Briac Barthes

Co-Founder of hiLyte

(Forbes 30 Under 30)

5 August 2019 13 Min Read

Briac Barthes' Global Quest to Power the World Sustainably

Meet Briac Barthes, an adventurous social entrepreneur and the co-founder of hiLyte, a company that aims to bring clean and affordable energy to the people that need it the most. Briac and his team developed a consumable-based iron battery that generates enough power to light a bulb and charge a phone. His work landed him a well-deserved spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe 2019: Manufacturing & Industry list.

Moreover, you can see Briac’s spirit and passion for working in sustainable development in his involvement with The Ketchup Project, a project focused on improving the Kenyan tomato market by sending dried tomatoes to the Netherlands instead of throwing them away due to the instability of the demand.

Briac’s excitement about his work and life, in general, can be felt through his stories, from teaching people in India to climbing Kilimanjaro. Join me in hearing what this out-of-the-box entrepreneur had to share!

The Logician

Hi Briac, and welcome to this interview! First off, I would like to thank you for taking the time to join me in this mission of mine! Do you mind introducing yourself? Who is Briac Barthes? How did you choose the career you have today?

Briac Barthes

I am a 26 years old French man, always laughing and looking for big challenges and adventures to live.

I have travelled a lot around the world to help people as I could (helping street kids studying in India, starting garden projects in schools in Honduras, teaching autistic children in Tanzania…) as well as to understand better the way of thinking of people and the beauty of nature (trek in the wild jungle in Brazil, climbed the Kilimanjaro, autonomous life in a tent in winter in North Norway…).

I really love adventure because I believe it is the best way to be connected with nature and to make use of my whole body and mind together. It is when I feel that I don’t control anymore that I push my limits and become better.

During my studies, I was good at maths and therefore studied engineering without knowing really what I wanted to do.

In the middle of my studies, I had six free months and I decided to go volunteer in Tanzania.

The job was very useless but it left me some time to learn Swahili and slowly start a microcredit program with the street boys. When 3 of them told me that they could get out of the street thank to the $20 I had lent them, the feeling of happiness I felt made me know that this would be my job: give the means to people to get out of poverty by working themselves.

I then came back to finish my studies, and after one year of working in Switzerland, I decided it was time for me to prepare for my own adventure. I quit my job and came back to Tanzania to talk to as many people as possible and understand their needs.

I really wanted to create a for-profit company to make sure it would keep growing by itself, and to make sure it would solve a real problem that the poorest people face.

Having a positive impact on the people I work for was very important, and going to Africa was giving me a bigger challenge than just creating a company in Europe, there would also be the whole difference of culture to manage.

The ideas I had were not interesting to them, but they told me they had problems to get light, and that is how I got into hiLyte’s idea.

The Logician

I would also like to take this opportunity and congratulate you on your spot among Forbes 30 under 30! How was that experience for you? Was it something you dreamed about?

Briac Barthes

Reading the names and activities of the Forbes under 30 was something I used to like doing, thinking that the people were amazing. But I was not even imagining myself there someday, that was only for others.

Before starting the company, I met a Forbes under 30 and was already so proud of knowing someone who made it there! It is only when I received their email with their form that I started imagining that I myself could be on the list.

The Logician

Can you tell us more about hiLyte? How did you and the other co-founders come up with the idea? What makes your business different? Why is it important?

Briac Barthes

hiLyte is a company that aims at bringing clean and affordable energy to the poorest. For this, we developed a consumable based iron battery that generates enough power to light a bulb and charge a phone.

It provides clean, safe, affordable, and on-demand electricity in rural Africa and aims at providing an alternative to kerosene lamps that are toxic and expensive, solar lamps that don’t work on cloudy days and which batteries end up polluting a lot, as well as enabling all people to charge their phone (in Sub-Saharan Africa, almost half of the population owns a phone but cannot charge it at home).

Therefore the idea is really to give a product very cheap (we target the people who have less money in the world) but that empowers the customer and does not harm the environment.

It is very important to me to show through this company that is completely possible to help people, help the environment, and at the same time make a profit.

The idea was developed by my cofounder David during his Master thesis at Berkeley Lab. He then continued working on the technology by himself in his free time, and I met him when he was still developing the technology. We didn’t go any further together but just kept in touch.

In April 2017, he followed an entrepreneurship class where he met our other cofounder Jonathan. Together they won a first prize, but still had no experience at all about the customers.

