StartupYard Accelerator

In Their Own Words: Pavel Konečný, CEO Neuron Soundware

/in , , /by

“In their own words” is a series of interviews with some of our alumni about the stage they were when they joined our programme and where they are now.
Today, we are joined by Pavel Konečný the CEO of Neuron Soundware, which recognise broken machines using sounds and machine learning. 

At what stage were you when you applied for StartupYard?

This was in 2016. We had many ideas and a few lines of code and that’s about it. The idea to apply the technology to machines came during the programme and the company was incorporated then. I was the only member of three, who was full-time dedicated to the company.

At what stage are you now?

We recently closed our Series-A. Multiple customers are using our technology. I would call our company as being in the scale-up phase now as we are looking to expand rapidly.

How much money have you raised since leaving StartupYard?

We raised 600k EUR within one year of leaving the program. Two years later, we raised 5.45m EUR.

How many jobs have you created so far? What kind of jobs?

The team is now composed of more than 25 people. We have experts in AI, IoT and we are now hiring our new, but badly needed, international sales team.

What has been the most challenging experience when growing the company?

We were quite good with finding customers. So it would be finding the right people to work with us. Not only with good CVs, but with real skills and also commitment.

What are you the most proud of so far?

We started with focus on the algorithms. Our expectation was that OEM would integrate the necessary hardware such as sensors. However that was a wrong assumption. So we pulled out our sleeves and entered the hardware business. How hard it could be, right? Quite a lot, in fact! So now I am proud of our nBox – an edge computing capable industrial IoT device.

How did StartupYard help you?

We have learned many very useful skills. However the most important for us was finding our business field. We had many options how to use our technology. The team of mentor helped us to identify what we wanted to do.

What would you say to someone who hesitates to apply for our next program?

It’s worth it! I recommended it several times during the last few years. I am glad that all the teams, who have joined StartupYard, are happy alumni too!

Apply to StartupYard Batch 11
Payowallet, StartupYard

Meet Payowallet: Customer Rewards for the Rest of US

/in , , /by

In our continuing series of up-close, in-depth interviews with the founders of the StartupYard Batch X companies, we come to Payowallet, a Slovak startup founded by Klaudia Drabikova, and Gabriel Cegledi. Payowallet helps small retail businesses graft world class customer loyalty and rewards programs using their mobile-first application and payment platform. Unlike the loyalty programs of major retailers, Payowallet is accessible to any small business, and can be set up in minutes.

 

See Payowallet and the other Batch X Startups Pitch at StartupYard DemoDay Bath X, November 29th in Prague

 

For this interview, both Co-founders chose to speak with me, so you will read answers from both Klaudia and Gabriel.

Klaudia Drabikova, the CEO, Has worked for 15 years in international non-banking and banking financial companies, specialized in consumer lending as Head of Direct business. Her working experience wass enriched in operations matters as a former COO and member of the Board of Cetelem Slovakia.

Gabriel Cegledi, the CTO, also has 15 years of experience, implementing loyalty rewards and payment cards programs for leading merchants and banks across Europe. Gabriel previously worked as Loyalty Products Owner at EMEA and International levels for First Data. 

PayoWallet, StartupYard

Here is what they had to say: 

Hi Klaudia,you come to building a startup from a position of more experience than a typical founder. You spent 15 years in banking, and you were COO and a member of the board at Cetelem in Slovakia. Why found a startup focused on small retail businesses?

Payowallet, StartupYard

Co-Founders Klaudia and Gabriel

Klaudia: That’s an interesting question, because in some ways it is a big leap. Still in another way, I see this move as a natural extension of my career long interests. At Cetelem, I learned that it is increasingly difficult to differentiate a retail brand according to pricing, or even the number and location of branches. Those may be the first things you think about when it comes to a retail bank, and these factors matter, however they matter much less in proportion to the impact that good customer experiences can have on brand loyalty.

One of the ironies for a big brand is that as you scale larger over time, you focus increasingly on these marginal factors such as price and location, because they are easier to quantify and manage using a data centered approach. However, customer experience remains a huge factor in creating loyalty among your userbase. That is harder to do as a company gets bigger, because the ways you execute customer experiences at scale are different from those of a smaller company.

What I found over time was that big companies are investing a lot into large-scale customer experience solutions, such as loyalty programs, apps, messenger bots, and such things. Still, these investments are really trying to mirror what smaller businesses do as a matter of day-to-day practice in customer service. The result is that big retail brands have very sophisticated technology, but still many of the best practices in retail come from smaller brands that are more free to innovate on a smaller scale. So, small retailers have great ideas, but no way to support them with technology. It’s too expensive, and too de-focusing for them to develop their own apps or programs.

So Payowallet is trying to provide that technology basis for excellent customer experiences. I believe, and I have seen it, that better customer experience can create customer engagement, which is more important today than ever to differentiate from competition. Small businesses only lack the technology to execute on their customer knowledge and ideas. They don’t lack for either knowledge or ideas. So we want to make customer loyalty programs and digital payment systems available to retailers of any size, in a format simple enough for anyone to use without a major investment of time or resources.

Why found a startup focused on small retail businesses?

Gabriel: There are two questions in this sentence actually. First question – why did we want to found a startup? Well, we both worked in big companies – each of us in a different one  – which grew from quite small firms to large corporations. From companies, where you knew all the employees – your colleagues, you all work together, you all work hard to get things done, all were personally responsible for every action, every success and mistake.

You had to find solutions despite different opinions, attitudes and varying personal characters within the team. The results and then also the joy and feeling of success from having done a great job were very tangible and personal, thanks to the real cooperation of all colleagues in the team and/or particular projects. We had really good times – both of us in our own companies. Now those companies have gotten very big, and these aspects naturally change to accommodate the new scale. We both felt it was time to search for something new, and begin again from the small scale.

Second question: Why focus on small retail businesses? The technology all retailers can now benefit from has progressed dramatically over the past few years. A few years ago, only large retailers, such as Tesco or Starbucks could have their own credit cards, loyalty programmes, analytics and proper full-stack marketing to end-customers.

Now, new technologies and new programming languages allow anyone to build marketing and payment systems in a fraction of the time for very little money. We saw these technologies evolving, we saw them coming, we were part of the process, we saw what impact they can have. And, these technologies small brands to be more relevant and personal when it comes to appealing to their customers. On the other hand, the end-customers have become more demanding – new generations (Y and Z) require more comfortable, easy-to-use and relevant products and personalized experiences when shopping.

Meeting all these new trends and requirements is not easy – but it is thrilling. It is extremely interesting to be able to help these small retailers who don’t really have the resources  to keep up with all these new communications methods (e.g. Facebook, instagram, chatbots, messengers etc) and technologies (e.g. analytics) – not because they can’t or don’t want to – but simply they don’t have time and money for it (as they are doing all the hard work around their core products)…

To me it is a shame if a big retailer beats a smaller one only because they can outspend them on technology to reach the customers. That does not encourage a true vibrant competition between small and large players in the retail world. Democratizing the technology used for marketing and customer experience means better experiences for everyone.

