The Foundry School

The Foundry School is a private advanced training, research and development center based in Pau, France and established to develop retraining programs, promote technology research and launch new ventures. It was created in 2000 by Chris Cantell and started in France with his partner Frédéric Artru after a European site selection for the appropriate site. Pau was chosen based on the Pau Broadband Country initiative, a broadband fiber optic development to cover the whole city. The Foundry School became the training center for Pau Broadband Country initiatives.

The Foundry School is the second such initiative. Chris Cantell had previously launched another center in Montreal, Quebec in 1999, which partner Frédéric Artru graduated from.

Today, The Foundry School has spun off its methodology to additional locations in Eastern Europe to deploy SigEx Ventures, Inc., developments.

The Foundry’s Methodology

The Foundry School bases its program on a set of methodologies structured by The Foundry School, Inc. which include management, business development and engineering practices well established in the industry. Such methodologies include:

• Fifth discipline
• Six Sigma
• Theory of Business Harvard Business Review article from Peter Drucker on The Theory of Business

• Art of Negotiation
• Advanced Financial Analysis
• Extreme Programming

The program includes academic lectures, reading and most importantly project development based on the Extreme Management methodology (inspired by Extreme Programming). The program is extremely intense and includes three major phases of validation:

• Validation by peers. This phase involves fundamental reading and learning. Projects get reviewed in pieces (business plans, strategic communications plan, presentations, executive summary) by peers.
• Market validation. Projects are then developed under a win by design approach with strategic clients.
• Investor validation. The project is then presented to supporting investors, represented by SigEx Ventures, Inc., for validation and seed financing.

Founder Christopher M. Cantell sums up The Foundry School: "Foundry, which is known to be an uncommonly collaborative and supportive, practice leadership school is a seriously competitive environment and you have to be ready for anything. Thus, you should eliminate any false notions in your head of a gentle work-training, graduate engineering school, or M.B.A. type experience—which is as it should be, for in real practice world, Darwinism rules. You should understand and appreciate the unique opportunity that you have at The Foundry to be challenged on many fronts (and on many practice fields), including working with people from various backgrounds and cultures."

µ-Foundry

After the launch announcement of The Foundry School in Pau, an additional six µ-Foundries (pronounce micro Foundries) were announced . These µ-Foundries were tied to academic and research partnerships in each area. The six locations are Cambridge, England; Munich, Germany; Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland; Paris and Sophia-Antipolis, France.

SigEx Ventures, Inc.

In order to provide seed financing for The Foundry School projects, the founder and Frédéric Artru launched in 2001 SigEx Ventures, Inc. The privately held investment fund provides operational financing as well as professional services to support the projects in their development.

SigEx SuperPBX, SAS

SigEx SuperPBX was the first project to successfully launch from The Foundry School. It was incorporated as a French SAS (Simplified Stock Corporation) in June 2002. SigEx SuperPBX, branded as SigEx Telecom, is a global carrier for entertainment and telecom broadcasting. The company started selling its stock on the private equity market to high wealth individuals and has since closed 22 rounds of financing at growing stock value.

In 2002, then in 2003, SigEx SuperPBX received innovation technology certification for its work on Enhanced Communications.

SigEx Ventures Euro Fund, SAS

In 2004, the founder and Frédéric Artru launched SigEx Ventures Euro Fund, SAS, a French based private investment fund to provide financing support to matured projects of The Foundry School. The fund has also developed its own activity in company restructuring and financing. Since 2007, SigEx Ventures Euro Fund has been offering secured wealth tax fiscal placements.

Other Projects

Other projects launched under The Foundry School and seed financed by SigEx Ventures, Inc., but not yet made public include:

• SigEx SIM
• SigEx Rights Management
• SigEx ToGo
• SigEx NanoData

References

fr:The Foundry School