to adopt annuitants’ investment strategies. They traditionally have a low-risk appetite and seek to limit intermediaries. When several startups confront the same corporate interlocutors and orbit common markets, they should pool their networks. The advantage for the client is highly superior: a bundled offer can cater the value chain extensively and reduce its risk exposure. It allows him to enhance productivity by reducing his fixed charges and simplifying his sales cycle.

Regarding Webdrone and Olnica, both firms deal with anti-counterfeiting through different sectors: industrial DNA proofing systems and cyber-investigation. The joint offer they propose provides global protection (physical and digital) to brand owners. “This partnership lets us fight illicit trade more efficiently,” outlines Hervé Putigny, CEO of Webdrone. The needs in anti-counterfeiting protection have become more and more substantial for the past years. Every industry is concerned, and counterfeiting offshoots are challenging to identify. According to the French Union of Manufacturers (Unifab), counterfeiting represents 5 to 10% of global trades. International criminal organizations invested extensively in physical counterfeiting and cybercrime. The consequences have a disastrous impact on public health, employment, and fiscal balances. Olnica and Webdrone thus decided to pool their expertise and propose a global analytical approach to secure their clients’ products and brand. Their combined solution integrates a physical unique DNA marking (Olnica) and a digital investigation service (Webdrone). Thanks to this exhaustive package offer, big industrial or retail brands, pharmaceuticals, tobacco companies, or agroindustries will trace the circulation of their products, guarantee their authenticity, and identify criminal organizations that are interfering with their businesses.

Nevertheless, if the Webdrone/Olnica association is a success, all joint ventures do not always lead to happy endings. Some collaborations fail. We can identify some criteria for success, beyond technological compatibility. Above all, it is necessary for joining startups to share the same corporate culture, to address the same type of clients, and to reach equivalent maturity levels. Entrepreneurs who focus on lab research and sell work in progress cannot collaborate coherently with a firm with high delivery standards. There is also a risk to see your good ideas “borrowed” by the other firm during the process of association. Hence, you must identify the competitive landscape accurately to connect with complementary businesses and avoid true rivals.

Before you engage in an active partnership, you shall capture:

- The financial health of both firms to be sure not to participate in flawed negotiations

- The possibility of future collaborations (not limited to one product)

- Corporate culture compatibility

- The coherence of the track records

- The material and ethical risk of plagiarism from the other startup

- The complementarity of the businesses

- The power balance with both customer bases: if the market is competitive, product delivery must be impeccable.

- A shared vision of the market and the set objectives

- Beyond business, the compatibility of teams and CEOs’ personalities

- A mutual comprehension of working methods

- The capacity of everyone to share information in a transparent and accountable way

A partnership between two startups is not just another business move. It often engages the future of your company if you are small and starting up. That is why your venture capital investor might be a good moral guarantee (even though it is not sufficient) to bond with another firm from the same portfolio. By any means, you should seek for such opportunities. In the vast jungle of business, small companies united shall not be defeated!

1 + 1 = 3 was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since the 1982 standardization of the Internet protocol suite TCP/IP, alternative data havens emerged everywhere. The development of peer-to-peer data transmission fostered the multiplication of decentralized data hubs. There is a real distinction to be made between the deep web(invisible, hidden, or whatever you might feel calling it), not indexed by standard web search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo), and the darknet, which intentionally hides data from traditional browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.) It’s really since the 2000s and Ian Clarke’s invention, the Freenet, that the deep web became so easily accessible. All you need is an internet connection and a computer. Download the Freenet software and surf. It seems so easy, we imagine that anyone who has fraudulent intentions would use this kind of anonymous playground. Don’t be fooled.

