Meet the Investor Readiness Program Batch 2020

Written by Jenny Konings on November 17, 2020. Posted in News, Online, YES!Funded.

Meet the startups of our Investor Readiness Program

Six startups are currently enrolled in our Investor Readiness Program. In 10-weeks they get all the tools to be attractive from an investor’s perspective and to obtain the necessary funds to further accelerate! After previous successes, and numerous requests, YES!Funded also started to welcome startups outside our ecosystem to the program! Scroll down, get to know them a bit better, and find out how they experienced the program so far.

PATS Indoor Drone Solutions

PATS Indoor Drone Solutions is automating insect control for horticulture with their Bat-like Drones.

“Investor readiness is much more than a fancy slide deck. You have to make the switch from selling your company to building the case for investors such that they see the long-term potential and have no other want than to be part of this journey together with the startup team.

The program gives great insights into all aspects that are relevant to building this case, with great and detailed support and guidance by the YES!Funded team.”

Cuurios

Asset-intensive industries struggle to inspect, maintain, and repair their assets in a coordinated and timely way. Their business-as-usual collaboration solutions (e.g. E-mail, Microsoft Excel, Power BI) are reactive, highly dependent on human input, or lack data context. This leads to avoidable production losses, asset downtime, or quality issues.

The software product of Cuurios is a collaborative environment to organize, track, and manage asset related actions, turbo charged by data.

“The first three weeks of the YES!Delft Investor Readiness Program were inspiring and intense and it gave us valuable insights on the investors perspective, our elevator pitch, and much more… Cuurios is now 2 years successful in business and we believe this program will help us prepare and present an appealing investment opportunity!”

Interested to know more about this startup’s experience in the program? Read all about it in the extensive blogpost they wrote.

Keep on reading

Lynk

Lynk is embedding quality control intuitively into your projects’ digital workflow.

“Even amidst Corona, Carola, Jan Geert, and Bianca have managed to make the Investor Readiness Program feel personal and inclusive. The masterclasses have been on-point and have nudged us to look beyond technology and product metrics. We are looking forward to making our business case full-circle and getting in touch with investors.”

Mavin

The purpose of the media has always been to hold governments and organizations accountable. But who holds the media accountable? Mavin believes it should be you. Especially now! Mavin will be an ecosystem of crowd-sourced, reputation-based, rating, and commenting tools to enable internet users to instantly recognize the trustworthiness of content they read, share, or engage in. This will help to restore online trust, fight misinformation, bad bots, and trolls while offering publishers additional engagement, traffic, and revenue.

“We applied to join the Investor Readiness Program to improve how we target, present to, and connect with investors. The first weeks have been focused on getting the basics in order to target investors, while the second part of the program is more focused on the in-depth knowledge required when connecting to investors.

We received great feedback on our pitch deck, not only from the YES!Delft team, but also from the Entrepreneurs in Residence which are part of YES!Delft. Especially those connections, to seasoned entrepreneurs and investors are most useful and relevant to us and we are looking forward to a lot more inspiring conversations.”

BodyGraph

BodyGraph designed The Textile Coach, a smart undershirt that provides accurate body monitoring and gives actionable advice.

“During the first three weeks, we already got so many new insights from the YES!Delft team and the other participants. We now know what investor-ready truly means. We are looking forward to putting the things we learned into practice and pitch for the ‘friendly’ investors, later on in the program.”

Olivia

Olivia brings inexpensive wireless data fuels to the next wave of innovation. An explosion in affordable hardware makes gathering data possible in ways it wasn’t before. Communicating data wirelessly remains costly and painful. Olivia changes that, by becoming the world’s first mobile network operator for smart devices.

Are you an investor looking for investment opportunities in these startups or would you just like to get to know them even better? Join the Investor Day!

Startups present their solutions at the Pitch Day of EIT Health Validation Lab

Written by Jenny Konings on November 8, 2020. Posted in MedTech, News.

The EIT Health Pitch Day marked the end of this year’s EIT Health Validation Lab, and sent 17 early-stage MedTech startups into the market. The event was held entirely online on October 27 and gave teams a chance to pitch their innovation to our network. Lifelet Medical took the coveted first prize.

“The Validation Lab was a great experience for Lifelet Medical, where we received excellent domain-specific mentorship and coaching. It was an honor to work with all of the startups, and we are delighted for the opportunity to advance to the central pitch competition and to accelerate our technology further”, says Elle Sander, co-founder of Lifelet Medical.