Q: How did you two begin working together? Why are you a good match for this project?

Klaudia: First of all we know each other from the past, when Gabriel was working for a company delivering payments and loyalty services. Both of us left our companies, and were looking for new opportunities. When we met, of course there were discussions what to do, and because we have seen the trends in other developed countries in areas we had a knowledge in, we started to be hungry to do something similar in this region. Why we are a good match? In my opinion it’s like this: Gabriel has many, many ideas, and me, I like them to get them done! Gabriel always has many questions, like when a kid ask you why, why, why? All the the time, so he forces me to think and to be more prepared. We fit together in that way: by being opposites.

Gabriel: I saw these new technologies and opportunities coming, I saw them hitting and scratching the surface of the corporation I was working in as well – but months passed and none of the promising new technologies was being realized. None of them took off in the corporation really. It was not easy – to quit a good and safe salary, but couldn’t do it differently.

When we both quit – literally at the same time – despite the fact that it was not coordinated, we started to look at a couple of new opportunities, potential startup projects and technologies together – with some other friends of ours and our former colleagues.

We tested a couple of projects over a period of 7 months or so, and then decided on Payowallet – digital loyalty and marketing, including payments with mobile and sophisticated analytics. Very cool.

Why are we a good match? Well, the thing is that we are quite different, we have a different nature, we have different ideas, we have a different style of work – I like to work alone, closed in a basement in a cellar.  But Klaudia needs plenty of people around her all the time. But when it’s time to get things done, we alighn. Obviously, we share a common vision and strategy. The differences help us look at the same thing from different angles, and so we are able to see new and more opportunities and options that would be overlooked otherwise – if we were the same or similar. This is a very good thing indeed. Obviously, different natures come with some disagreements, fights, arguments etc. But we respect each other well enough to overcome these in order to achieve a better outcome and result.

Q: Most people probably have some loyalty and membership cards. Why is it so hard for small businesses to run their own loyalty programs, and what are the benefits of doing so?

Klaudia: There has been research recently showing, that 44% of small businesses are focusing their marketing activities on acquiring new customers, but only 16% of them spend as much on existing ones. And there is other research showing, that 67% from existing customers are likely to buy another product from a retailer they go to regularly. These are not huge new discoveries in retail. It is an axiom of sales that an existing customer has ten times the value of a new customer.

So, why do they not focus on existing customers? I believe it is partly because in this technological age, they are not sure where their customers are, or how to reach them. It may often be as simple as not really understanding which of your customers is even a loyal customer, and past that, how to actually reward that person. Keeping track of these things as a small business is difficult to do. Loyalty programmes play a big part in customer retention and not all retailers see the value in that, because they don’t know how to measure it.

The second thing is, that old-school style loyalty programmes, like paper or plastic cards don’t tell you that much. They don’t provide any data, or statistics. Much of the effort that goes into them is wasted. It’s hard to know their impact, or even know how many rewards you’ve given away. Plus, today another issue is privacy and GDPR. You now need informed consent to store customer data, and you need to justify its use.

This all sums up to a situation where small retailers can’t justify the cost and now the legal risk of initiating their own programs, particularly not being able to identify a clear return on the investment. New technologies make that decision a bit easier. We help retailers bring loyalty programs direct to the mobile number of each customer, opening up a new marketing channel, and a direct link with a loyal customer.

Gabriel: It is not only about rewarding my customers (as a retailer). It’s about the whole approach to communication with them. It’s also about a customers’ shopping experience. Small retailers have a massive disadvantage compared to large players in terms of marketing budgets. And then – what will be the customer’s choice if she is bombarded with more than 4500 marketing messages per day – as one marketing professional/specialist confirmed to us?

it is easy to guess. So, being able to “stay on the customer’s mind,” by choosing the right communication channels, being able to handle them all – so called omni-channel communication – FB, insta etc, providing relevant and personalized messages and communication to the customers – this is deeply challenging to a small coffee shop or burger-bar owner. They don’t have the resources of a nationwide brand or chain.

On the other hand, the retailers now really can benefit from the technologies – technologies provide them data insights – about customer’s purchase behavior, and technologies enable delivering the messages and communication right to the customers and in a manner that doesn’t annoy them and doesn’t spam them.

And as regards customers’ shopping experiences – you can see all those trends – order ahead and pay cashless – Uber, shared economies, buy online, get products delivered to your home, fine-tuned and sophisticated online shopping experience, after-sale care and services, in-store marketing and merchandising. All of these are available thank to progress in technologies, and the new generations take full advantage of these, grew up with these technologies, so they can’t even imagine doing any different. Keeping up with all of these opportunities and options is challenging for small retailers. That is where Payowallet is aimed at helping them out.

Practically speaking, what does it take to get set up as a retailer on PayoWallet?

Klaudia: PayoWallet is a mobile marketing platform, which consist fof components like digital loyalty, mobile payments, and data insights. For every retailer who is busy with their own activities and duties, but is looking for ways to engage with his customers better, we are the right solution. We help him to motivate his customers to come back more often, by providing technology to manage his loyalty program in a fully  digital way.

Customers love it. Retailer gets statistics and insights, which can tell them much more about their customers, comparing with paper or plastic cards. Imagine, that you can easily set up your next marketing campaign to the right person and send it straight to her phone within a few minutes. If you are a retailer, with no time, or skills to manage campaigns by yourself, we can do it for you as a managed service too. Mobile payments will be the feature which will complete our brand name (the wallet part) and will make the experience much more convenient. Payment and loyalty will be just one transaction, which will deliver new data about customer purchase behaviour to the retailer.

Imagine being able to conceive and sell a new offer to the right set of customers within moments. Have an idea? Test it out on a group of your customers, and see the results instantly. Get people to come into your store or restaurant at just the right time.

What are some of the ways you would like your users to change their relationships with their customers using PayoWallet?

Klaudia: For the moment, first thing is that retailers start to think more about existing customers; because this is the target group you can rely on and you can sell more. Remember the statistic I told you earlier, 67% of existing customers will buy another product from you. Imagine having a tool to delight your customers individually and invite them for a specific, contextual reason to come again and to spend in your shop.

We can see many validated products in other markets, like the US, or UK, where it’s important for retailers to start to think about mobile strategy, which will help them to engage with their customers. This will become a standard. And small retailers can be even more happy that there will be such a SaaS technology they can use afforably.

Gabriel: We help the retailers to analyze what is happening at their stores. We help them understand they have top customers – who are returning to them often – and WHO they are! Now, the retailers are able to thank them, stay in touch and delight these customers with special perks, treatment and personalized messages. They couldn’t do this before (except a very few small exclusive shops, where they know all their customers by name).

On the other hand, we can help them understand other customers who haven’t returned for a while. How could the retailers have a chance to reach out to these customers and re-engage with them? No chance! Now, we can tell who they are, how long they’ve been away, and enable the retailer to send offers to motivate the customers to come back.