According to Didier Douilly, Manager Business Development of the French start-up Webdrone, specialized in cybercrime, engineering, and business intelligence, most of the counterfeits on the e-market are accessible from the regular World Wide Web, (or clearnet). Medicine, technology, cigarettes, industrial products, agribusiness, chemicals, children’s toys, wine, or clothes and accessories… counterfeiters’ imagination is limitless. “It wouldn’t be rational to sell these products on the deep web since their business model is to reach out a broad audience,” he says. It would be pointless indeed to expose poultry broth between Kalashnikovs and ketamine. Yet, the stock cube by Knorr is the food item the most counterfeited in the world. Contrary to what you may believe, the prime illegal trade is not the Chanel suit or Yves Saint Laurent handbags.

The amplitude of the problem causes a severe shortfall for the global economy. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the International Trademark Association (INTA) released a report in 2017 on the “economic impacts of counterfeiting and piracy” that shows how substantial are the losses:

All the counterfeited products are not strictly purchasable on the internet. On the contrary, they propagate in the retail business without you knowing it. Some regions are more affected than others. From 30 to 60% of the drugs available on the African continent are fake ones. Understand that you will try and buy some medicine and end up with a placebo, or in the worst-case scenario, toxic products. Most of the counterfeited drugs are the ones used to treat cancer, HIV, or malaria among other lethal diseases. The market doubled between 2005 and 2010 and reaches U.S. $75 bn nowadays. If Europe and North America remain protected from these frauds by their highly controlled pharmacies, the parapharmaceutical products you can purchase on the internet to lose weight, gain muscles, or energize yourself are not regulated. Consequences can be fatal, and this kind of weapon can be found on a regular Google web page.

Most of the clients who seek to protect their business from counterfeiting ask for a major focus on the darknet surveillance. Such anxiety comes from a cultural fantasy about the deep web. The truth is that there are fewer platforms available to store this type of parallel trade, thanks to the work of international security authorities. The real challenge is to leach into active networks operating on the Clearnet, as a commissioner would do. Created by former cybersecurity policemen, Webdrone technology addresses the issue radically. Their e-drone behaves like a police investigator. It doesn’t act like classical robots. It can infiltrate a network and communicate with people as if it was a seller or a buyer on an illegal market. This use of artificial intelligence has proven efficient to dismantle illicit and criminal rings. Didier Douilly recalls however that everything in the deep web is not strictly dedicated to criminal activities: “In a dictatorial regime, the hidden web remains one of the last hope for democracy. Otherwise, no journalist or political opponents could ever be active and stay alive.” The deep web is not just dark; it needs to remain invisible to legal authorities (legal but not always legitimate). We must demystify it and apprehend it for what it is: an open door on the real world, for better or for worst.

The onion router (best known under its acronym Tor) has been created to defend the idea of users’ protection and anonymity. Originally launched by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) during the 1990s. In that sense, the evolution of the usage of the anonymous internet in the world is enlightening. Internauts from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Turkey, are increasingly surfing the net as a space of freedom they should protect.

Reports Without Borders’ report on the “Enemies of the Internet” in 2014 shows that most of the institutions limiting the freedom of access to the internet are indeed dictatorships. Thus, network centrality can also be dangerous if there are no democratic safeguards.

It is understandable that the darknet generates so many fantasies. It is everywhere, and yet you cannot see it. Maybe you are too afraid to explore it. The worst horrors of the world coexist with engaging alternatives. You cannot be blamed if you don’t manage to conceive its reality. Few actually do. When the NSA declassified its handbook to navigate in the cyberspace in 2007, Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research, initially intended for internal use, we could discover how embarrassingly basic were the tips provided (like “Browsers assume the prefix ‘http://’ unless you tell them otherwise.”[1]) The gap used to be huge between the reality and institutional ability to adapt to it. For long, cybersecurity tended to focus on dereferencing illegal web pages from the eye of the public. But the only viable objective to eradicate cyber criminality is to find out the shape of the structures, the extent of the networks, and the functioning of the organizations. Sometimes, you can have a cluster of hundreds or thousands of ghostly websites, related to one single individual. It is pointless to try and shut down the websites successively. It would be like fighting the Hydra: cut off one head and others will grow in its place. But with technology like the e-drone, a criminal network can be dismantled within few months when it previously took years to identify the same type of organizations.