A partnership between EIT Health & YES!Delft

EIT Health Validation Lab is a partnership between YES!Delft and EIT Health. The two organizations join forces to offer early-stage companies an opportunity to validate their technology as best as possible, and combine YES!Delft’s startup expertise with the extensive knowledge and network of EIT Health.

Over the course of eight weeks, the two parties provided the right tooling and coaching to startups to develop their skills to validate their riskiest business assumptions, to sharpen their problem-solution-fit, and find their product-market-fit. The Validation Lab is designed to help promising MedTech teams get in touch with mentors and industry specialists already early on.

Solving a severe and relevant problem

Lifelet Medical, the winner of this edition, is on an ambitious yet very important mission. The team aims to improve the lives of patients with heart valve disease by developing fully synthetic durable and sustainable heart valve leaflets for life.

“Lifelet is solving a severe problem that is very relevant worldwide, they have a unique innovation and an excellent team,” said Evert Jaap Lugt, Managing Director of YES!Delft, when he announced the startup as the winner.

“We would like to thank all the startups and ecosystem partners for their ongoing enthusiasm throughout the program. I’m very curious to see what the future holds for these game-changers, I have very high expectations after everything we’ve seen so far”, says MedTech Program Manager, Claire Visser.

[CLOSED] VACANCY: Junior Startup Scout

Written by Jenny Konings on September 9, 2020. Posted in News.

Are you ready to build tomorrow’s leading firms?

YES!Delft is hiring a Junior Startup Scout! (1,0 FTE)

YES!Delft – Building Tomorrow’s Leading Firms

YES!Delft is the start-up incubator that supports entrepreneurs in building and growing technology companies in the Netherlands. Over the last 15 years YES!Delft has become one of the leading incubators in the world! YES!Delft offers guidance and support to graduates, scientists, engineers, professionals, and corporates in their start-up journey. Our programs turn promising technology ideas into solid start-ups and help them grow to successful companies. Entrepreneurs get access to mentors, experts, investors, and corporate partners who share their know-how and experience. Basically we train entrepreneurs and connect them to the world!

You, your purpose & the ideal outcome
As a startup scout, your purpose is to get the best tech entrepreneurs in the country at YES!Delft. You constantly look for new and efficient tactics and strategies to find and keep in touch with promising founders, technologies, teams, and startups. We expect a data-driven work approach. You explore and test online & offline channels to see which scouting tactics help you achieve your goal. You will also be working on screening & selection of the teams for our corporate programs and challenges. Most important: You are the main point of contact for tech startups, you represent YES!Delft and explain our programs, and our purpose to entrepreneurs. The ideal outcome would be thousands of high-quality applications consisting of enthusiastic & committed teams for our incubator and our programs.

Competences:
– You have top communication skills, talking with people you don’t know is second nature to you
– You are solution-oriented and a real team player
– You are passionate about technology and want to learn everything about the next tech innovations
– You like structure, you find Excel easy to work with, and are fascinated about data
– You’re eager to learn a lot about startups

Job requirements:
– You have a completed WO or HBO, recently graduated
– Fluent in English (Dutch is a bonus)
– Looking for a Junior position in which you can learn and develop yourself

We offer you
A world-class incubator: An inspiring start-up environment where you have the opportunity to develop yourself and where you are able to implement your ideas and improve programs wherever you see fit. You will work with a driven and ambitious team that goes above and beyond to support start-ups, funding and builds a thriving ecosystem, day-in-day-out. YES!Delft offers a truly unique opportunity to contribute, learn, and grow in the world of tech-entrepreneurship.

More information and application procedure
We look forward to your application, send your resume and tell us about a situation in which you overcame an obstacle and how you handled it. Please keep it within 2 paragraphs (no more than 300 words). Lastly, send your application, including the resume and your story, to andreea@yesdelft.nl to the attention of Andreea Bota before the 22nd of September 2020.

Meet the EIT Health Validation Lab batch 2020

Written by Jenny Konings on September 9, 2020. Posted in News, Online.

Meet this years EIT Health Teams

Last week we kicked-off our very first, fully online MedTech program! A record amount of 17 startups, from all over Europe, the UK and Turkey, are joining the 6th edition of this EIT Health Validation Lab for 8 weeks, to validate their business idea. Scroll down, and get to know them a bit better!

Meet this fantastic cohort yourself on the 27th of October at the Grand Finale.

Berdac

Berdac proposes the use of IMA Hub for patients alerting, medication dispensing and real-time adherence monitoring.

