Meet the nextGEN
Benoît Serive - BlueCare discovery
What is your personal story of how you ended up in the life sciences?
I’ve always wanted to work in science. My parents gave me a small microscope for Christmas when I was a child. We lived close to the sea and I spent hours exploring marine organisms. I kept different aquatic species in an aquarium and collected specimens.
I even made plans to build a big laboratory. Unfortunately, those plans were probably thrown out after I moved out of my parents’ house. But I did build a little hut in our garden, which was my childhood lab for years.
I quickly understood that I am happiest when I’m surrounded by the sea. I wasn’t interested in football or basketball, instead, I learned how to windsurf, surf, and scuba dive. I don’t dive as much anymore, but I do surf regularly.
After finishing college, I went to a technical school to study marine organisms. This meant that, from the start, I spent half my time in labs and companies and the other half at school. It was a great experience and I met some really inspiring people.
One person who influenced me greatly was Jean-Paul Braud, founder and CEO of Innovalg. I met him in 1998 and he dared to take on a young trainee like me. I was super impressed by his deep knowledge of science. It was the first time I’d met someone with a doctorate in something other than medicine. He’s followed my journey over the years and we’re still in touch sometimes.
I also met a great professor of marine pharmacognosy, called Jean-Michel Kornprobst, who took me on a diving mission to collect marine samples. I was very excited to join him. I loved this person for his kindness and his immense knowledge of how to use marine organisms for the development of medicines.
While I’ve met some fantastic people during my career, who have greatly inspired me to work in the field of marine pharmacognosy, these two great scientists and humans particularly did.
Did you always want to become an entrepreneur or would you have been happy to stay in the lab?
It’s hard for me to talk about this topic. I had some very bad experiences in academia and met some unkind, uncaring people. That’s why I decided to leave academia and become an entrepreneur.
Another reason for me to move into business was that I didn’t want to only work on papers. Life is short and I wanted to do something concrete, something impactful. Throughout my career, people kept telling me that I’m not only a scientist but that I also have an entrepreneurial spirit, because I like to push things until they make a difference.
After leaving academia, I was unemployed for some time. I decided to participate in the TechStars Startup Weekend organized by La Cantine Numérique in Nantes. There, I built a small team made up of people who weren’t scientists, which was a good exercise and experience for me. At the end of the weekend, we pitched our project – which was a method to regenerate bones using algae and shell molecules – and we won the prize. That’s when I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I then joined the Startup Studio of Imagination Machine, which is an accelerator and investor for startups with a social or environmental impact. From the start, the team and I were on the same page because I also wanted to help people and the earth. Together, we co-founded BlueCare Discovery in 2022.
Benoît’s full profile is available for our members inside the community.