As at the time I was doing my research in Tanzania, so David sent me the first prototype and I could show it and test the reaction of the market. People loved the technology but said they needed it to be more powerful.

He kept on working on product development, and I went to Kenya to start a drying tomato plant for another company.

That gave me the first experience of working in Africa, dealing with non-educated people, and living very close to my customers. In January 2018, I came back from Kenya and we decided to incorporate hiLyte and make the company real.

The Logician

According to you, what is the hardest thing about being young and successful? How do you cope with difficulties? How do you manage stress?

Briac Barthes

I believe you never feel young and successful. As I always have new objectives forward, success is something that I never reach.

But I love being young! I think one of the biggest difficulties is to get credibility, to make sure that people see you as a real business person and not as a young dreamer.

To manage stress, one of the first things I did was to buy a slackline. When I feel there is too much in my head, I go 15 minutes slacklining and forget about everything.

Otherwise, I also make sure that I regularly go out and have fun with friends. The times I stop doing this, I see a decrease in efficiency in my work that is impressive.

The Logician

What are your ‘’5 Life Lessons I Learned From My Experience’’? Why? Please explain.

Briac Barthes

Never wait for more experience or be afraid of what you don’t know. Just try, fail, and learn from your failure. It gets much more into your head and you learn much faster. I really believe that a lot of people have dreams but are afraid of living those dreams because there are some unknowns, or because they would have to quit their small comfort. Living your dream is much more important than having comfort in life. In acting towards it you get much deeper happiness and peace than you could ever seek.
Always set some deadlines. Even if you are not able to follow them, that gives you short-term objectives that make your big objective much more achievable.
Stay close to your friends, live, laugh, go out, do some sport. If you focus too much on your project it becomes unhealthy and you slowly lose efficiency, motivation. On the contrary, if you know that you have to finish your target so that in the evening you can go climb this mountain, you get a double target: one because you want to succeed, and one because you want to succeed soon enough to close your laptop and go.
Always take feedback and implement it. In the beginning, we participated in a lot of startup competitions, and we were always losing. But every time we were rejected we asked for feedback and changed something in our business plan, in our presentation or in our strategy. That helped us a lot, and we are still taking the feedback of every person who is willing to help us. In parallel, as feedback is so precious, it is also of great value to provide feedback to people. It forces you to think of what you like or not in what they do, and this structures your mind. You can then see more clearly what is good or not in your own venture.
Get to know yourself and train your willpower. When you get into a new adventure, you always face many more barriers than what you expect. You need to know the deep reasons why you started the project to make sure that you will continue no matter the challenges. In the beginning, I thought my objective was to solve the electricity problem in Africa. But what really moves me forward is the challenge. Bringing energy to poor people in Africa is not just a problem I want to provide a solution to, it is the challenge I gave myself. So no matter what happens in front of me, it might change my short-term objectives but I know that my long-term objective is to enable all people to get light and charge their phones, that is what motivates me. When you know what drives you, what is your long-term objective, you are able to face every challenge that comes in your way.

The Logician

What do you think all young people should know before they decide to start their own business? Is there a specific checklist everyone should follow before making a major step into the business world?

Briac Barthes

I think the main and only thing that young people should know before starting their business is what does drive them.

Once they know this, they will learn all the rest on their way.

However, I would still advise not to start your company if you don’t know the market. When you want to solve a problem, you need to know if people want this problem to be solved and if your solution is interesting to them.

Talk to as many people as possible before the beginning, and during the product development to make sure you arrive with a product that your customers want.

While developing our device, we made 5 iterations from the lab in Switzerland to the rural villages in Tanzania and Kenya, to make sure our solution was something people wanted.

The Logician

What are the top three skills everyone wanting to be successful should have, regardless of the industry?

