Lean Startup and the University of Twente entrepreneur

So our key assumptions were about added value, meaning that we had these material and we assumed that we can use it in different markets. Like for example, textile in fibres of widely used in textiles and these material made from, is made from ceramic nano fibres. And we thought that we can use it in textile industry. Then we’ll dive to the market and test our assumptions. But assumptions of that added value were the main assumptions. We had multiple key assumptions that were untested. I would say one of the most important ones was for one of the key markets is the airport market, that the airports themselves would be interested in investing more to reduce the bird problem.

You would be surprised about the fact that that isn’t actually the case. And we had some assumptions about other markets where we were plainly wrong. We were wrong about, for instance, the size of, I would say, the heavy industry market, where we thought that the problems wouldn’t be that big, it wouldn’t be that attractive. But the oil and gas market currently is one of our most important clients. The most not tested assumption was how LoRa as a network performed. Since LoRa was very new in those days, a lot of aspects were not carried out yet or researched yet.

And we had to do a lot of that research and development ourselves to know how the communication technique is actually working, which specifications can be reached and so on.