High Tech Campus Eindhoven is glad to announce a major expansion of its facilities for startups. High Tech Plaza is a brand new concept that forms the startup hub within the bigger Campus ecosystem. It is the biggest and most dedicated place to start, accelerate and scale high tech startups in the Netherlands.
This is the concept in summary:
With over 40 startups and scaleups, young tech companies are already well represented at the world's smartest square kilometer. Paul van Son, Marketing Manager of High Tech Campus Eindhoven and responsible for the development of the High Tech Plaza concept: "We see a big increase in the interest of tech startups that want to become part of the Campus. Young companies can benefit from our open and cooperative ecosystem, but until recently we simply didn't have the space to house more startups then we do today."
Recently, over 10.000 square meters of office space and labs in existing buildings became available. "As Site Management organisation, we took this opportunity to commit it to young companies and develop a major startup hub. We strongly believe that it will be a boost for the quality of our ecosystem, since we strongly believe that diversity of companies is essential", he explains. For the development of the concept, Campus Site Management worked closely together with other drivers of the startup community.
About five years ago, High Tech Campus Eindhoven (HTCE) and HighTechXL started an alliance to improve the startup ecosystem by starting a dedicated accelerator program for high tech hardware startups. The program attracted and accelerated over fifty high potential startups and two years ago, HighTechXL Plaza (HTC 12) was the beginning of a startup hub at the Campus. It was developed as the place for alumni of the program to find a first permanent place in the ecosystem.
Now, it evolves into High Tech Plaza.
Hans Meeske of Campus based company Holland Innovative was one of the drivers in the development of this old Philips building and will remain one of the key drivers in the new High Tech Plaza concept. "With the development of our first startup building, we learned a lot. In the past years, we got a lot of feedback and these learnings were very helpful in the evolution to the new High Tech Plaza concept. We're taking it to the next level. Not only in quantity of startups, but also in terms of quality of the ecosystem", Hans explains.
The quality of the startup ecosystem is mainly determined by the support that startups can get. Paul: "The fact that we had to create a concept with three buildings forming one hub gave us the opportunity to focus on a different theme per building. We will now have a building to Start (HTC 12), one to Scale (HTC 29) and one to get Support (HTC 27). The buildings are adjacent to each other and are open for all members of the Plaza concept."
The Support building will be the new home of accelerator program HighTechXL, Nextview's Design Thinking Center and lots of other supportive services like patent specialists, venture capitalists and more.
HighTechXL CEO Guus Frericks: "We are happy with the expansion of the startup facilities at the Campus and with our next step as accelerator and driver of the startup ecosystem. The Support building will be the place for startups to get all the help they need to grow their company. It's very valuable for us to be close to our alumni and to team up with other supportive players to help startups grow."
Want to know more about High Tech Plaza and the possibilities? Download the leaflet:
Do you want to become part of High Tech Plaza in a supportive role? Get in touch via the button below, or send an email to paul.van.son@hightechcampus.com