Another thing – imagine announcing and sharing news about what is happening in my store with the customers – what options do the retailers have now? Posts on Facebook reach a fraction of their customers. But their regular customers, who shop with them quite often may really want to know if there is a new flavor of their favorite coffee, a new type of burger or a wine-tasting event. They would love to hear this. We help span all these missed opportunities.

What do you hope PayoWallet is going to be in 5 years, as a business, or as a technology. What would be your ideal scenario?

Klaudia: I would love to see a PayoWallet sticker on as many shops as possible. That means, that retailers are open to using mobile technologies. Their customers spend pm avg. more than 3 hours looking at their phones every day, so retailers have to adjust to be present there. Our goal right now is to increase the numbers of our partners, ideally in the Czech Republic and other countries of CEE and SEE  that we find a good match with.

At the same time, we are working on the technology, which will combine mobile payments and loyalty in one simple transaction, which will deliver insights to retailers to help them make sales. In 5 years it will be a standard to pay with mobile, but our standard will be to pay with mobile and deliver added value for both: a retailer – having more data on who is his customer, and for the customer to enjoy all the benefits of one click payments and targeted communications they actually want.

Gabriel: I see this from two perspectives: regional and technological. Technological – as Klaudia said – retailers heavily using the advantages of the technologies and services provided and all parts of it, reward programmes, analytics, and mobile communication. And end-users benefiting from the ease of use  of payments and of being rewarded.

What has been the biggest challenge for you, personally or professionally, in transitioning to the role of Startup CEO? How has the StartupYard experience affected that transition?

Klaudia: For me as a person it was like entering a completely different environment comparing to the  corporate world. I had to overcome the fear of not knowing many things. In a startup you do so many different things on your own, in most of them you are not an expert, or you have no idea “how to”, but definitely “you have to”, because it is your company. Sometimes it takes you really far out of your comfort zone.

Startupyard is helping us to focus on what is important and whe,n and showing how to make each next step. And of course the people here are willing to share and give us courage, when needed. You don’t feel that alone though.

Gabriel: Running a startup is really completely different to working in a corporation. Obviously, this has been said many times, but just to confirm – in a corporation, there is a distinct and limited and defined set of tasks and content you are responsible for. In a startup, you do everything on your own. From marketing, through product, technology, infrastructure, wording on your facebook and on your web page. Obviously, you have colleagues working on this with you, but it is your call. So, yes, it is about overcoming the fear of unknown waters, and about trying to learn as much as possible and as quickly as possible.

How can businesses start taking advantage of PayoWallet right now? How do they get started?

Klaudia: First of all, very easily. If a retailer has decided to become our partner, we just give him set of easy questions to be able to manage his offer towards customers, which will be displayed in our app. From loyalty rules, exclusive offers, or products, which can be sold in advance. We do the rest, set up in the system takes a few minutes. The retailer can start to create their own database of customers from Day one. No complicated integrations, no GDPR issues, just one smartphone and that’s it.

“I would like offer you rewards, use our app” is the only sentence they might use in the checkout process to create the engagement. The rest is on us.

You both have children. What is it like to be a mother or a father and founding your own company?

Klaudia: I feel good, because as a founder you are the owner of your time and you can adjust to the needs of your child. But I am not the mother with fashion bags anymore, because I need to carry my notebook everywhere, using every opportunity while waiting for my son at his guitar classes, or sport activities. My time is calculated to every minute. To watch another movie, is today a task for time management! As a co-founder of such a company it is very much about networking and this is a part you are quite often limited, but we are trying to manage and to share with Gabriel if needed.

Gabriel: Frankly, it’s extremely challenging and really not an easy thing. A friend of mine once told me: your first children will eat 90% of your free time. The second kid, she will require the remaining 60% of your free time! I fully agree. And now – I have 3 kids. And I’m telling you – a startup will eat through the remaining 200% of your free time. And it comes with so many uncertainties and unexpected situations. So, juggling with time, that’s priority number one for me. I’m dealing with it every day, and I’m considering every ten minutes of my time  – where and how I’m going to spend it. But running your startup is so interesting – it’s worth all the hassle.

 

See Payowallet and the other Batch X Startups Pitch at StartupYard DemoDay Bath X, November 29th in Prague
StartupYard, ShufflUp

Meet Shufflup: Bringing the Benefits of Crypto Trading to the Masses

/in , , , /by

In our continuing series of up-close, in-depth interviews with the founders of the StartupYard Batch X companies, we come to another of the 3 companies that join us this round are working in the field of crypto asset trading.  ShufflUp is working to make the growing world of crypto-currencies and crypto asset markets available to regular people. It’s a fully automated trading platform that uses techniques from electrical engineering and high-frequency trading to generate steady profits for small-time investors. The team comes from India, and has decided to locate its operations in Europe, incorporating in Estonia. 

See Shufflup and the other Batch X Startups Pitch at StartupYard DemoDay Bath X, November 29th in Prague

Shufflup Co-Founder and CEO Shilpa Mitra is a data researcher with 5 years experience in statistical data analysis. During her engineering career she has focused on building software, and in the process got into close proximity with many programming languages. She was part of a collaborative research project with Tokyo Electron Limited during her Ph.D. studies which culminated into a full length academic research paper, published in one of the esteemed peer-reviewed journals. She is captivated by the possibilities of blockchain transforming the current inefficient financial system. I spoke with her this week about Shufflup

Hi Shilpa, first of all I want to highlight your career so far, because at 26 you’ve accomplished a lot of amazing things, including studying for a PHD in electronic engineering. Can you tell us how you got to where you are?

First of all, I want to clear this that I am not a PhD.

My Co-Founder Sromana Mukhopadhyay and I went to the US with the vision of changing the world through our love for maths and technology, like any other PhD student might think during their first year of study. By the end of the first year, we had published two research papers in two esteemed peer-reviewed journals, completed almost all the courses, taught a bunch of undergrad students, cleared the dreaded PhD qualifying exam but still somewhere the creative soul within me was not satisfied.

StartupYard, ShufflUp

Co-Founders Sromana (left), and Shilpa (right) come from the same region in Eastern India and studied in the US together

I realized that I can better utilize my data-processing skills to develop something which is useful for the people I care about and this realization brought me back to India. The tech-lover within me got fascinated by the revolutionary concept of digital currencies and the more I learnt about them the more I realized that they possess the power to change the future economy.

Going from electronic engineering to blockchain technology seems like a big leap. What got you interested in working on blockchain and cryptocurrencies?

You can say it began as an academic sort of curiousity. There are interesting mathematical concepts in blockchain technology, and the idea of distributed databases and trustless networks.

I started reading the whitepapers of various cryptocurrencies in order to understand the underlying blockchain technology. I started trading with crypto-coins on various exchanges but soon enough spotted the obvious inefficiencies of the crypto market. I realized these inefficiencies provided the potential of being even larger than the inefficiencies of the current unbalanced financial system. Upon researching more and after some days of digging deeper, my calculations proved that the inefficiencies that prevail in more than 15,000 crypto markets and 500 exchanges are capable of creating 440 thousand arbitrage opportunities per second, which are capable of producing 8-10% profit each month.

