Alain Coulombe

Disruptive entrepreneur to the core

Alain Coulombe, CEO of the Canadian company 3DSemantix and leader of the recently, and successfully, completed ITEA project SAMUEL, was so convinced that the entrepreneurial path was the route he would take, that after one year of study at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal, he switched from civil to industrial engineering. “Industrial engineering turned out to be a perfect fit for me, combining my wish to be an entrepreneur and my love of technical stuff.” After graduating as an industrial engineer, he started his career at IBM in a semiconductor plant. In less than three years, he became a manager and thought he would spend only a few years there because he wanted to start a company. “During my studies, I had the opportunity to work in SMEs and the adrenaline, the thrill, the power, the decisions you make … all that excited me.”

An entrepreneurial test

But Alain stayed at IBM for ten years, gaining experience after experience. “I didn't stay more than a year in one job. Or if I did, I had to deliver on different challenges, and this was very exciting. One of my biggest challenges was a technology transfer that was critical for the plant. With more challenge comes more responsibility. You may get carte blanche to deliver but limited time to do it. Between unplugging the testers to implementing production, 24/5 but that was not enough. It had to be 24/7, but IBM had never operated on Saturdays and Sundays in Canada so we made weekend work attractive, offering a full salary for two 12-hour shifts per weekend. It worked and was a big success because the rest of the week was free – working for 24 hours but being paid for 40.” This and other challenges were like a test of being an entrepreneur. “If you are to be an entrepreneur, you will have to do things you've never done in your life. You're going to have to think outside of the box. And this opportunity inside IBM was quite fantastic for me. When I decided to leave, I sold my house and went to do an International MBA in Europe with the aim of starting my own business afterwards.”

Fast Moiré Interferometry

In 1994 Alain did just that, entering the machine vision industry with SolVision. He ‘poached’ the best engineer he had worked with at IBM. “For the first four or five years we did one-off projects and grew a team of about 15 people. In this emerging technology we targeted the semiconductor industry, having seen where it was going in terms of miniaturisation and took a big bet that the laser triangulation method of measuring connectors would eventually start to lack accuracy and capabilities. What could be the solution? Phaseshift Interferometry. It's a very accurate technology, where you get height measurements for every pixel of your camera. We could be ten times faster and eight times more accurate. I told my team that if we could do this, then we would have a winner. With the help of some very smart guys in our research team, we came up with a solution, got 25 patents for this technology and within three years, we became market leader with 55% market share worldwide. We were selling to Intel, AMD, Samsung, NEC in Japan, you name it, the big guys. Before you knew it, we grew the team to 175 people and made an acquisition in Singapore as well as created a subsidiary in Japan to be close to the semiconductor industry in Asia.”