Here is the "Charbon" podcast about Sébastien Arnould and SupAirVision, powered by "J'ai un pote dans la com". It was published on 1 March 2024.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

As the podcast is in French, here is a transcribed extract:

Valentin Richardot: First of all, can you tell me who you are, what you do for a living and where you're from?

Sébastien Arnould: [...] So Sébastien, the founding director of SupAirVision. I'm from the Marne, in the Champagne-Ardenne Grand-Est region. And I set up SupAirVision in 2017 in Troyes, to invent drones that can inspect wind turbine blades.

Valentin Richardot: So this is a very technical subject with a particularly high demand today, which I think is going to grow. Are you based there, do you go back and forth a lot, or is everything done there?

Sébastien Arnould: Yeah, I go back and forth quite a bit. In fact, if we can go back a bit in history [...] I was a freelance photojournalist. Photography led me to try my hand at aerial photography. Then the drone came along in 2010-2012, I put a camera under a drone and I always say that in three weeks, I told myself that I wasn't just going to take landscape photos with this extraordinary machine. On the other hand, it's a highly technical field, so I looked for help to develop the project. I found the help in Troyes, at the Technopole de l'Aube, just 100km from my home. That's where I set up the company, and it's still based at the Technopole de l'Aube in Troyes. We've just moved and got bigger offices. We're now close to 25 people strong, so we've developed the project with the technology, the whole commercial approach and a lot of help and support to structure the company's development. I didn't have all the skills at the outset, but it's impossible to have everything when you're starting out.