Meet Securaxis co-founder Gaetan Vannay and learn more about the power of smart hearing 

27.04.2021 07:25, Isabelle Mitchell

Gaetan Vannay co-founded Securaxis, a Venture Leader Mobile that develops a first-of-its-kind smart acoustic sensing solution to detect, recognize, localize, and report sound in any environment. Applications for Securaxis’s technology are traffic monitoring, noise measurement, and intelligent street lighting that help increase safety, reduce CO2 emissions, and optimize costs. Learn more about Gaetan’s expectations for the Venture Leaders Mobile experience and find out how his previous career as a war and hostile environment reporter influenced Securaxis’s sound analytics solutions.

The Venture Leaders Mobile 2021 will accelerate their expansion into the global market and strengthen their business network by attending the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona, Spain, to meet with top-notch investors and industry leaders. To introduce you to the members of the Swiss National Startup Team, we asked each entrepreneur to complete a short profile and choose six questions from a questionnaire about their personal and professional life.

Name: Gaetan Vannay
Location: between Lausanne, Geneva, and Tunis
Nationality: Swiss
Graduated from: University of Neuchâtel, BA in Journalism (1995); certificates from various universities in Russian language (2001), humanitarian law (2008), and conflict resolution and peacebuilding (2019)
Job title: co-founder and chief of staff of Securaxis
Number of employees: 6 (as of 04/2021)
Money raised: CHF 1.8 million (as of 04/2021)
First touchpoint with Venturelab: In 2021, during our Venture Leaders Mobile application

“Securaxis turns sound into actionable insights for the monitoring and exploitation of urban noise, combining acoustic with advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI- RNN) to add the missing layer to smart monitoring solutions: the hearing, sounds analytics.”     

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
The idea came up during a Hackathon organized with CERN. As our first product was more in the field of safety and security, and because of our previous professional experience working in a hostile environment, the idea made sense to us. On a front line, you often hear a threat before you see it. Sound is information to exploit. We started first to train our solution for gunshots and explosion detection but moved quickly to work on road traffic noise monitoring and exploitation, as traction was there. Around 80% of noise pollution in a city originates from road traffic.

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?
As we start developing business in Spain, we have no doubt that Venture Leaders Barcelona will boost connections to local partners and investors and prepare us to best integrate into the ecosystem. 

What is the one talent you wish you had?
The ability to stand in front of an audience and assert whatever is especially untrue with perfect aplomb. Kidding. Truly speaking, I do not want that talent, but I am always baffled when I see somebody asserting the opposite of what they said a day or a week earlier without a hint of hesitation.

What are you most proud of?
As a war and hostile environment reporter (my previous life), I am proud to have had the chance and privilege to share time with people fighting for their freedom or their rights and to be able to report about them.

What advice would you give your teenage self?
Don’t listen to my advice; go on your way. 

Where and when are you most productive?
Late at night or very early morning: no calls, no emails, no notifications, and no pop-ups.

What do you do when you are creatively stuck?
Leave my desk and computer, do something I need or want to do that is not related to work.

How and where do you clear your mind?
By chopping wood at a location I do not want to reveal. Unfortunately, I currently do not have the opportunity to do it often enough.



For more information and updates on Securaxis and the Venture Leaders Mobile, follow the Venture Leaders Mobile 2021 team with #VleadersMobile on social media or subscribe to our newsletter. 
 
This year's Venture Leaders Mobile program is supported by Huawei, Swisscom, and VISCHER.