Now let’s dig deeper into how two electrical engineers have done it, considering we have always dealt with electrical signals and currents coming out of transistors. As electrical engineers we have used time series analysis to predict the useful lifespan of transistors. We realized that the data coming out of exchanges is also time-series data and the same time-series analysis tools can be applied to exchanges’ data as well. It is simply the source of the data that has changed, not the nature of it. Hence is not a ‘big leap’. It is because of our backgrounds that we are able to build everything we are building today.

Just imagine the global currency system as a series of outlets and inlets, just like an electrical grid. You have a peak flow that is predictable. You have a directionality in the system that can be modeled and observed. You can see that money and transactions flow across the system in a certain way, based on the capacity of the various parts of the network to manage the traffic, as well as the actual needs on the side of the users of these systems.

Now, whether it is crypto-currency or forex or electrical grid systems, the same type of statistical analysis can be applied to predict movements and to design the ideal way of managing those movements. What we do is called “currency arbitrage,” but it resembles electrical grid arbitrage as well. Providing liquidity where it is low, and sucking up liquidity where it is high, in order to keep the whole system stable, is the same whether you’re dealing with crypto tokens or energy itself.

Q: What are you trying to accomplish with Shufflup that you think no other platform has been able or willing to do?

Arbitrage and automated trading are not new concepts in the least. Our approaches to these activities I believe are unique, however I want to be clear why we have chosen this direction for our company.

Unlike other complex crypto platforms, which try to serve more sophisticated and more liquid investors, at ShufflUp we are trying to help that section of people in society who are neglected and not taken into consideration by other crypto trading platforms. There are 25 million crypto wallets in the world and out of which only 3- 5 million are in active use, whereas the world’s population is 7.44 billion.

The Co-Founders in New Jersey during PHD studies.

Other algorithmic trading platforms are making their tools available to this bracket of tech-savvy and the so-called ‘accredited’ investors who are already in the business of crypto trading. At ShufflUp we will initially target the rest of the 20 Million passive wallets of ‘HODL’ers who have bitcoins sitting in their wallets and doing nothing. Then we will move forward to target retail users. We are primarily focused on small investors and the minimum deposit is 0.025 BTC. At present in order to use ShufflUp, a user only needs to have bitcoins in his wallet, deposit them to our platform, sit back and relax to see his profit steadily moving up.

With ShufflUp, no complex setup or figuring out innovative trading strategies or 24/7 monitoring is required, ours is a no-brainer and hands-off platform. We want to be a sensible bet for the average low income person who wants to profit from a dynamic, changing economy.

Can you tell us a bit more about how your technology really works?

At ShufflUp, our mission is to bring cryptocurrency profit to the masses because we believe digital currency is the future. A part of making that future work is distributing the gains of growth in the crypto market, and getting more people engaged with it. Through our technology, we have been able to eliminate the long-standing issues of arbitrage crypto trading. To realize significant profit through this form of trading by a single trader, huge funds are normally required upfront. A person also requires his/her funds to be properly distributed among several exchanges and the right coin-pairs where the opportunities are occurring. Basically, you need a large reach and high liquidity to profit from helping to maintain the balance of the system.

 

ShufflUp aggregates data from several exchanges, analyses them based on historical data patterns to understand where the next arbitrage opportunities are going to happen and distributes the funds in those coin-pairs. As of now, our system processes 40,000 datasets/sec to identify the next set of arbitrage opportunities. Needless to say, this will go on increasing as we scale.

Identifying the opportunities is one thing, but not all of them are executable for various reasons, such as network latency, high associated fees and volume associated with the trade. In order to avoid order slippage our technology determines the exact quantity at which to place the order based on statistical correlation and then executes only those trades which it predicts to be executable.

So far our algorithm has correctly predicted and executed 99.62% of all the arbitrage opportunities that have occurred during the last 3 months in the integrated coin-pairs. One of the things that few of you who are familiar with crypto arbitrage trading must be wondering is the transaction time and transaction fees associated with the arbitrage trading. Our smart system distributes the funds in such a way that it reduces the transaction time & fee by 90%. Also it is important to mention that all the profit that our system has made during the last 3 months is after taking into account the maker, taker, deposit and the withdrawal fees in the exchanges.

We have been organizing our private beta for the past 3 months with 12 investors – 2.5BTC and generated 55.2% profit for them. Also 250 users are in the pipeline eagerly waiting for our product to go public.

Many people including many mentors of SY have asked us, ’what if these opportunities gradually diminish in numbers as the market matures?’ That is a valid concern, because as a market matures technically and in scale, arbitrage becomes more common, and so less profitable.

But here I would beg to argue that even after so many years discrepancies still exist in the traditional market. Arbitrage always becomes more complex, but it does not go away. We will have to continue to evolve and learn from existing datasets. In that sense, our early mover advantage will be increasingly important, as we will have more data than others who attempt to enter the market later.

Having said that we have two very different trading strategies currently under simulation which will drive us forward in the path of our broader vision. One of them is based on complex predictive trend line analysis coupled with a few technical indicators which we know only the top experienced, disciplined, dedicated and the rich bracket of traders can take advantage of. The other strategy is based on analyzing market psychology because ultimately, market prices are created by the constantly fluctuating perceptions of market participants.

Here too, you can take some clues from understanding the flow of an electrical circuit or grid. The needs of a system can be understood through outside indicators. For example, famously, electrical grid operators must study television schedules to understand when consumer are likely to turn off their televisions at night, in order to ramp down the supply quickly enough not to over-power the grid. They must understand the upcoming weather patterns in order to provide enough power to the grid to run cooling systems.

You can apply the same macro forces analysis to crypto trading as well, which is something we don’t believe is common in this market yet.

Q: What do you hope that Shufflup will be able to do for its users in the next few years that they can’t do now?

As we are targeting the masses, or in other words retail investors, we will have our focus in developing an end-to-end solution for our users where they will be able to buy not only Bitcoin but also other cryptocurrencies because with arbitrage we will have an umbrella of cryptocurrencies. They will be able to buy these at a much lower commission than what is available at other exchanges/platforms.

We will also have two different schemes for our users based on a long-term and a short-term approach. If someone prefers to keep their crypto with us on a short-term basis, we would take a 20% cut from their profit, on the other hand if they stay with us on a long-term basis, we would take an even smaller cut from their profit. We are planning to go into partnerships with different companies which would enable our users to pay for their rent or coffee or pizza directly from our platform at a discounted price. Again, this is helping to spread the use of the currencies, and make them more attractive as a real utility to more parties.  At ShufflUp, we are dedicated to expediting the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Why do you believe so strong that blockchain technology can make the financial system more efficient, or more fair?

I firmly believe that blockchain is the future of finance, and this technology will do to the financial system what email did to the postal system. Remember, the postal system is not dead because of email. It’s bigger than it was when email came along. But we use it very differently now. We use it for much more important things. The use cases that migrated to email did so because the electronic form made so much more sense than the physical, in almost every way. I believe the same will occur around blockchain.

