Bullard Buys Darix for Tech That Helps Firefighters See Through Smoke
05.04.2019
Bullard, a fifth-generation family-owned company with units in the U.S., Germany and Singapore, will transform Switzerland-based Darix into the Bullard Technology Center, to develop leading technology to enhance worker safety. We caught up with co-founder Martijn Bosch to learn more.
 Darix co-founders Adrien Birbaumer and Martijn Bosch
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What is Darix' mission and core innovation?
Darix’ mission is to improve the situational awareness of professionals in critical environments. More specifically, we have focused the last years on providing firefighters with a clear vision in environments with dense smoke. We do so by providing hands-free thermal vision with a see-through display combined with an infrared camera – effectively allowing the firefighter to see through smoke.
How will joining Bullard help your achieve your vision?
We believe that our technology has the potential to save lives and therefore felt obliged to look for the best way of getting it to fire services. Bullard has a strong brand and long history in the safety and emergency responder industry. With their experience, manufacturing facilities and distribution network, we have much better chances of getting our product widely adopted on the market.
Your entrepreneurial journey began at EPFL with Startup Acceleration Workshops and Startup Champions in 2015. How did those early Venturelab programs help?
These programs really helped in shaping our story and prioritizing our activities early on. Our idea, like most I guess, was in essence ‘technical’. The big help of those courses is transforming such technical innovations into business cases that you can present to funds, investors and clients.
Darix won the highest level of support and training from Venture Kick through 2016 and 2017. How did Venture Kick lay the foundation for your growth and yesterday's achievement?
I loved the Kickers Camps! They are notoriously direct and force you to rebuild your story again from scratch. This hurts a bit while doing it, but at the end of the day you leave with a fresh and clear set of priorities, which is rewarding and very useful.
Venture Kick's financial support was essential for us. We needed time to get to a mature enough state for either investment or -- as it turns out now -- an acquisition, and the Venture Kick investment helped a lot there. Not just the amount, but also the efficiency around the process are great.