They met during their studies at the university. Louis Ambroise, a university karate champion, has been studying at the University of Bordeaux since his first year of studies. He met his partner Quentin Gouty during their Bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Now both pursuing their PhDs—Louis in Bordeaux and Quentin in Pau— their fruitful collaboration continues. Five questions for the inventors:
You founded the company nHomade, the "Vinted" website dedicated to chemical products. How did you get to this point?
Louis Ambroise: Our idea started to take shape during our internships in the laboratories. We noticed that many chemical products were wasted, burnt or buried after experiments. It is complex to dispose of chemical products as they are often flammable and hazardous to health. Moreover, they are expensive. We were determined to create a more virtuous cycle.
Quentin Gouty: We participated in the seminar of the University of Bordeaux incubator, UBee Lab, to learn about entrepreneurship. By the end of the week, we already had a first draft of our business model! We then moved to the next step and applied to the “Statut national d’étudiant entrepreneur” (national status for students-entrepreneurs). Since September 2023, we have been incubated.
The great added value of the UBee Lab is its integration into the Bordeaux economic system. Amandine Boutang, who is in charge of support and animation at the UBee Lab, challenges us in our approach. Benefitting from personalized support is a significant time saver.
What is nHomade?
Louis Ambroise: Aimed at researchers, lecturers and researchers, post-doctoral researchers and PhD students, nHomade is an online platform for exchanging chemical products. We want to pool the inventories of all laboratories so that each group within the same laboratory or each institution can communicate about selling or searching chemical products whenever they wish.
Quentin Gouty: Regarding chemical products, we have many prerogatives and requirements to meet. Hosted on a French server, our website combines inventory management, product hazard qualification and the function of selling/buying chemical products.
We chose the name nHomade, which combines “Home made” and “nomad” meaning traveling from laboratory to laboratory.
What are your future plans for nHomade?
Quentin Gouty: In the future, we would like to recruit web developers and R&D developers in order to continuously develop our innovative solution. For now, we cannot afford it but a fund-raising could be a way to achieve this.
Louis Ambroise: We plan to organize conferences to raise awareness among researchers about exchanging chemical products and to convince more senior researchers to adopt these new habits. Another challenge—in the more distant future—is to export our solution to Europe in compliance with the European standards.
It’s quite rare to meet PhD students embarking on an entrepreneurial project alongside their PhD. How do you manage both?
Quentin Gouty: With a lot of organization! Especially since I have two young children who take up my time. It’s lively at home!
Louis Ambroise: We work from home. Time is limited and we divide the tasks. However, we travel together when we visit the laboratories, for example. This routine works well.
What do you appreciate about this entrepreneurial adventure?
Quentin Gouty: The impact! Environmental awareness is gradually increasing and we want to reinforce this awareness in laboratories. The aim is to develop our website n-homade.com so that it is operational by the end of our PhD.
Louis Ambroise: The excitement of bringing the project to life. It's very gratifying. We have nothing to be ashamed of when compared with specific American websites.