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The High Tech Plaza is home to over 70 ambitious, tech-driven high tech start-ups. How is the start-up life for them, what are they working on and what keeps them motivated to drive their company to success? In this first blog of Meet the Plaza you can read the stories of PHLECS, AlphaBeats, Vention Technologies, Holland Innovative and VersionBay

Rene Wenmekers from PHLECS 

About a year ago, three former employees from Philips Light & Health founded PHLECS, a startup focused on providing state-of-the-art UV-free, dermatology solutions. "We are currently working on photo dermatology care therapies for various skin issues like psoriasis, eczema, and senile pruritus. But we are ready and enthusiastic to explore new areas," explains Rene Wenmekers, responsible for quality and regulations in the company.

The employment of light therapy in the treatment of skin conditions is not something new. However, PHLECS' revolutionary device brings to the table an exciting and most significant improvement in the field. Under the traditional methods, skin burns, melanoma and infections are not uncommon side effects due to the use of ultraviolet light. PHLECS' original technology, on the other hand, utilizes what could be described as a clean light, without UV or radiation. This results in no harmful effects on the skin. On the contrary, the blue light obtained through 1000 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) suppresses the overproduction of ill skin cells and yet limits inflammation, which is more than a "plus". 

Wenmekers concludes, "Our goal in five years is to be the center of photo dermatology solutions; we will be able to tackle multiple skin diseases and to improve the quality of life for our patients."  

Are you interested in getting in contact with PHLECS or learning more about our technology? Contact us!

Bert-Jan Woertman from AlphaBeats

It is the 21st century, and our lives and minds are frantic. Anxiety and lack of focus are, unfortunately, everyday complaints. Listening to music tends to be an excellent way to find relaxation, but it has limitations on how much it can act to relieve stress. 

Enter AlphaBeats, an app that gently modifies your favorite music, inviting your mind to go into alpha mode and relax. “You just sit back, hit ‘play’ and your brain is guided intuitively into relaxation,” says Bert-Jan Woertman, the company’s CMO.

Woertman, together with Johan Kortas, Han Dirkx, and Jur Vellema, founded AlphaBeats 6 months ago with a simple, yet compelling objective: “To help people train themselves to stay more relaxed, feel better, achieve more, and simply enjoy life.” Their app, in development now, measures your breathing, allowing it to “see” how tense you are. Based on these real-time measurements, the patented algorithm adapts music in such a way that the brain reacts with relaxation. “We already have over 500 people that signed up and indicated that they would love to participate and think with us about designing and developing the app and the user experience.”

AlphaBeats’ team will be releasing their app for BETA testing soon. So, they are very much interested in getting advice from people with know-how in kicking off apps worldwide on their pre-launch and launch campaign. The company is also looking for funding for their project: “We would really appreciate it if people could connect us to investors in their network.” Businesswise, their ultimate goal is a partnership with Spotify and Apple Music and wearables like Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Muse. 

According to Woertman, “The only things you need are your phone, your music, our app, and 10 minutes of your time to relax.” Would you want to know more about the project and how AlphaBeats work? Check their video above!

Teun Broeren from Vention Technologies

EendjesomhoogGIF- Vention

This week we met Teun Broeren who is currently an Electrical Engineer at Vention Technologies. Teun has recently joined the management team and started to work on expanding Vention’s internal business processes. Vention is a fast and flexible prototyping and product development company. They turn ideas into products for their customers with a focus on embedded software and electronic hardware development. This is mostly in the range of consumer electronics, medical applications or the energy market.

“With our deep understanding of embedded software and hardware, we develop products that work out there in the real world. How? Not just by going with any solution, but by helping you discover what it is that you really need. Our people work in close collaboration, combining multiple competences, making sure that you get the benefit of our up-to-date knowledge. As your partner in development, we make sure that your idea comes to life by shaping it so that it can be designed, produced and marketed, and therefore it is ready to conquer the world”, explains Teun Broeren.

Vention is an open, young company that takes pride in collaborating as a team to solve solutions as well as celebrating the big successes together. “In January we had our quarterly figures drink. Hereby, we completed and announced all figures of 2019 to the team. This included the profit figures, which resulted in a bonus for every team member!” This is just an example of the friendly atmosphere and high involvement of all ‘Ventioneers’ within the company.

Vention Technologies is currently looking for someone who can help them out in HR, recruitment and marketing as they are mostly engineers. For HR, they are currently looking for a part time person to help us with this. Feel free to contact us if you have any leads or questions! 

Hilde Teunissen from Holland Innovative

This week we meet with Hilde Teunissen, recruiter at Holland Innovative. Holland Innovative was founded in 2006 by Hans Meeske and has since then grown to almost 50 employees. ‘We focus on providing leadership in project management, product & process development and reliability engineering. We work with multinationals, SMEs and start-ups. Our proven methodologies are highly analytical, which leads to a robust product with a predictable lifespan that reaches the market faster.’ 

‘Holland Innovative is an ambitious, growing company. Our goal in five years is to expand by having more colleagues to help even more clients solve their problems. We are very opportunistic, so whenever we see an opportunity, we will try to find a way to do something with it.’

‘We continuously celebrate our achievements, whether it is hiring new colleagues and finding a project for them; starting a project with a new client or celebrating when we have been working for a long time with a client. We also celebrate when we have given a successful training to a class full of students.’ 

‘We would love to come in contact with other companies at the High Tech Campus, so if you are interested or have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact us!’

Gareth Thomas from VersionBay

We meet Co-Founder of VersionBay, Gareth Thomas. Who is responsible for Sales, Marketing and Business Development. VersionBay has the mission to empower people to leverage state-of-the-art software stacks. VersionBay started with a simple question: why don't more people use the latest software stacks? 

‘Our biggest achievement the last year? We landed our first Belgium customer this month, have signed a partnership agreement with a Norwegian company: Open iT and we have the right to sell their solutions in the Benelux. So, enough to celebrate! 

VersionBay initially started by supporting only MATLAB customers, but we learnt that we were not perceived as an independent consultant, so we added Python. It turns out that Python world also has challenges with versions. We are planning to grow in headcount and support different technical and scientific computing tools in five years.’

And after we asked VersionBay a couple of questions, they also have some for you!

1.     Do others know of anyone with MATLAB/Python companies that would benefit from VersionBay Services? 
2.     What tools do other Startups use? (CRM, Finance, Book keeping, Marketing, Web, Web traffic)
3.     How are other companies using interns? 
4.     What are experiences with the first real hires of a company?

So, if you have the answer to any of these questions or want to have some coffee (just black coffee, please) with Gareth, just contact him!