New high-tech companies, start-ups and scale-ups in the region raised €400,000,000 in investments last year. The Gate is an organisation within Eindhoven University of Technology and has helped dozens of start-ups get started since its inception in 2021. “The first steps are the hardest”.
It is since 2021 that TU/e has been making additional efforts with The Gate to acquire patents and allow start-ups from within the university to take the first steps. The Gate was established to help students, but especially researchers connected to the university, patent inventions.
Beginning companies such as AI start-up Dembrane, ATA Mute, whose innovation fights noise pollution, or HaptonTech, which develops material that can be deformed with electrical pulses, are helped along the way by The Gate.
The organisation now has about two hundred start-ups in its portfolio, 62 of which are spin-offs started by TU/e scientists. There are also 22 university students with a spin-off through The Gate. Two Fontys students and one Fontys academic also have a start-up through The Gate. Fifty-one start-ups come from elsewhere from the Brainport Region.
That these start-ups are increasingly contributing to the regional economy is also visible in The Gate’s annual report. €206,000,000 was raised for start-ups, of which €18,000,000 was acquired in the form of grants, with guidance from The Gate. Scale-ups – companies already more advanced in their development – raised €189,000,000 from investors in the same year.
First phase
“Our main task is to help start-ups to survive the initial phase, a time with high cost but no income. That’s the phase when the right type of financing is crucial”, says Jeroen van Woerden, director of The Gate.
“Capital is a challenge. There were reports recently that capital was being withdrawn from the market. As a university, scientists and entrepeneurs, we must remain attractive to investors. Financieel Dagblad recently ran an article about an investment fund that was returning money to lenders. The money is there- and experience teaches me that investments do follow good propositions. When this does not happen, the case is just not strong enough”.
“We want to prevent someone coming up with an invention and not managing to get it patented”
Jeroen van Woerden, director of The Gate
“We make sure that that whole financing phase is well established, so we do that with the regional development companies, BOM in Brabant and Invest-NL in the Netherlands”, Van Woerden says. “Metropolitan Region Eindhoven (MRE) has a start-up financing of €50,000, which is very important for companies. Not everyone gets it, but that’s usually because they don’t meet the demand from the MRE well”.
Patents
Even more important than financing is the initial idea for a start-up. These are often captured in patents. The Gate helps scientists and students get started with that too, to obtain patents on the inventions they make. In the past, this sometimes led to scuffles between researchers or students on the one hand and the university on the other.
“We have made strides in that”, Van Woerden says. In order to prevent disputes between the university, staff and students, information meetings are organised, which about 300 people attended last year. “In this way we want to inform people about the rights and obligations they have, but in this way we also want to prevent a situation where they have come up with a nice invention but it can no longer be patented”.
Public
“Once you have made one thing about your invention public, for example in a presentation at a conference, a patent appplication is no longer possible. Sadly, this is a frequent occurrance, as scientists are always happy to share their ideas with colleagues, not realising they have lost the opportunity to get these ideas patented. However, we see that the awareness of this danger is rising”.
At the university, there were seventeen patent applications in 2013; by 2023, there were 28 – not a hugely surprising increase. “But patenting is expensive”, Van Woerden says. “At Philips and ASML it happens much more, hundreds of patents are filed there every year. But you also have to maintain that because you have to renew them every year. So we are usually open to selling patents or leasing them under a license”.
In addition, the patents provide another source of income. “SmartPhotonics once started as a TU/e spin-off, with patents from the university. But the same SmartPhotonics now works closely with the university for additional research for the development for photonic chips. In fact, it is one of the companies we work with the most, and we make money from that as well”, Van Woerden says.
Grant
One of the TU/e researchers who started his start-up through an invention is Mert Orhan Astam, founder of start-up HaptonTech. “I recently obtained my PhD and now have a start-up. Yesterday I heard that I got a grant from the NWO (Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research, ed.). That is very important, as in the next few years that will have to be my salary”.
Astam came to Eindhoven precisely because he wanted to start a company. “I have always been involved in technology but besides that I always had the idea of a start-up. I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in London but knew that Eindhoven is the place to be if you want to develop as an entrepreneur in addition to your scientific career”.
The researcher will work on the development of a material that can deform itself with electrical pulses, in the long run it could be used to make a deformable phone screen, for example. Before that happens, though, Astam and his company still have a few steps to take.
Adventure
Meanwhile, Astam says, The Gate’s work is not finished either. “Not all my colleagues at the university know the possibilities when starting a company. It’s a less clear path than when you go into salaried employment with a big high-tech company but there’s are many possibilities. It’s a great adventure”.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