Blockchain will have a profound impact on the consumers who will hugely benefit from greater efficiency, greater security and greater transparency. A new decentralized financial system would remove the intervention and complexity that exists in the existing financial system and would lower the barrier to entry for those people who are currently denied entry (the unbanked population).

Yes the financial system would also become more fair as blockchain’s underlying protocols support stronger identity management thus helping regulators combat illegal money laundering and terrorist activities. The truth is that the financial system as it exists today is not technologically backwards, but it is built largely to the benefit of the wealthy nations, the rich, and the powerful. It has few real incentives to provide tools for smaller investors and for the poor and unempowered to use modern financial tools. That is a growing problem that I believe blockchain technology can work to counterbalance, and help to democratize access to finance.

What other things can blockchain be used for that most people have been ignoring?

I think in the areas of e-voting by bringing more transparency so that election results are honest and accurate, coming from a country like India I believe a fair electoral system can bring much needed socio-economic change to developing countries.

I also think the sharing and gig economy can strongly benefit from decentralization, as many of the existing systems are designed to benefit a relative few at the top of organizations, and are not equitable to the people who use the system. You can see this with companies such as Uber, where the drivers are being pushed to work for the minimum amount possible, while the company itself needs to take a larger portion of their earnings to stay solvent as prices continue to drop. If this system were mediated by a cryptocurrency where the economics were more transparent, I believe consumers could make better decisions, and those working in the gig economy would get access to fair compensation for their work.

As it is, these markets today work on a “black-box” basis, meaning that you simply have to believe that a company like Uber understands its own economic model, and that the driver understands the cost/benefit of working for them, and that the price you pay is fair and equitable. You must take the word of the company on faith, without proof. However, in a black box model, the company at the center is incentivized to change the rules in its own favor, and to profit from a lack of information from the parties it transacts with. That is not a system in which the good of ordinary people is the focus.

Decentralization means that the ability of the rich and powerful to take advantage of your lack of information in everyday economic decisions is neutralized. That is the ultimate promise of cryptocurrencies, and what we should all hope for in the future.

How did you start working as a team? What makes you the right people to build Shufflup?

Sromana and I know each other since our undergrad days (about 8 years). We initially started preparing for several competitive exams together, cracked all of them, and got admission to the PH.D. program in the USA together. In that way, we became a team before we had a mission. We noticed the loopholes of crypto trading world in a joint effort and wanted to solve it together.

Data analysis and data processing, dealing with different statistical tools like Wavelet and Fourier Transform has been our forte and this project requires deep digging of data.

Coding of course forms the backbone of any startup and both of us are well-versed in a plethora of programming languages like PHP, NodeJS, Javascript, C, Java, Python, CSS, etc.In college we organized a national level technology festival where both founders were part of the managerial team. We together raised funding, and scaled the number of participants by 1500.

We are each other’s best critics, and constantly pushing one another to perform better. For all the above reasons we felt uniquely qualified to work as a team and solve the problems that we are solving now at ShufflUp.

How has your experience been at StartupYard, and in Europe generally? Did it match with your expectations, or did it surprise you in some way?

A: Prague is a beautiful place to live, extremely peaceful with an extremely systematic and well-connected transportation system. These are the kinds of things that I notice as an engineer by training: that this is a society that understands organization of public spaces very well. Europe in general has wonderful advantages for quality of life.

StartupYard has been great so far, I love the people here at SY as you let us be ourselves yet push us at the right time in the right direction. We can’t thank you enough for accepting us into this program as it was a huge validation as well as support for us that we are moving in the right direction. We got to learn a lot from some of the mentors, actually formed a lot of ideas that we are working on now, which would never have been possible without SY.

Being in SY and attending the workshops helped us ‘know’ about different core metrics of building a business about which we did not have any idea even a few months ago. The most important thing which I learnt is finding like-minded investors who will push your company in the right direction and not just crave to get manifold returns. Basically I can go on and on, on how being at SY has been such a learning experience and a much-needed one for us.

See Shufflup and the other Batch X Startups Pitch at StartupYard DemoDay Bath X, November 29th in Prague

Meet Printsyst: The Only AI 3D Printing Expert You’ll Ever Need

/in , , /by

Printsyst co-founders Itamar and Eitan Yona are brothers, and they represent our first startup from Israel as members of Batch X. They are also the 3rd generation in a family of a printers, carrying their family tradition into the realm of 3d printing. Their startup, Printsyst, is for companies that use 3D printing, but don’t have internal expertise. PrintSYSt is an AI-powered management solution that provides a complete automated 3D printing workflow. Unlike standard existing solutions, PrintSYSt requires no expertise, allowing users to focus on design instead of production.

Itamar, the older brother at 34, plays the role of CEO, and  has a degree in Electrical Engineering. He provides professional engineering advice, lectures, and workshops about additive manufacturing worldwide. His articles being published on well-known industry magazines and blogs. Eitan on the other hand focuses his attention on marketing and communication, and can be found frequently on the team’s YouTube channel, connecting with experts and educating his audience on 3D manufacturing.

See Printsyst Pitch at StartupYard Demo Day Batch X, November 29th in Prague

 

Printsyst, StartupYard

Printsyst Co-Founders Itamar (left) and Eitan Yona (right), with StartupYard CEO Cedric Maloux

 

Hi Eitan and Itamar. You are not actually our first pair of siblings at StartupYard, but I think people will be interested to know how it is you both came to make 3d printing your focus in life. What’s it like to do this together?

We will answer these questions in one voice, because that’s really the way we are as a team. We know each other so well, it’s like one hand working with the other. It’s muscle memory.

Working with family is unlike anything else. You can have colleagues, and you can have people whom you rely on and you trust, but these are not your family. We are a 3rd generation family in this business. Our grandfather was a printer, our father is a printer. We are carrying that tradition forward, and in that sense we see ourselves as a part of that tradition, just bringing it forward.

Our father taught us growing up that individually, we would never have the strength that we have together. Perhaps you can tie this in with the history of our country and people as well. We have to cooperate as one to get things done. As brothers we are able to learn collectively, and to multiply our strengths.

That is the secret sauce in a family business, which is that you are building upon a foundation that is rock solid. In most tech startups, we think this is missing. That sense of belonging to the industry and the sense that you are born to do what you do is very appealing. Our family is not just in the printing business, but rather we are in the technology business, and always have been. The technology just changes. The business part is not so different.

It’s fun as well. We can laugh at and scream at each other, and change directions in 10 seconds. We don’t have to forgive each other for every mistake. We can be angry, and we can share our feelings with each other. One can rely on the other.

Is there a downside to the family dynamic?

Sure. We are very monomaniacal about our work. It can be hard to stop talking about work and switch to other topics. How are your kids? What did you do this weekend? We get very comfortable talking about work topics, to the point where the separation of work and life is a bit blurry.

