Mougins British International School is known for its academic prestige and its incredibly intelligent students. All of the students from Mougins School end up exactly where they are meant to be, this is particularly evident in Gaelic's case.

Gaelic was a student at Mougins School from Year 7 to the end of high school. During his A-Level studies (the final two years of the British secondary school system), he studied Further Mathematics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics. He has now gone on to take part in the creation of a start up company that has managed to raise a whopping $2.7 million in funding. The company in question is called eNOugh led by A*Ventures, with participation from Comma Capital, Karman Ventures, Intuition VC and more. The 3 co-founders Ina, Alex and Gaelic have created a discreet camera with AI technology designed to notice signs of attack and alert authorities. It works by using the AI to recognise signs of a threat which then alerts professional monitoring centres who have trained operators receive the feed and assess the situation in real time to then designate the best course of action. This incredible and innovative product is to be worn on clothing when walking alone at night or in an area where one might feel unsafe. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing Gaelic on his experience at Mougins School and the process in the creation of his startup and the approaches which helped him to gather such success in funding. 

Gaelic spoke fondly of his days at Mougins and commented that “The family culture we had back in the days definitely helped me grow as a person, and learn soft skills I still use today.”. He also highly regarded his teachers as well as his peers in pushing him to consistently show up and put in the effort to better himself. Gaelic describes his role as CTO as “everything technical and operational: hardware engineering, product design, firmware, the mobile app UX/UI, manufacturing, supply chain, finance, legal and compliance.”. Which, in shorter terms, means that on top of the responsibilities behind founding a startup such as marketing and networking, Gaelis also uses his technical skills to make sure the product works as intended and runs as smoothly as possible. 

Despite Mougins School clearly having a big impact on Gaelic, much credit should be given to him and his co-founders for having the bravery and initiative to begin an endeavour such as this. Their product, the  eNOugh badge, was originally inspired by a dangerous encounter that one of the co-founder Ina had some years ago. Gaelic chose to pursue this business alongside her due to his own personal concern with the safety of not only women, but anyone and every one. He reflects on his own personal experiences growing up in Uruguay and France,  knowing the feelings of fear and insecurity when walking alone at night in an unfamiliar area.  But above all Gaelic reiterates that “The problem speaks for itself. We should all have the luxury of walking without fear.”

Gaelic credits the incredible amount raised for his start up, not solely from his team's amazing networking strategy, but from the importance of the issue itself being recognised by more and more people. He relays how “everyone knows someone” which is disheartening, yet the emotional nature of the cause is what drives people to be more likely provoked into action. However, much more effective than the issue's emotive nature is the actions seen in the marketing and strategising from the founders. Gaelic and his co-founder turned up to events with patents of their product and relied heavily on Ina, the original founders, gripping storytelling. As he puts it, the success of the product “came down to: big problem, real product, capable team.”
 

Gisele E.
Sixth Form Student