[1] The Center for Digital Content, Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research, DOCID: 4046925, last updated February 28, 2007, p. 28.

Why the Darknet is Not our Major Problem was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thou Shall Communicate

We are so used to WiFi, LiFi, IoT, and other dematerialized data transmission that we often forget 99% of intercontinental communications are due to 930,000 km of submarine cables (for 1% to satellite transmission). The story is not new. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and modern globalization emerged under the sea during the 19th-century when the first telegraph cables became operational across the Atlantic, quickly followed by the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Queen Victoria of England and James Buchanan, President of the United States, had the honor to be the first to converse across the Atlantic in 1858: “May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world.” It took 1 hour and 7 minutes to transmit a 100-word message.

Nowadays, LOLcat videos and adult content are rather more spreading throughout the world than civilization or liberty, but if you compare the maps, you will see that fiber optic cables are positioned in an extended continuity with the telegraph cables.

For those who remember the internet in the 1980s and the 1990s, the worldwide data communication used to spread through dial-up phone lines. The Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) was introduced at the beginning of the 2000s, and Satellite Internet started to develop. Then came the fiber optic Internet access in the 2010s. It changed our lives.

An optical fiber is a glass strand that uses laser light pulses to transmit signals over distances up to hundreds of kilometers. The optical fiber is impervious to electromagnetic interference, requires less signal boosting and has a much higher capacity (up to 40 gigabits per second) than copper wires transmitting electrical signals. However, fiber is costly to deploy. Optical cables are used extensively in the backhaul and core networks of the internet (i.e. the networks that connect local providers to each other).

Next Generation Access (NGA) networks are based on fiber-optic technologies that provide radically improved quality regarding high-speed broadband Internet access. Given their generic all-IP technology and enormous bandwidth capacities, these new internet access networks represent a general-purpose technology and are expected to induce significant productivity improvements and growth across major economic sectors.

Fighting for the Cloud Beneath the Sea

Across OECD countries, investment in telecommunications infrastructure fell significantly with the advent of the financial crisis, declining from a high of US$209 billion in 2008 to approximately US$180 to 190 billion annually in the three subsequent years. Meanwhile, according to Arbor Networks, if there were 1.3 bn connected objects in 2016, there will be between 8 bn and 20.4 bn in 2020. Mobile phone subscriptions continue to grow in numbers whilst applications and other services consume more data.

• The Internet of Things promises to vastly increase the number of devices communicating via Internet (to an estimated 26 bn devices worldwide by 2020) and hence the amount of data transmitted and the number of broadband connections.
• The expected growth in Cloud-based services — whereby data and applications are stored on the internet — will also create higher demand for bandwidth, especially in combination with Big Data applications that capture and process vast quantities of data derived from everyday activities.
• End users are increasingly expecting fast access to traditional internet activities. For example, 36% of UK consumers who shop online will head elsewhere if an online shopping site does not load in 2 to 3 seconds.
• Advanced internet-based applications (e.g., telemedicine) can deliver future benefits but will require low latency (delays in delivery) and high quality of service.

The optic fiber is the cornerstone of this overconsumption. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty says 80% of the world’s data is where the “real gold” is. The crux is the property of the wires. Whereas the economic importance of new internet access infrastructure is widely recognized, there are various approaches to promoting the deployment of NGA networks via competition, sector-specific regulation, and public subsidies. Currently, the European Union regulatory framework imposes rather comprehensive and strict access obligations on incumbent operators compared to jurisdictions in the U.S.A. or leading East-Asian fiber nations (Japan, Korea, and Taiwan). Furthermore, the European Union’s access obligations cover not only legacy (copper-based), but also NGA (fiber-based) infrastructures.

The business war has been won so far by telecommunication operators.However, the rise of technology companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook disputes this monopolistic position. They don’t strictly invest in software anymore. Hardware is their new dare. “One of the biggest challenges is that people are still using 20th-century technology in a 21st-century world,” underlines Harriet Green, IBM General Manager.

