Building a healthy team, launching a startup and achieving goals. Participants from Venture Academy can tell how it’s like to be an entrepreneur in an early-stage. But first, what is Venture Academy exactly? This is a program for motivated early-stage entrepreneurs who want to develop their ideas and launch a startup. In the 4-month journey, participants will build a healthy team, validate their business idea and start preparing for their first round of funding. All the while receiving support from a community of entrepreneurs, experts and mentors.
During the program, the participants have attended training sessions that strengthen their entrepreneurial skills and build a community with the other participants. In addition, they also received coaching to help them achieve their goals. The following startups have participated in Venture Academy and share their experiences: Knower, AnyAFM, TREX Microscopy, Zell and Bitsized.
Knower
The first Venture Academy participant we will highlight is Knower. The founder of this startup is Thanuj Ravindranath. His educational background is Electronics & Computer Science and the last 8 years he has worked in India/US and for the past 6 years in the Netherlands. After finishing a 4-week program at UtrechtInc, Thanuj has joined Venture Academy at PLNT Leiden. It was beneficial to get connections, become acquainted with the insides of entrepreneurship and specify the startup idea to access the market. Thanuj has an interest in education. His passion is making that education simplified with technology, by making the research process more efficient, organized, and less time-consuming.
“We all learn from the internet, but the internet has a large amount of resources. We don’t know what to choose, because of the overloaded information. Most of the time, you need to take the time to search for some good quality links and papers, and figure out what information you can use. In some cases, you’re looking for the same information as your connections. As the complexity and volume of information increase, the process of comprehending and extracting knowledge becomes increasingly time-consuming. Historically, this retrieval of knowledge has largely been a manual process. However, with the advent of artificial intelligence, we can automate certain aspects of this process, particularly with large language models (LLMs).
Within the group of target users, Thanuj focuses on researchers in the early stage. Since they don’t have years of experience and a lot of useful tools, they can use the help that Knower can offer. “Knower is an AI-powered assistant designed specifically for researchers, providing a fully active personal second brain to help manage their extensive references collection across various file formats such as text files, notes, and PDFs. Instead of relying on traditional labels or search keywords for organizing and retrieving data, researchers can utilize Knower’s natural language processing capabilities for seamless and convenient interactions. This innovative platform enables users to quickly locate relevant information, making the research process more efficient, organized, and less time-consuming. Experience a revolutionized way of managing and extracting knowledge from your research materials with Knower.
AnyAFM
Patrick O’Brien is the founder of AnyAFM: producing custom-configuration scanning microscopy probes with printed circuits along the cantilever for use as advanced sensors. Probes will be customisable and sold to consumers (research/ industrial sector) from an online calculator.
“I’m doing the master’s in Physics at Leiden University. My startup is based on this measurement technique called atomic force microscopy, in short AFM. You can use atomic force microscopy if you want to image the service of really small objects on a nanoscale. During one of my master’s projects, I was working on atomic force microscopy probes, specifically to make an electronic sensor on the probe. My supervisor that I was working with has joined Venture Academy before. His project was very similar to mine, but with a different focus. He was telling me that it might be a good fit for me.”
“It’s really interesting to hear how these startups work in general. You need to make something with value that people want. At the beginning of the process, I was thinking too broadly. The feedback I got is to find a niche and narrow the market. If it does everything, it does nothing: if you have too many customisation options, no one will know what to do exactly with the project. A challenging part is explaining the idea to interested parties, potential partners, investors or clients. It helps that we share knowledge and experiences with each other. You also get a lot of useful advice from our trainers and mentors with experience in the field. It’s exciting to meet everyone in the community.”
Zell
Koen Hagen, Wessel van Dam and Enzo Sastrokarijo are the startup founders of Zell: an all-in-one communication platform for associations (sports, students, social or otherwise), where members can interact, receive information and organise events. Zell is a platform that allows communities and their members to communicate freely and privately. Zell provides all the tools necessary to create interaction, organise events and more.
Why Zell?