Briac Barthes

Smile, laugh, be happy. When you are happy, the people around you become happy also and the work atmosphere does not feel like work anymore. People like the atmosphere and therefore work harder without noticing. A good atmosphere also means that teams talk more between each other, there is a better transfer of knowledge between departments. Finally, a customer will be more ready to spend money on your product if he has first laughed with you. So just try being happy no matter the context, and make people around you feel happy too.
Another very important skill that I see is to be true. It might not be always easy because you want to say that your product or your company is the best in every aspect, but accepting that you have some weaknesses and showing that you are tackling them is something that I believe is very important. It enables to start a strong relationship, not based on a lie that you will have to hide for a long time. If the other finds out by himself that you lied, it can easily end a relationship whereas if you explain that the solution you were using doesn’t work, your partner might not be happy but will understand and maybe even give you ideas to tackle your problem in a different way.
Finally, be yourself. If you really love the technical part of your product, and that it is the main reason why you started your venture, don’t try to spend time on raising funds because you will hate it and do it bad. Do what you like because that is what you will do best. I am trained as an engineer, but in hiLyte, my job is mainly in Business development. My background enables me to understand what I am talking about, but what I like doing is talking to people and get people to collaborate with me.

I am much better at what I like doing than at what I was trained for.

The Logician

Who is Briac Barthes outside the office? What brings you joy in life? Can you describe what happiness means to you?

Briac Barthes

There is no Briac in the office or out of the office, I am only one person and wherever you find me I’ll be the same. For example, I love walking barefoot. If there is no meeting expected I will be barefoot the whole day in the office!

Happiness is the reason why I live. Everything I do is in pursuit of happiness, and I think that if at every moment of my life I focus on being happy now, then I will be happy my whole life.

My work makes me happy, but there are things that are still missing. I need a lot of freedom to feel happy. This is something I can only find in places where there is nothing man-made.

Therefore I spend a lot of times in the Alpes mountains, mainly free-touring, to feel the beauty of nature and its power.

However contrary to many mountain people, I also need to be surrounded by people I love. When I get this feeling of freedom, I need to be able to share it with someone, which is why I almost never go on my own.

And as said previously, it is important to me to push my limits forward. I need to feel that I am almost burnt to use both my body and spirit together and get a new strategy to achieve my objective.

Finally, I would say that the impact I have on people is something that is very important to me. It will be difficult for me to say that I like just being with people, but if I see that our discussions make this person grow, or help him/her make a decision, or just makes the person feel happier….That will make me happy.

The Logician

Let’s say it is the year 2025. What have you achieved by now? Where is your business?

Briac Barthes

In 2025, I strongly believe that 10% of the people who are currently burning kerosene will have switched to a better solution such as hiLyte.

We already have a team in Tanzania working on the production of the devices, and in 2025 this team will not only have grown a lot but they will also work fully by themselves.

One of our goals is to help the development of the economy of developing countries. I don’t see that as just hiring people. I think my role is to train people in those countries so that they get their independence.

I have been a boy-scout for a long time and loved the education strategy that they use. Everyone has a responsibility, and the boss can help each of these people to grow their skills on this responsibility.

As the times passes, the responsibility grows until the small ones get to be the chief themselves. That is exactly how I want my company to grow. So that after some years the Tanzanian people will be the ones managing the company in Tanzania, and I will be focusing on the worldwide strategy.

We also have a lot of ideas to exploit our technology and create new products both for the developed, and the developing world.

There is currently a lot of noise around renewable energy, but there is still no way to store this energy in a renewable way. Using the iron battery I am sure we can revolutionize the storing of energy but that might take some time of research first.

The Logician

Finally, what is the best life advice you have ever received? Why is it important?

Briac Barthes

Don’t fear and try.

As the first brother of my family, I was feeling that I was not allowed to fear. So when my brother and sister were scared, I had to show them that there was nothing to be scared of even if I was freaking out in silence.

That helped me a lot winning over my fears. And when my brother started extreme sports, I was still the big brother so I still had to show that I was not scared either.

I can’t tell you how many times I broke my legs and arms, but these challenges that pushed me and my brother to go bigger every day enabled me to overpass a lot of fears and accomplish things I would never have thought I could even try.

And that is something that I continue doing every day, I give myself a new challenge that makes me push my limits and no matter if I fail or manage, it makes me stronger and readier for the next challenge.

The Logician

Thank you, Briac, for sharing the importance of being passionate about your work! Your happiness, enthusiasm, and willingness to help the less fortunate shines through the stories you shared today. To hear that, according to you, the skills of a successful person are to smile, laugh, be authentic, be happy, and “be yourself” is genuinely refreshing. Especially in today’s world, when everything is about profits and money. I wish you all the best, and I believe your goal for a more sustainable future will continue to reach more and more people. You inspire me and an actual role model of what a young entrepreneur should promote.

The Logician

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Briac Barthes' Global Quest to Power the World Sustainably

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