If the web is becoming a “trinet,” owned by Facebook, Google, and Amazon, what about the hardware supporting physical internet? The cables used to be the property of classical telecom operators, but now GAFA launch their own infrastructure. Faster, Junior, Monet, Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), Tannat, Unity, Asia Pacific Gateway (APG), Marea, AEConnect, Hibernia Express, New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable System, Hawaiki, and now Jupiter, about to be launched on 2020, are marine cables owned by Google, Facebook, Softbank, Amazon, or Microsoft.

Speeding Up the Internet

The optic fiber has not yet been exploited up to its full potential. The most innovative recent hardware breakthrough does not just increase the power, it reshapes it. The French physicist Jean-François Morizurrevolutionized the conception of light: its power, shape, and speed are correlated. The Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC), a technology he developed in the scale-up CAILabs, empowers the light signal by the distortion of its shape. It multiplies by 400 the internet speed everywhere, on existing networks. CAILabs was even able to bring full power internet connection on the top of an Alps glacier!

The progressive improvement of fiber capacities has been based so far on 4 technological advances:

• Power
• Color (Wavelength)
• Polarization
• Phase

Each technology has faced the limits of its asymptotic development. The cost of a new cable is highly prohibitive, and many developing areas remain underequipped. The MPLC enables to empower existing cables and to reduce maintenance cost. It will be the unique technology able to address the future needs of the uncontrollable evolution of connectivity towards cloud computing, big data analytics, and the internet of things.

If you believe in the future, you should not be afraid to put your money where your mouth is: invest in science.

Where is the Cyberspace? Beneath the Oceans was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Wolf meets a Dog.

The Wolf is skinny and starving, reduced to skin and bone, covered in debts. The Dog is chubby and stout, strong and tall, owner of a cool penthouse, a fast car, and a summer cottage.

“What made your life so fulfilled?” asks the Wolf.

- You could be as fat and fortunate as I am, answers the Dog. You should leave the woods for good. All the wolves I have seen are so miserable and wretched. They are all starving. That’s no way to live! You had to fight for everything you have. You should come with me. You will see, your life will get much easier, and you will share a better fate.

- What should I do? asks the Wolf. What is the work required in this place?

- Almost nothing, says the Dog. Protect your master, flatter him, please him, and you will be rewarded.”

The Wolf begins to dream. Life would be so comfortable basking in the sun. But all of a sudden, he sees the Dog’s neck bare.

“What is that? he asks.

- Oh, almost nothing. All you see is worn-off hair. That’s because of the collar I am tied up in.

- Tied? cried the Wolf. You cannot run wherever you will?

- No, not as I please. But it’s okay. The compensation is worth it.

- Is it really? Honestly, I don’t care about your sumptuous fare, for I wouldn’t ever give up my freedom.”

And the Wolf runs away.

The moral of this story is that no entrepreneur who has appreciated the taste of freedom would ever become an employee manager, whatever the cost.

Our VC advice: Be a wolf, bootstrap your business till your cashflow leaves you free to choose your path and be independent. Don’t worship those who run after fund raisings beyond their capacity to manage risk and develop their business. They are just another dog in disguise.

The Dog & The Wolf was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We finance innovation to counter the status quo. “No risk no future” is our motto.

1. Our mission is to make disruptive technology come true and challenge the world.
2. We have the commitment, the network, and the funds. Entrepreneurs have the talent, the ideas, and the drive.
3. We are not afraid by uncertainty. We embrace worthy risk.
4. We are men and women of conviction.
5. We are not only liable to our LPs and entrepreneurs, but also to all the people who will be impacted by the projects we finance.
6. We seek to convert cutting-edge technology into sustainable and growing companies.
7. Although our form is corporate, our attitude is collaborative.
8. We bring smart money into startups: we create value by connecting the dots rather than by lawyering up.
9. We promote authenticity, resilience, and human adventure.
10. We are not in the game to hunt imaginary animals, but to help entrepreneurs to rise and rise again until lambs become lions.

