The 100th Issue: Machines

The positive power of ambition has helped Devialet bring the world of sound to a whole new level.

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BETTER THAN BEST

HANNAH CHOO

If you remember reading Simon Sinek’s book, The Infinite Game, you would have remembered this: “In infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game. There is no such thing as winning business or winning life, for example, there is only ahead and behind.”

Franck Lebouchard embraces this mindset with all his heart. As the CEO of an ambitious audio company, he knows better than not to do so. This ambitious audio company is Devialet, a name that references Guillaume Vialet, an engineer and intellectual who contributed to the French Encyclopedia. Based in Paris, Devialet got its footing in 2004, when engineer and co-founder Pierre-Emmanuel Calmel patented the world’s first hybrid amplification technology. It was later established in 2007 with entrepreneur Quentin Sannié and designer Emmanuel Nardin, and has been making music magic ever since. In 2010, it introduced its first product, an amplifier called D-Premier, the ancestor of the Expert Pro line, and the rest is history.

“There were 10 people in the company (at the time),” says Lebouchard. “By early 2015, we had launched the first edition of the Phantom I and there were (only) 100 people in total, including the engineers.” Granted, the quality of output is impressive for a company that modest in stature. But all it takes is courage and great ambition, as Lebouchard would put it.