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Eindhoven: Phillips, Startups, and Holland’s own ‘Forbidden City’
Eindhoven: Phillips, Startups, and Holland’s own ‘Forbidden City’
There are too many new developments happening in Eindhoven to talk about them all in one blog post. But this is exactly what makes Eindhoven a pulsating city of innovation; part of Holland’s ‘new Silicon Valley’, and a magnet for tech talent.
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Source: Pixabay
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Home to “the smartest square kilometre in Europe”, the city of Eindhoven lies 125km south of the Dutch capital. Once the beating heart of Holland’s first industrial revolution, Eindhoven today is a city in transition, bustling with a constant flow of new ideas and new developments in the fields of science, technology, and design.
When you google the name ‘Eindhoven’, it’s no surprise that the first images you see are of lightbulbs. Over 125 years ago, Philips Electronics brought light to Eindhoven, and transformed the city into a vibrant industrial success storey. This energy is still present today, visible in the many startups which make up Eindhoven’s new tech scene.
Dubbed as “the most inventive city in the world” by Forbes in 2013, Eindhoven keeps pushing the limits of what’s possible. The growing startup community was spearheaded by Brainport Eindhoven, a space created to stimulate tech and design collaborations by offering entrepreneurs all the facilities needed to bring their ideas to life.
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Source: https://agne-k.com
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This testing ground for innovation became a fertile breeding ground for new business; stimulated by the dynamic interaction between research and industry, events, festivals, educational institutes, students, and the site’s many international visitors and investors. This has produced innumerable personal and business success stories, including Pillow’s Willow, VRee, and BitSensor, a cybersecurity startup awarded for its lineup of innovative efforts in the Netherlands.
Following in the footsteps of Gerard and Anton Philips, the founders of the first truly successful startup in the region, Amber, the car-sharing startup recently raised €500,000 in funding to further expand its vision to be “the first in the world to implement self-driving cars for commercial use”, with its on-demand fully electric BMWi3. Amber already provides mobility to more than 5,000 users who can request one of their 163 cars at any time, and are predicted to become one of the next Dutch tech unicorns.
Meanwhile, SendCloud, a startup which has developed cloud-based shipping software for ecommerce stores, has just announced its entry into the Spanish market after raising millions of euros from investors. With more than 15,000 clients and more than 50 employees, SendCloud was ranked as the fastest growing company in the Netherlands for 2017 at Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and won the Gerard & Anton award back in 2016.
Many of the startups born in Eindhoven are cornerstones of innovation, not only aiming to transform the world of work but revolutionise technology for people’s well-being. Lightyear, a solar-powered car that charges itself, is already considered a challenge to Telsa, and recently won the CES Climate Change Innovator Award.
Equipped with a solar roof, it eliminates the need for charging points, and can drive up to 800km without any sunlight. Lightyear will not only save tonnes of CO2 emissions, but will also prove that “electric cars are ready for every corner of the planet”, according to CEO Lex Hoefsloot.
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Source: Lightyear
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Recently named the “Best new global city for startups” in Fortune list, Eindhoven is a conduit for notable startup stories. These are supported by a range of accelerator programs such as the High Tech XL, which works to support hardware startups from the idea to prototype, to sustainable business stage, by connecting ‘maker’s with financers.
This is supported by sites such as the High Tech Campus, which accommodates over 11,000 researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs, of more than 80 different nationalities, the Dutch Design Academy, and the Eindhoven University of Technology. Students of which often go on to work in the startup scene for businesses eager for new, young talent.
It would be a mistake to think that Eindhoven is merely about cutting-edge technologies and design. The city has a vibrant creative hub based in Strijp-S. Previously known as ‘the forbidden city’, the Strijp-S industrial park was formerly only accessible to Philips employees. Spaces that once held lightbulb and electrotechnical manufacturing equipment have given way to new uses. The old factory buildings have been transformed into creative workplaces, shops, restaurants, and bars.
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Source: https://strijp-s.nl/
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At present, Strijp-S hosts a unique mix of renowned multinational technology companies such as Amazon, Bosch, and Gibson, knowledge institutes like the Singularity University, plus a number of highly innovative SME’s, startups and scaleups such as Flyparks.
Launched in early 2019, the airport car parking comparison site has since helped thousands of customers find affordably priced parking services. With an office in Strijp-S’s Videolab, Flyparks is part of ROOSH, another of Eindhoven’s homegrown success stories which now attracts talent from all over the world. The company’s marketers and developers come from more than 15 different nations, making daily work at the company more interesting through the different backgrounds and perspectives.
More than an ‘epicentre of innovation’
Eindhoven has always been more than an epicentre of technological and design innovation. The city is made up of an exceptional blend of multinational trailblazing entrepreneurs. The product of a progressive ecosystem which never sleeps but always invents; an interminable engine of creativity.
As BitSensor’s Ruben van Vreeland concludes, “Eindhoven is a great city that caters towards personal and professional growth. If you want to be immersed in high tech innovation, Eindhoven is the Dutch city to be in.”
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Source: ROOSH
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