In Tech We Believe, For Humans We Fight: Starquest’s Manifesto was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every year, more than 2.8 million of workers die from a work accident or an occupational disease in the world. The number of non-lethal accidents is uncountable on a general world-scale. In Europe only, there have been more than 3.2 million non-fatal accidents last year. The efforts to protect the workers are not new. But the causes of accidents have often evolved faster than the authorities could have apprehended.

According to the French National Institute of Research and Security (INRS), non-fatal accidents represented 41.3 million of lost working days in France in 2017. The consulting firm Leyton considered that the costs of compensation and medical expenses exceeded a billion in 2016. This appraisal does not even include the shortfalls. There is a statistical issue in the census of such accidents and their consequences: in many cases workers can die many years after chemical exposures, for instance, like the asbestos. Prevention is now the new watchword. Such considerations show that the paradigm has changed side: it is costly to lose or hurt a human life.

Quick History

Risk prevention efforts preceded the industrial revolution, contrary to what one might think. In the 16thcentury already, the French king Charles IX, for instance, forced building contractors into erecting defenses made of poles and rafters to ensure appropriate safety for the roofers. In 1947, the International Labour Organization(ILO) adopted a convention that imposed the creation of a labor inspection in industry and commerce in every signatory countries (convention n° 81). The United States decided not to ratify the convention. Nonetheless, in 1968, the Congress pointed out that the Vietnam War was killing 14 000 American lives, 46 000 were wounded, when during the same year, 14 000 Americans died at work, and another 2.5 million workers suffered disabling injuries (54 times the number of injured soldiers in Vietnam). They thus decided to create the Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) in 1970 to affirm the right of every man and woman to safe and healthy working conditions.

Breakdown of the estimated fatal work-related mortality by cause (% work-related mortality) in 2017

General Principle to Prevent Industrial Accidents

The point of prevention is to protect the health and safety of the workers. Most of public administrations advocate lists of procedures but, there is a considerable gap between theory and practice. Many factories settle for bulletins found on the internet and plaster them on the corridors’ walls. This cannot be satisfying. The employer needs to establish general principles of prevention and adapt the work organization. Risk prevention must be embedded in the general working setup to be efficient — and by setup, I mean building designs and optimized conceptions of circulations. Here is a series of tips to identify what to do and how to do it. As for anything else, think out of the box.

Evaluate risks

First and foremost, you need to evaluate the specific risks your workers are exposed to. The construction industry and handling work remain the most dangerous workspace environments. There are two levels of risk identification: 1) the factory or construction site; 2) each task realized in this context. Every activity has its own risks. Even if the workers are competent and experienced, repetitive tasks expose widely to accidents. Thus, you cannot strictly rely on one-time brief. Nothing is routine. Never forget risk is relational. The activity of a worker can expose another one who would not beneficiate from the same protection because his task is not perceived as dangerous. Even if you assign positions to the workers, a fabric is not a static place. Where danger is high, delimit a clear perimeter where protections would be distinct from the rest of the site.

Avoid risk

Risk prevention must address the entire staff (production, maintenance, support services, administration), including workers who are not hired by the firm (temps, subcontractors, etc.). The best way to avoid risk as much as possible is to conceive riskless (or risk limited) working spaces and processes upstream: building construction, production facilities, or storage equipment offer the first opportunity for protection. Technology can be leveraged to improve construction site safety. Building Information Modeling (BIM) enhances project visualization and makes scheduling more efficient. Take into account every risk component: hygiene, circulation, manutention, physical ambiances (noise, vibrations, temperature), situations (stress, isolation).

Adapt the working environment to the workers

Risk prevention is not strictly physical. It may be psychological too. Hence, do not consider that your workers bear the entire responsibility of protection enforcement. Adapt the working environment to the workers, not the other way around. If your work place is not safe, neither are you. Collective prevention is the key to efficient protection for the workers.