“Joining EIT Health Validation Lab is a new step forward for Berdac’s objective to monitor people’s treatment with chronic diseases, thus improving their health and providing peace of mind to their environment. We are convinced that IMA is a solution that will mark a before and after in medicine management, reducing health care spending, both public and private.”

VISSEIRO

Tackling major problems in elderly care, Visseiro allows the switch from hospital-centred sick care systems to a community based and integrated health care system.

“Our Goal is to provide Best Quality of Life for Elderly People: Healthy, Independent, Safe and At Home.”

Lucero

Lucero is creating an automated, optics-based, solution to help cell biologists study and understand complex diseases at the single-cell level more effectively.

“In 5 years we see our technology helping scientists discover the keys to the next generation of personalized medicine.”

Crescent Technologies

Crescent Tech is developing an innovative and smart headcam system that facilitates remote peer-to-peer communication for telemedicine and medical education. The system provides a safe and comfortable way to record and live-stream the clinicians’ unique perspective and aims to keep a simple interface that allows plug & play interaction.

“We want to be the go-to headcam in healthcare education and want to help healthcare practitioners educate, communicate, and share knowledge more effectively by digitizing their medical space. We joined the EIT Health validation lab to help us realize this dream!”

Micro-Cosmos

Micro-Cosmos develops a dome on the beds of patients in hospitals, so that they can get their required rest. By shielding the patients from external sound and light, and creating their own environment, we make sure that patients sleep better and recover faster.

“We are sure the EIT Validation Lab will help us make a huge impact in improving the environment for patients to recover. At the end of the program we would like the patients and medical staff to be just as happy with our prototype as I was with our first demo version in the photo. “

GlakoLens

GlakoLens is developing a proprietary biosensor embedded contact lens and its wearable readout system for 24-hour continuous monitoring of intraocular pressure fluctuations. Our technology will provide previously unattainable diagnostic information enabling personalised treatment options for better management of ocular hypertension and glaucoma.

“We hope to learn how to confirm the product-market fit for our technology and to take necessary actions to implement this methodology by going through this programme. Consequently, we hope that we can improve our product and business offering leading to the benefit of all stakeholders in the glaucoma field, starting with the patients and ophthalmologists.”

MindSave

MindSave is developing a therapy to reduce the cerebrovascular damage that causes vascular dementia, thereby improving patients quality of life, offering new treatment options to physicians and saving the healthcare systems hundreds of millions in care costs.

Fusedbone

Fusedbone provides streamlined workflows management and document creation system to enable hospitals to manufacture custom-made medical devices at the point of care.

“Fusedbone started with the idea of bringing 3D printed medical implants to hospitals, we pivoted as we understood that hospitals’ biggest problem is not 3D printing itself, but how to tackle with regulatory challenges. That’s when we pivoted to a fully online based workflow system to enable hospitals to produce regulated medical devices at the hospital.”

Lifelet Medical

Lifelet Medical is developing fully synthetic durable and sustainable heart valve leaflets for life, to improve the lives of patients with heart valve disease

Rocknroo

Rocknroo is developing a smart pillow for inconsolably crying babies suffering from infantile colic. By emulating the principles of Kangaroo Care, our non-invasive hands-free solution will relieve the pain and discomfort brought by colic and allow parents to carry on with their daily activities.

“Hi, we are Rocknroo! We are developing a smart innovative solution for crying infants with the aim to make parenthood more enjoyable! Throughout our journey, we have accomplished many milestones, such as becoming one of the top 3 finalists at the Philips Innovation Award 2020, sharing our story with Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, and now, starting the EIT Health Validation Lab 2020 with YES!Delft. Our proudest moment thus far has been watching the first babies enjoying their time on Rocknroo!”

Quantana

“We at Quantana are committed to democratize accurate biomolecule quantification for research and diagnostics. Our technology constitutes a cost-effective alternative to currently available methods and our products will enable any laboratory to perform state-of-the-art biomolecule analysis. The EIT Health Validation Lab by YES!Delft is a unique and exciting opportunity for us to develop our business idea and find our product/market fit.”

Virtuleap

Virtuleap is a VR brain training game designed to help increase attention levels, and address cognitive illnesses, disorders, and learning challenges.

“Within the next decade, VR brain training will become normalized as part of a healthy routine and regime, just like going for a run and eating a healthy diet. Our technology will help extend the quality of life of the elderly, help children with learning challenges, and empower employees and the general population to perform at their peak cognitive levels, particularly by better understanding and being able to train their weakest abilities in order to become more wholesome as enabled individuals.”