But again, this is in the family for generations. Our parents worked together all our lives, with our grandparents too. Life and family is business. There is no distinction sometimes. I don’t know if you consider that healthy. Maybe it’s good for some people and not good for others. We make it work. We are happy with what we do now.

Do you think that family background, being a 3rd generation printing family, gives you an advantage over others who come into this business from a different background, such as in computer science or manufacturing? What are the intangibles of a printer’s life experience?

So, it’s important to emphasize that we are technologists, by tradition. Printing is just the technology we know. A family business is not something that should stay the same for all time. That is not progress. Instead, a family business gives you the roots you need and the stable base you need to grow with much higher confidence and the right connections from the beginning.

It may seem like we are departing from tradition. Our father and grandfather were in 2D printing (Printing Press). We are in 3D. It’s a different world. However, our father made the switch from offset to digital printing. That was equally difficult, and equally transformative in its own time. The needs of customers change continually, and having a deep empathy and respect for people is something that takes a lot of life experience.

In that sense, what you do in 3D printing is no different at all from any other kind of printing. People always have the same flaws and the same needs from you. You are the person helping them to take advantage of the technology and see what is possible for them. If 50 years ago it was that they could print a photo or a book, today it’s that they can print something like a pair of glasses. Still, you serve a human need: to start a small business, to realize a creative dream.

That human level is where everything important is happening. The business that can get down to really sharing a bond with the customer and understanding and appreciating them for what they are, is going to be successful. The money will follow. That’s our view.

It seems rare to me in technology to see people follow their parents as role models and mentors

Yes, it is more rare than it used to be. Technology is no longer seen as a trade, but rather as a skillset. So you are not a craftsman or a journeyman, but an engineer. That brings the focus out of customer-minded, traditional practices, and toward institutional ideas and practices. The engineer thinks as the university teaches him to think. Not as his father teaches him to think.

That is not always bad of course, but there is a reason that trades have been passed down from

parent to child for all of time. In the formalization of some knowledge, you will lose that which cannot be written down. I can teach you to code out of a book. I cannot teach you to run a business out of a book. I cannot tell you what use that code will be once you know how to do it. That is experiential, and it is something people can get from their parents, and should get from them.

So in a sense you would like to see the tech business be more conservative?

Maybe. What does this mean, conservative? There is simply a great deal of value in growing up in an industry, just as there is value in coming into an industry fresh with a new perspective. Both approaches must always be considered.

In the “entrepreneur industry” today, ego is heavily monetized. Right? It is all about the founder and the singularity of them and their vision, and how no one else is the same as they are. No one can do what they do. But this is nonsense. This is not how knowledge is gained in the real world or passed on for our shared benefit. We are not islands to ourselves. If you build to last, then what you build is more than you are.

When you look to the great fortunes of the 21st century, it is sad in a way that they belong to people who are in many ways isolated in time and place. They have no sense of their past or future. Disruption in the sense that the technology industry means is often just an ego trip. Technology always changes. It is a question of whether we are better as people, or worse. Do we do good for people, or not?

What attracts you to working on 3d printing in Europe? Why not somewhere else?

Well, of course we were attracted to StartupYard! But also the fact that Europe is a really fertile ground for change and innovation in 3D printing. We see it as somewhere that we can bring a lot of value, and where businesses and people are ready to take advantage of our technology.

We love Israel as well, so we will always be home there. However, 3D printing is not like the old printing business. It is language independent. It is global and digital. So we must be where other companies are doing this work. The business may be global, but being physically present is still very important. We have to make ourselves unavoidable and inescapable for the future of 3d printing.

Let’s talk about the technology because I think most people see 3d printing in a really simplistic way. What is the current state of 3d printing, if you can provide some analogy to traditional printing technology? Are we in the Gutenberg days? The Franklin era?  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So decades  ago, when our father was taking over the family business, there was no really good software drivers available for professional, quality printing. People who were going digital were doing this stuff on their own. You had to have a very good reason to do that, because the change was very drastic. It was essentially taking everything that you know about printing, and changing all of it.

You want to print digitally? Ok. You need a team of developers, hardware engineers, you need a lot of money to research and test. You basically have to start from zero. People cannot imagine this now, because today you don’t think about PostScript and print drivers, and these things that were hell on people in the printing business for many years.

You have to consider that digital transformation is not a new phenomenon in 2018. It has been going on for decades already. The journey from an offset press, with physical plates printing pages, to a digital laser printer is an enormous change. It is like going from steam power to electric. Everything must change.

Now we face the same level of challenges in 3D printing. To digitize the making of 3D objects. If you will, I think we are in the offset printing era right now of 3D objects. You have injection molds. You have industrial processes that take huge investment and planning to work. You do have 3D printing happening on a small scale, but you lack all the hardware and the essential drivers between the finished object, and the technology itself. And if you are lucky enough and have access to 3D printing, you still need to follow a long learning curve.

That is the problem we are solving at the end of the day. The ease with which you print a page of paper today should be, maybe 15years from now, the same ease you experience printing a pair of glasses or a new doorknob. Whatever you need. Remember printing evolved from handwriting to the printing press, to the digital laser printer in more than 500 years. Manufacturing also is taking a journey from the handmade to the ubiquitously available object in a similar space of time.

Obviously there have been some hype bubbles surrounding 3D printing in the last few years. Do you think we are poised for a major step in the adoption of these technologies now?

It’s true, particularly maybe 10 years ago, that there have been some hype and disappointment around 3D printing. This is necessary to the process, And predictable in a way.

This is a normal thing for new technologies on the adoption curve.

There were lots of ideas, and people doing very cool things with 3D printers, but the technology has not jumped to mainstream adoption for a few specific reasons.

One of them is the materials being used, and that is changing very quickly. People found pretty quickly that the variety of objects and functionalities was limited by the material. Color, strength, consistently, etc. There are many new approaches coming to the physical printing process that will make this much easier.

On the side of software, this is what we are trying to solve. One of the problems that emerged very quickly was that there are many physical parameters to consider when you are printing an object of any size.

Unlike on a piece of paper, you have an object in 3 axis, and you must consider the 4th dimension as well: in which orientation should parts be printed, and even more, what should the internal structure of the parts be?

So that is where AI comes in?

Yes, precisely. AI is needed to run through all these potential variations in the way a thing can be printed, and select the best one for the purpose at hand. That can save a very lengthy process of having to manually determine these factors, or just guess and check to see if it works, which is what people are doing today.

Many hobbyists quickly found out that they could not move from imagining a new object to simply printing it, because the technology required more detail than the imagination supplies. You need hundreds or more parameters to print a 3D object. You must know the thickness of each component. You need to choose internal structures (honeycomb, swiss cheese?) you must know in what orientation to print, and where the piece will be separated from the printer. How fast will it be printed?

So the process of iterating these tiny details in a physical printer is very expensive and time consuming. There were many cases in which people just couldn’t produce prototypes because they couldn’t get the printer to follow a process that created a stable object. That’s a big problem in 3D printing. That’s not a physical obstacle, it’s a software obstacle.