Keep abreast of technology evolutions

It is your duty, as a manager or a boss, to be always up-to-date with technology evolutions that could heighten the protection of the people you are in charge of. Switch dangerous items for those that are not. Recent technological breakthrough can empower your protection system.

SITE SENSORS

They must be deployed across a construction site to monitor parameters like temperature, noise levels, dust particulates and volatile organic compounds in order to help limit exposure to workers. They can alert workers immediately when they are at risk from permissible exposure levels being reached. Data are collected and analyzed to mitigate exposure levels.

DRONES

Drones can scrutinize job sites and detect potential hazards each day. They can be used to monitor workers throughout the day to ensure everyone is working safely. They observe work progresses and create as-built models of construction or production sites to keep everyone informed of the changing work conditions.

EXOSKELETONS

Exoskeletons and power-assist suits help workers lift and carry heavy objects for extended periods of time without putting undue stress and strain on the body.

AUGMENTED REALITY

Virtual reality simulators have been used for long to train soldiers, pilots, and surgeons. They can be used the same way to train workers on everything from operating cranes and excavators to doing welding and masonry work.

WEARABLES

Personal safety protections cannot substitute a collective safety organization. Before you ask someone to wear a helmet or gloves, make sure he is surrounded by railings, handrails, and that machines are equipped with emergency stop mechanisms. Individual protections should be seen as a top-up, rather than an alternative to collective protections. If the sound of machinery is too loud in your fabric, beyond stress limit level, the solution does not lie in imposing your workers to wear noise-canceling headphones. You should try and isolate the engines in a soundproof room first.

The wearables must be adapted to personal exposure in a limited risk environment. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) identified four hazards staff must be protected against:

• Falls
• Caught-In/Between
• Struck-By
• Electrocution

Thus, the solutions you should look for are safety vests, hard hats that integrate low-cost wearable computers, sensors, GPS and real-time locating systems (RTLS). Smart clothing, or e-textile, can also monitor vital signs of respiration rate, skin temperature, and heart rate.

HEAVY EQUIPMENTS & SELF-DRIVING TRUCKS

Crash trucks equipped with attenuators were used for years in highway work zones to protect workers and motorists. Heavy equipment manufacturers, like Komatsuand Caterpillar, developed machines capable of operating autonomously or being controlled remotely. However, the circulation accidents between engines and pedestrians remain plentiful and deadly.

How technology prevents, protects, and provides

Proxipi, a French startup created in 2013, developed a technology to prevent collisions between engines and pedestrians in industrial and logistic environments. Vehicles are equipped with a beacon and an antenna, and pedestrians hold a badge that send out an encoded magnetic field to the conductor in a determined radius. The technological breakthrough lies in the 360-degree capacity of the signal to be transmitted through metal with no impact on the workers’ health.

According to Gilles Vaquin, CEO of Proxipi, what is at stake here is not the security system but the culture of safety. “In a fabric 4.0, you need safety 4.0.” Even if future operators become cobots (collaborative robots), maintenance, quality control, and other facility management will need to meet with safety standards anyway.

How much are you willing to pay to protect a worker’s life? was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We finance innovation to counter the status quo. “No risk no future” is our motto.

1. Our mission is to make disruptive technology come true and challenge the world.
2. We have the commitment, the network, and the funds. Entrepreneurs have the talent, the ideas, and the drive.
3. We are not afraid by uncertainty. We embrace worthy risk.
4. We are men and women of conviction.
5. We are not only liable to our LPs and entrepreneurs, but also to all the people who will be impacted by the projects we finance.
6. We seek to convert cutting-edge technology into sustainable and growing companies.
7. Although our form is corporate, our attitude is collaborative.
8. We bring smart money into startups: we create value by connecting the dots rather than by lawyering up.
9. We promote authenticity, resilience, and human adventure.
10. We are not in the game to hunt imaginary animals, but to help entrepreneurs to rise and rise again until lambs become lions.