“Associations are vital for humans and are a great way for people to find their niche or interact with each other. At Zell, we believe that we can support associations with activating their members through building a more engaging and fun-to-use social platform. Our platform is an personalised, all-in-one solution that helps physical communities organise & promote activities and increases member engagement. But don’t just hear it from us, try it out for yourself.”
Koen Hagen is a member of the European student association AEGEE Leiden for 4 years. Within the student association, the interaction was lacking, contact was difficult and there were many dormant members. Facebook and Whatsapp were used to solve this problem, but these were not optimal for an association with ±400 members. The question was: how do you keep association members informed of all activities and news?
Koen Hagen, Wessel van Dam and Enzo Sastrokarijo came up with the idea of developing a platform where members of associations can easily communicate with each other in subgroups, fill out (registration) forms and organize events through a calendar. Googling for programs where you can make your startup idea a reality, the startup founders came across Venture Academy. During the sessions, they spent time researching market share, interviewing the target audience, and developing the platform. The platform is named ‘Zell’ which comes from the Dutch word ‘Gezellig’. Very appropriate, because many associations want to project a sociable image. The goal is to activate associations. Zell is a tool for physically bringing communities together. In the future, associations will become customers who pay monthly to use the platform. You can keep an eye on the development of Zell and find more information at their website.
TREX Microscopy
Winant van Os is completing a PhD in Life Science at Leiden University. His plan is commercialising a throughput expanding technology enabling 3D subcellular imaging for drug screening studies and diagnostics. The idea has been patented with Leiden University.
“With Fluorescence microscopy, I observe where medication ends up in the body, in cells. I study organs and see which cells in the organ the medication goes to. A medication may not end up where it should. All the information can lead to making medications work differently and better. By developing a platform where we can achieve the highest resolutions with microscopy, it is possible to see in very high detail what is happening in tissues.”
“Leiden University has the intellectual property, which will eventually be taken over towards the startup. There is also support from Luris. There is not really a market yet, because it is a relatively new technology. This brought me to Venture Academy. The target market is largely the pharmaceutical industry, for example hospitals. The goal is to find a good market fit, including through market validation. Investors want to see numbers and get answers to the question what the value of the innovative startup is. Within the academy, this is slightly underexposed. At the Venture Academy, I learn how to answer that question and convince potential parties.”
“I work on my thesis from Monday to Thursday. It’s a nice change to be pulled out of your comfort zone on Fridays and research the value of technology. Telling a story with images is what I find most interesting about entrepreneurship. The coaches give good feedback. Other participants are also making progress, which is very encouraging. I would recommend people with a unique and good idea who need a framework to participate in Venture Academy. A prerequisite is having the drive to move forward, whether that’s left or right.”
BitSized
Bitsized is an innovative startup, founded by three computer science enthusiasts: Kris van Melis, Casper Hildebrand and Jeroen van Steijn, aimed at improving computer science education in secondary schools. By offering ready-made lessons, they reduce preparation time for teachers. Bitsized’s approach to education emphasizes individuality, providing a customizable learning experience that matches each student’s unique speed and style. They promote active learning through interactive assignments with immediate feedback. Moreover, they focus on breaking gender inequality within the field through relevant and engaging examples that reflect a wide range of interests and experiences.
“The idea for Bitsized came from the founders’ frustration with existing teaching methods. They noticed that the amount of time they had to spend collecting and preparing teaching materials was hindering their passion for teaching computer science. They decided to create their own solution to address this challenge, which led to the development of Bitsized.”
“What intrigues us about entrepreneurship is the ability to actually tackle and solve problems. It requires a wide range of knowledge and skills, and this diversity is exactly what makes it so interesting and fun. We have found the venture academy to be very useful. Especially that you get an outside view of your problem, solution and strategy is really an eye opener. Therefore, I would definitely recommend starting startups to participate in this. Our experience with the Venture Academy was very valuable. Providing an outside perspective on our problems, solutions and strategies was really enlightening. Based on this positive experience, I would definitely recommend beginning startups to participate in this program from PLNT.”