We are using AI to sort that problem out. You have to virtually simulate the infinite combinations of possible approaches to printing an object, and find that ideal process, which is going to be absolutely unique for every single thing you print. One small change to the thickness or the length of something, and a 3D printer must be completely reconfigured to allow for printing a stable version of this new design.

That really destroys your ability to iterate, unless you can be sure that each time you print, you are getting the best version of the object you are trying to make. You can make quite complex parts in 3D printers, and in some cases these parts can serve to replace dozens of other components that were formerly separate pieces in a machine or a piece of furniture. But if you can’t figure out how to stabily print that object, then the 3D rendering is useless. It’s just an idea.

Printsyst is taking that rendering, and making it printable and stable, and useful from the first try. That’s the objective. Break the expertise barrier that stops people from using 3D printing for whatever reason. Democratize manufacturing and make it something accessible to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and individuals.

We know that 3D printing has huge applications for manufacturing and design (such as being able to rapidly build custom parts and eliminate assembly steps). But what kind of impact do you see on consumer lives in the next decade or so?

Much of the impact may go unseen for the near future, to the end user. Many things that were formerly very complex to assemble may begin to be 3D printed, such as electronic components and even parts for cars, furniture, and things like that. But you may not know the difference if you don’t know how to look for it. It will simply allow businesses to deliver these goods cheaper, faster, and in more variety.

Later on, as this technology is further democratized, it can have the same effect that widespread printing had on the spread of literature and businesses around the world. The ability to create something fast, cheap and in good quality with minimal equipment also means you can take a lot of creative risks, and many microbusinesses may be born. Already you see this among some designers, using 3d printing as a bit of a gimmick. It will not be a gimmick forever.

Ultimately, we probably get to the point where an individual is able to order or print parts and object themselves that are customized to their exact needs or the needs of a situation. You know what size shoe you wear, but I bet you don’t know the distance between your temples. So why don’t you? Because knowing that, you can create a pair of glasses that fit you perfectly.

3D printing will mean “mass customization.” This means less waste of energy and materials, less cost to transportation, and ultimately we believe a better environment in which fewer resources are ultimately wasted by overproduction and under-customization.

How can companies who are employing 3D printing start to take advantage of your technology? Where do they get started?

Right now, we are working with small and medium sized enterprises who are using 3D printing to develop and produce new products. These companies don’t have a lot of internal 3d printing expertise, but can bridge that gap with Printsyst.

We also are interested in working with designers, and other entrepreneurs or engineers who want to use 3D printing, but again, don’t want to lose a lot of time learning how to get the most out of a printer or a particular design. We would love to support efforts to build low cost housing, and there are currently many needs from many different types of printers to get them to run more efficiently, and to optimize designs on the go, making each printed part perfect for its exact position and purpose.

Some industries we see getting interested are especially interior designers, architects, and automotive repair as well. 3D printing is great for refurbishing cars or making customized components, so we should see a lot more interest in that direction. Replacement parts, particularly, can be made much faster and exactly to fit.

In the long term, we really believe this technology is going to penetrate everywhere. Eitan spent his military service on a submarine in the Israeli Navy, working mostly on repairs. Imagine having a 3D printer in a submarine so print the exact parts you need. Stock becomes a much easier logistical issue.

 

See Printsyst Pitch at StartupYard Demo Day Batch X, November 29th in Prague

Meet Urbigo: Your First Smart Home Garden from StartupYard Batch X

/in , , , /by

With each new batch of startups at StartupYard, we run a series of detailed interviews with the founders to give our community a sense of who they are, and how they see the world they’re trying to change. Last week we announced 7 new companies in StartupYard Batch X. Today, we jump in with an interview of Anja Varnicic, CEO and Co-founder of Urbigo, the urban smart garden company that promises to “Bring nature closer to you.”

Urbigo is a system including a small modular garden with grow lights, and cylinders for plants containing nutrients and water. The garden is controlled via an interactive mobile app, and users can get the latest advice on how to tend to their mini gardens, as well as order new plants, nutrients, and soil packs from Urbigo.

CEO Co-founder Anja Varnicic, shows off Urbigo’s Smart Garden with company CTO and Co-founder Aleksandar Varnicic

 

Sign Up to See Urbigo Pitch at StartupYard DemoDay Batch X!

Hi Anja, coming from a plant biology background, what made you want to turn your passion for the science into a business, helping people grow plants at home?

So, as an environmental scientist, I have long asked the question: “what role do plants really play in our lives?” The truth is that we are entirely dependant on them. For oxygen. For nutrients. For flavor, and for our wellbeing. Yet modern society has moved off the farm, and now treats plants and spices as commodities that are easily fungible between one brand and another. If not from Spain, then from Brazil. If not from Turkey, then from California.

We don’t understand where our food and our air comes from anymore, and I think that is a problem for people living in cities. Of course, we can’t expect people all to live in hydroponic greenhouses in their flats, but we should get ourselves closer to the foods that we eat and the flavors that we taste.

The way of doing that for us at UrbiGo has been to bring just a little bit of green into people’s lives, and to show them the immediate benefits of tending to plants that we depend on for everything. We came up with a focus on spices that can be grown in the urban kitchen, because not only do fresh coriander or mint taste better than dried and packaged versions, but also getting something to eat directly from a plant in your home reminds you of the life behind the things that you eat, and the natural world you depend on.


As with any other true love story, the startup idea happened unexpectedly and accidentally. I wanted to make these ideas into a real business. Luckily enough, I had a chance to share my business idea with Alex, our now CTO, who had previous startup experiences. We shared our thoughts, he loved it, and boom – UrbiGo was born!

How do you think incorporating gardening into one’s everyday life can affect positive change for somebody living in a city?

CEO Anja Varnicic is an environmental scientist and an engineer.


They say plants are the friends that always listen. And they really do. Indoor plants and urban gardening has become madly popular in the past few years because it reduces stress, make our air cleaner and our bodies healthier. And those are the thing we usually forget about or take for granted.

Having and growing fresh ingredients from your own garden is a creative activity. It brings us the same feelings we have as in making a sculpture or a painting, or writing a song. Gardening is viewed in Eastern cultures as almost poetic in nature.

For the millenial generation, we want to feel that connection to the Earth, and doing so makes us feel more responsible and more connected to nature. It makes us feel like grownups to be able to make life in an urban area where nature has seemingly little control.

I also believe that the millennial generation regrets the excessive commoditization of food. We yearn for the experience of knowing how our food is made, what it is, and how it makes its journey to our plates. So you see many different ways this is expressed in the modern consumer culture. Farm to kitchen restaurants. Farmer’s markets. Home gardens, and smart mini-gardens like Urbigo, that will help people to get back some of the control that we have lost over our diets and our environment.

]What would you say are the biggest mistakes we make when it comes to designing urban homes, and thinking about our living environment?

]Today, a larger share of younger urban residents live in rented flats or flatshares than have ever done in the past. What we see happening in cities is interior spaces being divided into smaller and smaller parts, and unless the presence of plants is part of the planning for those spaces, it ends up as a kind of afterthought.

