Christian Gillot, CEO & Founder of startup Tetrao, shares his views on opportunities for collaboration between startups and established companies. Par Sebastien Lambotte pour l’édition du magazine ITnation de Juillet 2016

Why startups and established companies should collaborate ?

Naturally a startup is more agile and exploratory than an established company: its novelty entails that habits have not formed yet. It has often a logical affinity to the research world. On the other hand, it is in the DNA of an established company to implement and perform processes with great efficiency.

Integrating these fundamental differences, collaborations can be formed and help accelerate the digital transformation of established companies.

 What would be the ideal attitude of a CIO regarding a startup like yours?

The best enabling factor is a great CIO who is a curious, open-minded person who can start by listening and assess the quality of the innovations of the startup and its team without any prejudgment or bias. It is essential since this process will change his approach and only after that it is relevant to talk about the specific challenges of his company.

Our startup Tetrao is specialized in Internet Intelligent Process Automation. Our innovation is to simulate the behavior of a human being using an Internet browser with AI and Computer Vision techniques. It enables the reliable automation of any process that involves a browser and a human operator. For us, it is very important to have a quality contact person with whom we can review the different processes of the established company in order to create value by optimizing the right ones. Typically automation brings efficiency and free human time to focus on more creative and high-value activities.

What are the key factors for a good relationship between a startup and a large enterprise, in particular a chief information officer (CIO)?

More generally, any startup is totally focused on bringing on the market an innovative solution while a company is more focused on efficiency and optimization. So to ensure the success of the development of a project with a startup, a CIO should first let the startup work its own way, even it feels risky, and once the business issues have been resolved, assert more control during the second phase of industrialization.