The energy crisis the world is facing since the 1970s, global warming, industrial disasters, deforestation, overfishing, poverty, distress, recession, wars, this is all our human doing. Let’s not pursue the old practice of slash-and-burn farming on a galactic scale. We could destroy the whole universe and beyond, it would not resolve the problem. It is our intelligence we should explore, our dignity we should defend.

Let’s face it, it is not planet Earth that is in need of salvation; it is the humankind. If any climate skeptic is reading this paper, know that if your dream is to live in a global dive, we respect your weirdo’s choices; but even if we could all become bionic men and women, immune to nuclear leaks, we would still require decency for all.

The truth is that we are drowning in garbage everywhere. Last year, 48 people died in the collapse of a mountain of waste in Addis-Abeba, Ethiopia; 29 people died in the same circumstances a month after in Sri Lanka. Such mountains are sometimes sunk at the bottom of the sea, like in Lebanon last August, because the garbage crisis Beirut was facing became unbearable and people started protesting against the authorities. Hundreds of thousands of people live off garbage dumps around the world, gathering reusable products and selling them on informal markets. The job is dangerous, excruciating, and often toxic.

No one can be proud of such consequences of our living standards. We like to think of ourselves as progressive, advanced, sophisticated people. And the problem is not restrained to under-developed far-far-away exotic countries. The whole world is suffering from the Diogenes syndrome.

Dowe actually love this? We get used to anything apparently. Trash and waste have become our new religion.

We have even colonized the oceans with our debris. Plastic was the watchword in the 1960s. And now the sea is full of it. That is the proof that we should spare the rest of the galaxy. Our filth has no limit.

We are drowning in the trash; it seems impossible to clean the world from such a metastasis production of waste. However, some pioneers and innovators have started to face the problem from an unexpected angle of approach. What if waste materials could become valuable assets?

Landfill gas turned into Biomethane

Organic matter naturally produces “landfill gas” when it degrades. It is an energetic gas composed of methane and impurities. The landfill gas is released to the atmosphere or flared and is responsible for 5% of greenhouse gas emission worldwide. The French startup WAGA-ENERGY, which stands for WAsted GAs ENERGY, can turn this harmful pollution into a competitive renewable substitute of natural gas: Biomethane. Thanks to a unique technology which combines membrane separation and cryogenic distillation, WAGA-ENERGY upgrades landfill gas to pure biomethane whatever the landfill gas quality. This biomethane can be used as standard energy and injected in the gas grid or used as vehicle fuel.

The seven lives of objects

Above waste accumulation, the emerging social demand for circular economy exceeds the recycling imperative.

The French startup Phenix proposes a solution to reduce food and material waste by giving unsold products a second life for consumption. According to them, “wastes are a gold mine of raw materials for the 21st century”. Their digital platform and field expertise allow professionals to reduce waste at every stage of the products life, in restaurants, mass distribution, retail, or alongside producers and manufacturers. Products are immediately redistributed, optimally recycled, or reused by other industries, according to their condition and function. The company even identifies alternative receivers for products which are no longer eligible for human consumption. They aim to help the productive economy to reach a zero-waste business model.

The power is in sewage

Industrial and household activities produce gray waters. They are not too polluted, full of calories, and they flow at a temperature between 28 and 32°C (82–90°F).

Biofluides Environnement, the French leader in energy recovery from sewage waters, developed a technology that allows exploiting a giant repository of fatal energy relatively under-exploited until now. The calories present in gray waters can be reused and upgraded to heat or cool down buildings. Domestic wastewaters are immediately collected and reinjected in the local distribution system. They meet with 80 to 100 % of the collective needs in hot sanitary waters.

Innovation will save us from drowning in trash. Let’s not colonize the rest of the galaxy to spread our garbage to the stars and beyond. Waste materials are the resources of the terrestrial future.

What if Stephen Hawking was wrong? Let’s not colonize the universe. was originally published in Live from Starquest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.