Take a walk for example through an Ikea, which is where a lot of young people are going to get a sense of how to use their personal space… the plants are the last thing you see there. They are the afterthought. They are what you add when you have everything done.

This is backwards, I think. We need to plan more around plants, and plan to live with more plants in our personal spaces. That can affect the placement of windows, or the whole design of a building. The use of light must be reconsidered. In some cities such as Paris or Berlin now, whole buildings are being constructed with plants on their walls and rooftops. This is a good start.

Do not treat plants as a pleasant addition to your home. If you do, you will not have room for them when you decide they are the thing missing for you.

Let’s talk more about Urbigo’s products. What would you say distinguishes you from other indoor gardening solutions? What is your “killer app?”


UrbiGo isn’t just a fancy smart garden that grows fresh herbs for you – it is a community of plant lovers and enthusiasts that are changing urban gardening as we know it.

UrbiGo gardeners get to control their UrbiGo mini smart garden from their phones and learn how to grow their own fresh and nutritious ingredients in a fun and simple way through a gamified app. By completing daily challenges in the app we want to motivate and empower people to become successful urban gardeners and live more sustainably.

We take some cues from products such as FitBit, or Calm, an App for managing stress and relaxation. The way they engage millions of users into doing something good for their body and mind is something we  can learn from. Tending to your garden should be a small but integral part of your daily ritual, and with UrbiGo app we want to make the process learning and enjoyable even for those who could kill a cactus.

The Urbigo App

Now is an interesting time for home gardening, because today urban millennials are becoming used to healthy lifestyle daily rituals using technologies like smartphones and watches. We don’t want to suck people into paying attention to their phones, but rather to use the medium of the smartphone to help people live a healthier and more satisfying life, and live in a better environment.

Suppose that urban gardening becomes the norm for people living in cities 10 or 20 years from now. How else would you like to change the way we design our lives around food, cooking, and living spaces in the future?


Since we tend to spend most of our days in offices and indoor spaces,  I believe it will be essential to stay connected with things that matter most like family, friends and nature. Plants and greenery have this power to gather people, especially in urban areas where those are scarce.  And we wanted to make this values approachable and simple for our users which inspired us to create product and a network of like minded plant lovers and untaped enthusiasts.

Many people living in cities rarely if ever buy fresh spices and ingredients for cooking. What are they missing out on? What are some of the concrete benefits of growing at home?Besides improving your overall health, growing and consuming your own fresh ingredients makes you connected with nature and origin of your food, that obviously doesn’t grow on market shelves and from plastic packaging.

We’ve heard lots of complaints from our customers, that store-bought herbs dry out in a matter of a few days and don’t have the fresh and intense tastes they’ve come to expect. Once you have something fresh, it can be very striking to taste the difference between that, and something not fresh. So I think people should have more choice about what to consume and when to consume it – this is why the UrbiGo app educates consumers about the benefits of “growing your own ingredients” so you can make proper decisions about your health and wellbeing. Be better informed, and make more informed decisions.

Food gardening is most of all a local and sustainable way of producing fresh ingredients and educating your family on where your food comes from. As cities transform into concrete jungles, this kind of relationship with nature will become crucial for us future generations’ well-being.

As a business, where would you like Urbigo to be 5 years from now? What will be your metric for having accomplished your mission?

We go where our customers needs are, and thus we are experimenting with the ways to include smart indoor gardening into every future home. The next logical long term step would be to incorporate UrbiGo into the smart home device network because there is a space and interest in companies for the next gen “plant device” that would improve urban health and connect with their low-friction lifestyles.

For now our goal is to get a smart garden into every home, and turn that into a network of people who are thinking much more about their well-being, health and importance of food gardening.

Imagine, using smart home technology to, in a way, bring us back to an earlier age when you would ask your neighbors for an egg or a cup of sugar. Maybe in 5 years you will be able to use UrbiGo to compete in urban gardening skills with your neighbor, grow chillies in your office desk or have a “green pet” for your kids. Maybe it will lead to people sharing much more of their domestic lives and spaces with each other, and helping each other to live better.

I think these very locally focused changes will be a very important part of the smart-home of the future. Not that you are one home connected to the whole planet, but that you are one home connected to the homes around you as well. We all share one environment, and the best way to improve it is to connect and learn together.

You’re employing a number of new technologies in Urbigo’s gardens already, like 3d printing, and LED lighting. How do you see technology making urban gardening even easier in the future?


New technologies have allowed urban gardening become more “smart” and resilient to climate change effects we are experiencing. So you don’t have to be dependent 100% on sunlight, ever changing weather conditions or your personal skills and knowledge .

But, still, people don’t want technology to do everything for them, because growing and tending plants can be part of a soothing ritual as well. I see technology as a tool to make your everyday life greener, easier but also to empower you to learn and share your urban gardening experience with others. We cannot stop urbanization, but with technology we can help people stay connected with nature.

Has there been a major surprise for you since joining the StartupYard program? Did you learn something you weren’t expecting to?

I’m not sure if it was a surprise, but we have certainly noted that the interest in smart gardening in the corporate and business spheres are also growing very fast. I think as millennials begin to move higher in large organizations, this is going to become an area where we can have a big impact with our product.

Urbigo, StartupYard Accelerator

The Urbigo Founders brought some life into StartupYard this round

People spend up to half their time in offices, and in many cases, these spaces are poorly adapted to keeping people healthy and happy. Companies are understanding more and more that the total wellbeing of their employees is a vital consideration, and that if they cannot provide a better environment for people, then workers will go to those who can. I think this is very positive, and I hope to continue to raise people’s standards for their immediate environment, and inspire people to demand greener workplaces.

What have been your team’s biggest personal or professional challenges in making this project a reality?  

We’ve been able to grow the waitlist for UrbiGo to over 500 people and we got major interest not just from individuals but also corporates. One of the challenges for us, as we are engineers, was to let go of some of our ideas about what people should like, and really listen to what our customers are saying about what they want.

You can come up with great ideas, but if you can’t get your ego out of the way, you will miss the experiences and stories that really define who your customers are, and how they see your products fitting into their lives. Learning this at the beginning of our startup journey was crucial to get first sales, traction and investments.

We cannot stop the technology and urbanization, but we have to design a product that accommodates our customer’s fast paced life and needs and also engages them into doing something little everyday that is good for themselves. This is an ongoing process but we are happy that so many people help us do that and share our vision.

What do people need to get started with their own urban gardens? How can they get their hands on an UrbiGo smart garden?

Since UrbiGo does not require big space, plant knowledge or time but accommodates to your lifestyle, you are basically one click away from starting to grow your mini indoor garden.

We have had testers out in the field for a whole, and we’re ready to go live. Right now, we are taking signups for a special, limited first batch of Urbigo gardens for those real enthusiasts who are ready to join our smart urban gardening community. This exclusive run will start delivery in December 2018, and the wider public will be able to order from Urbigo during the next year.

Sign Up for your First-Run Urbigo Before It’s Too Late.