Meet the Investor Readiness Program Batch 2020

Written by Andreea 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!

Meet the EIT Health Validation Lab batch 2020

Written by Andreea 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 Andreea 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.

CoronaMelder: From intelligent lockdown to intelligent opening

Written by Andreea on July 28, 2020. Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, News, Online.

The coronavirus has had a huge impact on our society, both from a health perspective as well as economically. It is crucial that society can manage the spread of the virus while minimising the broader impact of measures put in place to contain it. To help contain the virus, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport is launching the CoronaMelder notification app on the 1st of September – CoronaMelder locally tracks contact exposures. Your phone later notifies you if you have been exposed to someone who was infectious. You can get a test for free after receiving such a message, to prevent you from unconsciously transmitting the virus to other people.

Engagement of YES!Delft

PrivateTracer was established in March as a non-profit public-private collaboration with the goal of contributing to the development of a contact tracing solution for the Netherlands. Initiated originally by Milvum, YES!Delft got involved very early on and helped to engage the wider ecosystem as well as drive the technical solution. Key parties from the YES!Delft ecosystem that got engaged included Cybermundus, Milvum, Circularise, Odyssey and the Municipality of The Hague. Together all parties worked hard on the development of the open source exposure tracking app CoronaMelder, which supports the GGD process.

“It was great to see how a young startup like Cybermundus could contribute seamlessly to this unique public-private partnership. I believe the diversity of participants, from large multinationals, public institutions and academia to startups, was one of the particular strengths that allowed us to create something valuable so rapidly. PrivateTracer demonstrated the enormous potential of a multi-stakeholder collaboration to solve the world’s most pressing challenges in an open and innovative way.”, thus Rene Honig, co-founder of Cybermundus.

The impact of PrivateTracer

It didn’t escape the notice of the Ministry that the parties behind PrivateTracer have taken up that gauntlet with great energy, professionalism and commitment. And critically the open source and transparent approach that the coalition leveraged meant that both significant elements of the PrivateTracer solution as well as core team members were integrated into the Ministrys’ delivery team.

“PrivateTracer is a collaboration that I believe we can all look back very proudly on, given the depth and professionality of the solution that we all pulled together in incredibly short (but intense) weeks. My personal thanks to all involved – it was a pleasure working with you!”, says Neil Smyth, CTO of PrivateTracer and Digital Technical Director and Blockchain Focus Area Manager of YES!Delft.

Interested in other initiatives that are contributing in solving the corona crisis?

Read another article

Delft startup DeNoize on its way to tackle noise pollution

Written by Mina Nacheva on July 21, 2020. Posted in News, Online. 1 Comment

Noise pollution is nothing new to people living and working in big cities, yet what many may not be aware of is that it is also a major health risk. Delft-based startup DeNoize knows all about it and has made it its mission to tackle the challenges of noise pollution and enable a healthier living environment. How? By installing its active noise cancellation technology – similar to that in noise-cancelling headphones – into the frame of windows, drowning out the noise of the busy streets underneath and the large planes flying overhead.

FROM A SIMPLE IDEA

During his studies, Aman was looking into how to design airplanes to be less noisy and more efficient, and had a strong interest in mitigating aviation noise. “There is a lot of potential in finding a way to make airplanes less noisy,” says Aman, “but if I were to turn that into an impactful solution business, it would have taken years and years.”

Instead, he wanted to create something here and now, so he focused on putting a new spin to his research and findings. “I started looking at the problem from a different angle and decided to tackle noise issues on the receiver’s end instead of its source,” says Aman. He joined the incubator program of Deep Science Ventures, a six-month pressure cooker for entrepreneurs who want to solve key societal problems, to help him kickstart his venture.

“That’s where the whole idea came together. I decided to develop a solution that can be integrated into the facade of a building and isolate it from the outdoor noise.” In a nutshell, he made a plan to create a new generation of smart windows.

With active noise cancellation at the heart of it, a very specific type of technology in itself, Aman saw the need to look for a co-founder. He found that co-founder in the face of Olivier Schevin, a fellow entrepreneur based in France, with years of experience in exactly this field.

THROUGH YES!DELFT

With the Deep Science Ventures program behind him and a round of financing that he got at the end of it, Aman moved back to the Netherlands to continue working on the DeNoize technology. In December 2018, he and Olivier got accepted into YES!Delft’s Accelerator Program, which gave them the know-how and network they needed to take the startup to the next phase.

“YES!Delft is a specialized incubator that gave us the stamp of approval we needed in the market,” Aman says. “When we joined, we were also paired with a mentor, who has quite some experience in the glass industry, and that has been of great value to us.”

The community of startups that YES!Delft has built over the years has also proven to be beneficial to Aman and DeNoize.

“There are startups in different stages of their development so there is always someone who has been in your shoes and can advise you when you’re facing a challenge. Physee, for example, is working in the same market as us and it is always good to spar with them,” Aman adds.

TO A GROWING COMPANY

Today, in only two years’ time, DeNoize has grown from one man with an innovative idea to a team of over 20. Olivier is still based in France, with four students and an intern working alongside him. In the Netherlands, the startup has two full-time employees and three groups of students working on various design projects for it.

So far, the technology is in the prototyping stage and on its way to being converted into a product. “We’re working together with a glass manufacturer to make sure that our technology can fit into their products,” says Aman. “And based on recent tests, it looks good.”

While glass manufacturers could be a key customer segment for DeNoize, at this point they see them as their closest partners – working together on prototyping and knowledge-sharing. The product that will eventually be integrated in the frames of windows is planned to be ready within a year from now.

Keeping them going until then are several financing opportunities that the team has secured, including a loan from Rabobank, a round of funding from UNIIQ and grants from the government.

Perhaps one of the most notable achievements of the team so far is their collaboration with the Royal Schiphol Group, which they announced recently. The agreement between the two companies is for studying the effects of noise pollution on people who live in close proximity to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

The research is planned to start in October 2020 for a duration of one month. The goal will be to understand the effects of noise on residents’ well-being and investigate how DeNoize can play a role in improving the quality of life of those living close to major noise sources like airports, highways, and train stations.

“We are doing research on people’s perception of noise with regard to their comfort, stress levels and mood. We then want to simulate how our technology can improve their acoustic environment,” Aman says.

While the technology is not market-ready yet, Aman and his team are already talking to potential customers to make sure they have them lined up when the time comes. DeNoize is mostly focusing on real estate developers such as Schiphol Real Estate and Heijmans, who can increase the value of their buildings by integrating the startup’s noise cancelling technology.

From this point on, DeNoize will be focusing on putting their technology on the market and getting the right partners and customers onboard. Working together with a partner like Schiphol Group is sure to boost the startup on its way to success.

Milestones:

March 2018: Aman started working on the DeNoize concept in London

May 2018: Founded DeNoize together with Olivier Schevin

July 2018: Raised £70,000 as pre-seed funding

August 2018: Built the first proof-of-concept prototype of DeNoize

October 2018: Joined the Get Started Program by ECE

February 2019: Joined the YES!Delft Accelerator Program

August 2019: 1st paid pilot with potential customers

October 2019: Raised €150,000 from Rabobank

December 2019: Set up a collaboration with a major airport

January 2020: Expanded the DeNoize team

With DeNoize set on a path of growth, the team is currently looking for programmers. Do you know someone or are you one? Get in touch with them now!

Apply now for our upcoming programs, and become part of an ecosystem with startups like DeNoize!

Accelerator Program

AI/Blockchain Validation Lab

Investor Readiness Program

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.