Thomas Laurent, entrepreneur at the service of ecology in Toulouse
In ten years, the contractor Thomas Laurent has embarked on the creation of three start-ups with ecological and responsible projects in Toulouse. The last one has been talking a lot about her for several months: Micropep. It is indeed considered a “revolution” in the agricultural world.
Three. This is the number of start-up projects carried out by the entrepreneur Thomas Laurent, since his installation ten years ago in Toulouse. The latest: Micropep. This young company is in the process of developer of natural inputs and pesticides based on micro-peptides. The latter are natural proteins present in the body of plants that help them germinate, grow and protect themselves from diseases.
Multiplied on an industrial scale, micro-peptides will soon make it possible to create a range of products which, once absorbed or sprayed on plantations, will be distributed for the good development of crops, the fight against diseases, but also, to slow down of weed growth, replacing the highly controversial glyphosate.
“A new story on a white beach”
Before embarking on the creation of Micropep in 2016, Thomas Laurent worked for two years as a business developer at Toulouse Tech Transfer. Son work? Liaise between researchers and industrial partners published by the fruit of their scientific or technological research. “This experience allowed me to fully understand the issues of intellectual property and the interest of deep technology. But also, of keep an eye out for promising projects which came out of public research laboratories”, he admits, always ready to embark on new entrepreneurial adventures.
After discussing with Jean-Philippe Combier and Dominique Lauressergues, the CNRS and University of Toulouse researchers behind the discovery of micro-peptides, Thomas Laurent quit his job as a business developer to devote himself to founding the start-up Micropep. “The idea of writing a new story on a blank page stimulates me a lot,” rejoices the forty-year-old. And this page is already full, since in a few years, he managed to leverage nearly 20 million euros with French and foreign investors. Its objective is to soon launch its inputs and pesticides on the American market (2025), then in Europe, by 2027.
A start-up project in small wind turbines…
On the benches of theESSEC already, a business school in the Paris region, the young student from Lyon is interested in entrepreneurship, human resources and finance. He began his career in strategy consulting for various companies within a firm in the capital. “I made strategic recommendations without really knowing if they were going to be implemented afterwards,” he admits. And he missed seeing his ideas come to fruition.
So, landing in Toulouse ten years ago to follow her company, which had just landed a job as a researcher in agronomy, Thomas Laurent launches alongside his father-in-law to set up a first company manufacturing small wind turbines for individuals and professionals. “He is an ironworker and had managed to create a prototype of three meters in diameter in his garage. So I worked with him to launch a start-up, we entered an incubator (Nubbo) and won the “Emergence” competition of the BPI (former I-Lab)”, recalls the entrepreneur, who put finally all his skills to execution. But due to lack of market demand, he abandoned the project at the end of 2012.
… Then a second in urban market gardening
The following year, Thomas Laurent committed again, but this time alongside Cédric Jules and Alexandre Belin, met through friends. Together, his haunting Macadam garden, a vertical vegetable garden production company enabling the development of urban market gardening. “I have always lived in big cities, in Lyon, in Paris, in Toulouse. I am not the son or grandson of a farmer. But this idea of bringing nature closer to cities really interests me, from a technical and environmental point of view,” explains the forty-year-old. At the end of 2013, he finally left the start-up because of “disputes” in the vision of his future. The results of these first two experiences are mixed for Thomas Laurent, who nevertheless remained convinced that one day he would come across the nugget. He is now convinced: this nugget is Micropep.
An eco-conscious entrepreneur at work and in life
Beyond a strong attraction for the economic world, Thomas Laurent has an ecological sensitivity that guides him in all of his projects. She was trained during her studies in Paris, alongside her classmates who, like him, grew up in the 1990s when there was a certain lack of concern about the environmental crisis. From that time, he remembers the name ofone of the members of his promotion who inspired him a lot: Jean Moreaufounder of the platform against food waste Phoenix.
“I first applied my ecological principles in my work, even before my partner made me realize that I also had to act in my daily life smiles the entrepreneur: “From now on, I pay more and more attention to my consumption, I hardly eat meat anymore, I buy second-hand and I prefer the train to the plane for my business trips”.
According to him, each human being “is only passing through on earth” and must “ mobilizing all of their skills to have a positive impact on the world “. Because he is now the father of two little girls, aged 3 and 5, and observing the economic, ecological, epidemic crises succeed one another, he fears only one thing: “that my children tell me that I have nothing made to try to change that”.