Led · Seed · Nov 2020

DesignBro is an Irish-Dutch company offering a cloud-based graphic design platform for logo, brand identity, packaging and merchandise design. Led by Founder & CEO Christiaan Huynen and co-founder & CTO Pieter-Jan Hoogendijk, the platform lets customers manage multiple design projects and work directly with designers. It provides a central hub to store and maintain all graphic design assets in one secure place and allows clients to manage projects with several designers simultaneously. On May 11, 2020, DesignBro raised nearly €400k in a seed funding round partly via private investors and partly via Dutch angel platform Leapfunder. The company intends to use the funds to expand globally.

Led · Seed · Jun 2017

Hugsy is a Dutch startup building a smart blanket designed to recreate elements of parental kangaroo care by providing a mother’s smell, heartbeat and a supportive wrap. The blanket includes a heartbeat module that records a mother’s unique heartbeat and translates it into realistic sound and vibration, and the fabric is designed to absorb a mother’s scent. Initially the product is positioned as a home-care solution for babies up to three months and to help parents transition premature infants from hospital incubators to cribs; a hospital-specific version is planned later as clinical trials expand. The project began as a student project at Eindhoven University of Technology and the team went through the hardware-focused HighTechXL accelerator; they incorporated as a business this March. Development to date has been mostly self-funded, including €15k via the accelerator. The company aims to get a first product into the local market by spring 2018, then expand to other European markets followed by North America, and plans next-generation IoT-connected versions and a broader product portfolio.