Business

Eindhoven Business Briefing: The post-corona V-shaped recovery edition

How do we avoid a coronavirus depression? Easy … latent demand. When people stay home for weeks, they need stuff. If Eindhoven is a barometer for how Europe is going to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the future of business is bright, because there’s an encouraging amount of activity going on as the Netherlands reopens.

In fact, the crowds returning to Designer Outlet Roermond, just south of Eindhoven, have been so big Roermond’s mayor threatened to shut down the outlet center if stores can’t control shoppers. On 31 May, so many people came from nearby Germany there were traffic jams on the highways leading to the outlet center.

And that was after all the regional mayors in Limburg province, which includes Roermond, wrote opinion posts and letters to the editor in the regional media begging Germans not come to the center on the Pentecost holiday.

Our sources who work there report crowds are – if anything – larger than before coronavirus shut the giant complex in March. The stores we’ve visited in Eindhoven and Maastricht were busy, though there’s less inventory because of increased space between aisles … which isn’t a bad thing.

Retail is still strong. So let’s look at the tech side.

Sioux expanding

Sioux Technologies, one of Europe’s most advanced deep-tech support companies, is building a huge assembly hall in Eindhoven with a 700m2 clean room, according to the company’s website. Sioux functions as the R&D lab for high-tech clients, coming up with faster and cleverer solutions.

Production sites in Nederweert and Eindhoven will consolidate to 101 Esp near the Sioux headquarters. The clean room alone will increase to 700m2 (7,500-plus square feet) from the 400 m2 existing facility.

Want to make a stepper to make computer chips? Sioux (pronounced “SEE-youxs” in Dutch, not “sue” as in English) can help with the software, photolithography and metrology.

Need a machine that can automate biopsy marking and analysis for pathologists involved in cancer treatment? Sioux built one for Philips. Need a smart soup maker for the office? Sioux can build the software and electronics.

They even make craft beer. Is this a great company or what?

AN ILLUSTRATION FROM TU/E’S MASTER PLAN 2040 WITH PROPOSED BUILDINGS IN WHITE

New tender for housing at Technical University of Eindhoven

Technical University of Eindhoven has issued a tender to build 700 new student residences, planned for the northeast side of the campus on the edge of centrum.

Before the pandemic hit, there were way too many students and way too few units everywhere across the Netherlands. Rents at some of the nice buildings were sky-high. That’s not likely to change post-pandemic as most European universities don’t have American-style dorms.

TU/e is leading the way to that American college ambiance, with two residential towers with 300 units each replacing a building to be demoed. A low-rise “student village” building with 100 units is planned for the space between the two new towers. The project will basically double the number of students already living on campus.

The post on the TU/e website makes clear this is a move to attract more foreign students at a school that already has a sizable percentage of students from all over the world, including the United States, China and South Korea … students who pay tuition that helps subsidize Dutch students.

This project has been in the planning stage for years. But a tender might mean it will happen sooner than later. And by the way, TU/e already has a great campus and great program for a tuition for Americans that’s about 20-percent that of Purdue or other land-grant engineering schools in the U.S.

NEXTVIEW’S SPACE AT HIGH TECH CAMPUS’ STARTUP HUB (High Tech Campus Eindhoven)

Salesforce invests in Nextview

Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of San Francisco-based CSM giant Salesforce has invested in Nextview, which is in Building 27 in High Tech Campus Eindhoven’s startup hub, home to HighTechXL and Dispatches.

In fact, we envy Nextview’s very groovy space, where we’ve attended a couple of startup events including a Drinks, Pitches and Demos.

While he wouldn’t reveal the amount of the investment, Nextview founder and CEO Huub Waterval said the injection of capital “will allow us to double our sales in the next three years,” according to Emerce, a website that covers business and marketing.

We’re not 100-percent certain what the consultancy does, but it has something to do with helping clients digitize sales efforts. And whatever they do, Nextview does it in tandem with Salesforce.

Waterval told Emerce that in the past two years Nextview has “grown” by 25 percent, though he didn’t specify if he was talking about revenue or the 85-person workforce. Clients include ABN AMRO bank and Heijmans, a publicly traded construction company based in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, just north of Eindhoven.

In addition to the Eindhoven HQ, Nextview has offices in Brussels, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Salesforce Ventures launched its $125 million Europe Trailblazer Fund last year and was the most active VC in Europe during 2018, investing in digital payments, machine vision, AI, blockchain and API startups.

Intel selects Incooling for collaboration

Even though it’s not quite two years old, Incooling has been selected as one of the first independent startups to collaborate with Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor giant Intel through the Intel GrowthX Open Innovation Platform.

You can read more here from Intel GrowthX.

Incooling was founded in 2018 as part of the first deep-tech cohort at HighTechXL. Incooling uses CO2 cooling technology inspired by CERN to cool data centers. Incooling uses a next-gen, phase-change cooling system to create an optimal thermal environment for processors.

The team also is working with GIGABYTE, the Taiwan-based hardware company big in gaming and high-speed trading.

Incooling has multiple career opportunities at the moment. You can see them all here.

HighTechXL invites you to enter its venture-building selection process

HighTechXL’s Info Session Q&A events are coming up for those brave souls ready to join Incooling CEO Rudie Verweij and other HighTechXL grads to become co-founders of deep-tech startups. Q&A events are set for 16 June, 7 July and 18 August.

You can read all the details on the Info Session landing page here.

HighTechXL is in the process of selecting co-founders – CEOs, CTOs and CBOs – for deep-tech ventures who’ll start the program this fall. These are preliminary steps toward the next FasTrackathon on 16 September.

From the landing page, you can request a link to see the the Info Session video, which has a lot of details about the venture building program and the HighTechXL selection process. If you still have questions after you’ve watched the video, you can sign up for the Q&A online sessions.

After completing an extensive questionnaire and the interview process, you’ll go on to FasTrackathon, a reverse-hackathon where teams come together around advanced technologies and come up with business cases to take the tech to market.

Since 2018, HighTechXL has built teams around advanced technologies from CERN, the European Space Agency, TNO/Holst Centre and Philips. Alums have gone on to raise millions of euros and form partnerships with high tech global giants such as GIGABYTE and Intel.

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