In my previous blog post I briefly listed the major differences (in my own personal point of view) between a normal (if there is such a thing!) “startup-project” and a “deeptech-project” which started from a research-based innovation. Our academic, detail-oriented way of thinking combined with the “backwards” project, where the solution was invented before the customer problem was identified, is an interesting combination that could potentially hinder the progress of the project.
Thankfully, our academic mindset naturally set us in the frame of mind where learning new things is just part of the job, and fun – which meant that our team was absolutely thrilled when we heard we were selected to be part of a Red Brick Accelerator!
What is Red Brick?
Red Brick is a community-driven startup accelerator, which aims to support pre-revenue startups – and in our case, Research-to-Business-project. It is located at the Platform 6 startup house, which brings together all startup services and a good number of startups here in Tampere.
Ten weeks of intensive, comprehensive training, with impressive line-up of expert speakers, mentors and continuous support from the Red Brick-team ensured an excellent learning experience. Our team gained loads of valuable experience and viewpoints not only from the speakers and mentors, but also from our wonderful peers – other startup founders from different fields of expertise, and at different stages of their startup journey.
The Learnings
The amount of things covered over this training was almost overwhelming, and there is no value in trying to cover all of it here. Instead, here are a few major take-home-messages our team found valuable and helpful.
Overall, I would say the biggest thing that happened over the accelerator was the shift in our thinking. At the start we were very much focused on the scientific details and excellence of our innovation, The Solution. However, during the 10 weeks we learned to see our idea through the eyes of our potential customer and learned to start looking for The Problem we could solve.
For anyone in business, such line of thinking is a given, and it might even sound a bit silly that for us it was a new thing. But in academia things are different. There, your professional value is measured by the quality, quantity and novelty your research, number of publications, and the number of citations your publications gets. In other words, your job is to “sell” your research and your ideas to the scientific journals and your peers, and to them, it’s all about scientific details.
This shift in thinking, obviously, is not enough. As our innovation – a humidity sensor – could be used pretty much anywhere, finding the correct customer segment was a challenge in itself. We learned how to evaluate what industry and which customer would benefit the most of the unique features we have developed, what customer problem does our technology solve, and how will the technology benefit the customer in terms of the customer KPIs. We learned how to actively listen instead of pitching our idea: how does the customer use sensors and sensor data today, what potential problems do they have, what is the cost of these problems, and so on.
But efficient and targeted communication is also essential, and Red Brick gave us a good understanding on how to relay our message to different stakeholders. The way we talk to potential collaborators, customers, or investors, is completely different. We must understand what these different stakeholders value, what they are interested in, and tailor our message to suit their interest.
The End (or, The New Beginning!)
The programme ended in style at Platform 6 with the Demo Day, where each startup pitched their idea to a group of peers, investors and other interested audience. This was such a good day with loads of networking and excellent pitches. It was so good to see how much all of the teams had grown and matured their ideas in such a short amount of time! I wish them all the best of luck in their startup journey!
Overall, this experience was definitely the most valuable one we have had during this project so far. The insights and feedback we got, and the shift in our way of thinking from academic to customer-centric has been more we could have hoped for. This experience also gave us new insights into ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses as a team – a valuable lesson to any team, but especially one that is slowly progressing towards spinoff.
On behalf of Team INTENSE I want to send huge thanks to Mirza & the Red Brick team and all the speakers and mentors involved in the programme, your work is extremely valuable!
Cheers,
Sari
Commercialization specialist
at Team INTENSE