Interview with our CEO Jordi Ferré

March 2, 2021

Today we interview our CEO Jordi Ferré who talks about his personal journey with innovation and technology and shares the story behind how Kamleon was founded, its vision and uniqueness, and how it has evolved since its foundation.

1- Tell us about your professional journey. How did you get into innovation, technology and the entrepreneurial world ?

Since the very beginning, it was clear that I would dedicate myself to my passion: sports and physiology. My journey with innovation and technology started when I was practicing triathlon at the elite level and I had the opportunity to get a four-year scholarship at the Olympic High Performance Center. As you know, Triathlon is a physically demanding sport that requires dedication and perseverance, so during my strenuous training time at the Olympic Performance Center, I became extremely curious about how to track my body, and I realized that performance tracking for athletes was still unexplored and underdeveloped to be implemented on a daily basis. When I decided to end my career in sports, I focused all my energy on my studies and moved to the UK to study at the Research Institute of Sports and Exercise Sciences (RISES) at Liverpool John Moores University where I specialized in Exercise Physiology.
After that, I had the privilege of working at the US Olympic Committee where I participated in the creation of the innovation and technology department based in Silicon Valley, just before the JJOO Rio Olympic Games where Team USA achieved a historical record high of 121 medals. During this time, I was appointed as Head of Wearables and Embedded Tech platform at Department of Analytical & Organic Chemistry at the University Rovira and Virgili, where we were developing cutting edge embedded technologies for physiological monitoring applied to sports and wellbeing. My work with the University led me to a scholarship in Boston, where I was immersed in the innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship ecosystem and motivated me to go further in this field.
After my different stays in the US and other work experiences and advisory roles that I have in this field that allowed me to meet with very inspirational people who also mentored and are still mentoring me, I decided to start my entrepreneurial journey and pioneer different highly innovative entrepreneurial initiatives around my ‘passion topics’. During the thought process, I envisioned the societal changes, and I realized the potential of technology not as an end but as an enabler, given the increasing possibilities allowed by so many technological revolutions. Today technology is unraveling possibilities and opportunities that were unimaginable before, and I think through innovation and entrepreneurship we can bring these new solutions to society.

2- What inspired you to start the company? What is the story behind ?

Most of the solutions today track steps, calories, heart rate or sleep. Moreover, accessing advanced physiological information nowadays is difficult: it requires trained personnel, use of consumables, or even invasive procedures. At Kamelon, we wanted to create the next generation of physiological monitoring platforms that go beyond and bring the biochemistry of our body into our daily life. We wanted to provide meaningful solutions based on a strong science foundation, user-centered solutions that would bring together science, technology and design. By placing the user at the center, we are creating products and services that provide unparalleled user interfaces and user experiences.
Kamleon is inspired by the chameleon in the sense that it is present everywhere but is not intrusive or invasive. We want our products to be widely used without being pervasive and being almost invisible to the user. Our approach is to turn mass-market products into seamless monitoring platforms that aim to improve healthy habits by reducing the adoption of use and increasing the usage adherence.

3- What is the vision and uniqueness of Kamleon ?

Our collective vision is to democratize health monitoring and empower people to lead healthier lives through the help of embedded platforms that are present in our daily lives. This vision is mainly based on two unique differentiators:

Providing unique interfaces that turn highly adopted mass-market products, such as urinals and toilets, into the next generation monitoring platforms.
Providing unparalleled user experiences through a digital multi-platform powered by personalized and engaging data-driven insights.

Our short term goal is to start implementing and deploying the solutions in specific market verticals. In the mid term, we aim to expand the reach to a global scale, as well as to grow into adjacent market verticals before increasing our solution portfolio. Given the enormous potential that we have to collect and integrate unique sources of data on a daily basis, as well as the capability to analyze and extract multiple data insights, our long term plan is to transition from a product to a data driven company.

4- How has Kamleon evolved since its foundation, and what are the key aspects that the company has addressed to be competitive in this new decade ?

Kamleon has significantly evolved since its foundation as a spin-off from the University Rovira & Virgili (URV), and we have simultaneously addressed different key aspects to mature our developments and reach the market. Even though it is difficult to summarize all the aspects, a good reflection is the Kamleon’s 8 P which corresponds to: People, Passion, Purpose, Persistence, Proactivity, Prioritize, Positivity and Product. In this sense, I would summarize it in 4 main areas:

Focus: As the company is maturing, we are more and more able to clearly identify our milestones and distinguish between what to do and what not to do. As the core technology that we are developing can grow into new market expansions and verticals, it is easy to lose focus. Nonetheless, I am glad to say that our team has been able to stay focused despite the unexpected challenges that we face in this ever evolving landscape.
Product/market/business fit: Another key aspect that we have significantly matured is the definition of the product and services in order to obtain a minimum viable product (MVP) with the aim to test, validate and learn very rapidly to refine our value proposition. Furthermore, we aligned the product to a specific market-vertical that we consider our early-adopter target and addressed a sustainable business model.
Team: Founding a company that combines hardware and software requires different capabilities, and as the company develops and evolves, profiles must evolve accordingly and the role of the founders too. Since the nature of the industry we are in is fast paced and quick to change, we tend to hire team members with high adaptability and a thirst for self-learning and evolving. Action-driven people who are quick on their feet is the kind of attitude that tends to be productive and successful at Kamleon. Furthermore, since the beginning we moved our headquarters to Barcelona in order to attract more and diverse talent.
Strategy: To outperform in a highly competitive and globalized market, for us it is key to identify our uniqueness and strengths in order to implement, deploy and scale rapidly while maintaining the core capabilities inside the company. In this sense we have matured and we are continuously defining our strategy while we closely monitor the market landscape to validate our approach and identify new opportunities that may arise.