XTremedy Medical

XTremedy Medical is developing a treatment for Osteomyelitis (bone infections) to selectively eradicate infected tissues, improving surgical success rates (currently as low as 60%) and patients outcomes (reduce number of surgeries, treatment times and recurrence rates).

CardioCrown

CradioCrown is a MedTech startup focused on the development of smart accessible technologies for the healthcare sector.

PointPressure

PointPressure is a non-invasive treatment system for patients with leg spasticity.

“We are PointPressure and we are fully committed to be the next big leap in non-invasive spasticity treatment. Our team is composed of: Ismael Ordoñez, a neuro-physiotherapist with a great experience in treating neurological disabilities and Marc Casellas, a mechanical engineer with over 8 years of experience in mechanical design and sales work.

Together we have the goal that in 5 years we will be selling our device in Europe, and we will be extending our product to target overseas markets.”

Vesiq

Vesiq is developing the next generation of urodynamics, a diagnostic technique that is used to determine the cause of incontinence in a patient. Our solution will be more accurate, quicker and easier to use than existing systems.

“In 5 years we want to be one of the leading worldwide companies in incontinence diagnostics and treatment. We hope that the EIT Health Validation Lab will help us learn more about the best way to approach the international market.”

Biogemix Pharma

Biogemix Pharma integrates precision analysis of high dimensional data, construction of enriched knowledge models and validation of molecular diagnosis prototypes to develop precision medicine in age-related conditions with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases, physiological disorders and trauma.

Interested to see where the program will bring them? Join the Grand Finale of the EIT Health Validation Lab on the 27th of October, where the 10 most promising startups of this batch will give their final pitch.

Ahold Delhaize announces winners of Cleaning Bot Challenge

Written by Jenny Konings on August 14, 2020. Posted in Artificial Intelligence, News, Online, Robotics.

Zaandam, the Netherlands, August 14, 2020 – Ahold Delhaize announces today that it has selected Fybots and Adlatus Robotics as the winners of the company’s first-ever Cleaning Bot Challenge, a global competition to scout and select smart technology solutions to perform cleaning tasks in stores.

More than 380 companies were initially scouted for the challenge, with nine reaching the finals of the event. From all over the world the finalists pitched their solutions in two tracks. In the first track, contestants pitched directly applicable cleaning solutions. The winner of that track, Fybots, was selected because of the flexibility of their autonomous solution. They are now invited to conduct in-store pilots at one of Ahold Delhaize’s local brands.

The second track focused on promising future technologies that can be co-developed. Adlatus won this track on the strength of the company’s technical capability. They will now explore a partnership with Ahold Delhaize AIRLab to co-develop new applications for their robotics technology.

The challenge underscores the ambition of Ahold Delhaize to help create the future of retail, supported by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and robotics.

“Smart technology, such as Artificial Intelligence and robotics, offers countless possibilities for the retail industry, the consumer, and society at large,’’ said Frans Muller President and CEO of Ahold Delhaize. ‘’With this challenge, we wanted to further develop our ongoing initiatives and explore how our great local brands and support offices can use this technology to better support associates as they serve customers. I was impressed by the quality of the pitches and the innovation behind the solutions.’’

He added, “A clean environment for associates and customers is now more important than ever. Cleaning tasks are often physically demanding and include many repetitive tasks. Increased cleaning cycles, due to COVID-19, have put teams under a lot of pressure. Robotics can help these associates. By reducing their time spent on repetitive cleaning, associates can focus more on customers, where they can make an even greater difference.’’

About AIRLab Delft

AIRLab Delft is the joint industry lab of Ahold Delhaize and the TU Delft, driving innovations at the intersection of retail, AI and robotics. It recently opened a test site where researchers – supported by RoboValley and tech incubator YES!Delft – can work with partners, students, startups and other companies to build and test prototypes of robotic solutions, and study ethical implications of such solutions.

Cautionary notice

This communication includes forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Words such as to, will, explore, for, ambition, future, possibilities, further, ongoing, can, increased or driving, or other similar words or expressions are typically used to identify forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results of Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. (the “Company”) to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to the risk factors set forth in the Company’s public filings and other disclosures. Forward-looking statements reflect the current views of the Company’s management and assumptions based on information currently available to the Company’s management. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and the Company does not assume any obligation to update such statements, except as required by law.

Author: Jenny Konings

The Holidays are around the corner, which means we are almost ready to wrap up 2020. One could think there would be fewer successes to share, but look at all the achievements from our startups that took place in November! Keep on reading and find out all about this.