Bison helps the pioneers: How Bison Capital Fund supports techno starters

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1 Bison helps the pioneers: How Bison Capital Fund supports techno starters Partner City of Leeuwarden City Leeuwarden Region Friesland Country The Netherlands Further Information Wim Huizinga, City of Leeuwarden Challenge What is Bison? Bison stands for Business Support North Netherlands and is a foundation that implements the government programme of Subsidies for the Exploitation of Knowledge (SKE) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the North of the Netherlands. The foundation uses this programme to promote the economy of the region in the following strategic sectors: Water technology Life sciences IT Engineering Bison provides aid in several areas, including: Financial help with pre-seed loans Coaching by experts Generating ideas Making business plans Finding business accommodation and equipment

2 Protecting ideas and applying for patents Extending networks The idea is that the help and support listed above should lead to an enterprise being able to put a product on the market within three years. Pioneers Who are these people with good ideas and why is it so important that they are supported and encouraged by Bison? The foundation s services are available to people in the whole of the Northern Netherlands, who make new technical inventions, who can apply existing inventions in a new way or who can combine different techniques. No more than an idea is needed as long as it is related to water, life sciences, IT or engineering, and if it is feasible to believe that the idea can be made into a product on the market within three years. Coaching these starters with good ideas plays an essential role. After all, not every inventor is a born entrepreneur. It s fun helping people. I like sharing, says Maurice Tax enthusiastically. He has become a successful businessman and expert/coach himself at Bison. He continues: Passion is the key. The creative spirit does not allow itself to be hampered by problems or constraints, but goes directly in search of challenges and solutions. First of all Maurice helps the techno starters to protect their idea and to concentrate on their core qualities. After that his motto is always: Find the shortest route to profit. Techno starters are important because they add value to knowledge. They are the pioneers at the cutting edge of science and industry. They can help new technological developments to mature commercially and that involves great risks. It is much more difficult for a techno starter to start a new business than in non technology sectors. Developing new technology is expensive. The innovation of knowledge, investing in new specialist equipment and starting up a business cost a lot of money. That is why the capital fund provides pre-seed loans to promote risky and innovative business in the region. Jelmer Algra, SME manager at the Rabobank thinks Bison is a very good initiative. Until now pre-seed loans were not available in this region. For the very first time we have a platform for innovative entrepreneurs. Stakeholders involved The Netherlands wants to belong to the most innovative and competitive economies in the world. Knowledge is necessary to achieve this. Knowledge is one of the most important pillars of our economy to be exploited commercially. That s the reason why all the knowledge institutions of Leeuwarden are involved: City of Leeuwarden Province of Friesland NHL university

3 Wetsus, Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water technology Noordelijke OntwikkelingsMaatschappij (NOM) Rabobank Leeuwarden North-West Friesland SME-Nederland-Noord (organization of sme-employers) Chamber of Commerce North Techno Partner (implementation of SKE scheme of the Ministry of Economic Affairs) Financial framework The Bison foundation will run for four years. The selected techno starters may tap into a budget of 1.6 million euro in pre-seed loans and an amount of for the support of patents. The Ministry of Economic Affairs finances half of this. The City of Leeuwarden and the province of Friesland are co-financiers. Means are made available in the form of a loan at an attractive interest rate. There is a minimum of and a maximum of euro available to implement an idea. Paying back the loan starts after three years. The strength behind your idea Process The structure that has been set up for the implementation of the Bison fund works well. The foundation has a board of stakeholders with representatives from education, SME- Nederland Noord and the Rabobank. Project leader Edwin Elferink of NHL University, commends the cooperative nature of BISON and the way it can boost innovation in this region. Very often the initiatives that take off have something to do with sustainability: they are technological changes that combine economy and ecology with the potential of changing/ improving society. At any rate, that is the challenge they face! Ideas come in on the website and People who are interested fill in four questions in the application form. Then a conversation with the Bison board takes place while an expert studies the idea. Finally the candidate holds a pitch in front of the assessment committee. This committee meets eight times a year and consists of people with relevant subject knowledge. Each member of the assessment committee has a vote so each vote has the same weight. Elferink thinks this is quite unusual as it means that the Rabobank accepts the opinion of the majority vote, even if the bank itself is against the idea.

4 Outcome Up to now more than a hundred applications for support have come in. Twenty- three have been accepted for a loan. As Bison becomes better known the number of applications is increasing. When the project stops after four years, Elferink is confident of a relaunch. I really hope Bison can become a permanent fund, and that all the stakeholders stay on board. Two examples of ideas that have been accepted are Hortimare and IntroVation. Hortimare Hortimare develops the technology needed for the cultivation of seaweed. Sea weed can be used in several ways: as a binding agent in the food industry, the purification of water, animal fodder, cosmetics, agricultural fertilizer, and so on. Hortimare (literally, a garden in the sea) uses Dutch horticultural knowledge and converts it for use in a maritime setting. Here is what Job Schipper has to say about Bison s help: It was an intensive time during which the business case became more and more clear-cut because of the constructive way all parties worked together with us. IntroVation Michal Krens of IntroVation on I had a lot of good ideas that I wanted to get on with, but I ended up choosing the underground irrigation system as the one to focus on. Water is and always will be a problem that gets bigger and bigger in our world. I want to make a contribution, so together with others I started to develop a cheap yet high-tech irrigation hose. This irrigation system makes it possible to save up to 80% of water. Critical Success Factors Which factors have contributed to Bison s success? The foundation: Is committed to social aims Makes networks and equipment available Is flexible: the conditions that participants must meet are not hard and fast Works with annual plans Joins up with other initiatives such as F-linc (the one stop shop for venture capital in North Netherlands) and the Chamber of Commerce Has a good reputation Makes use of the regional media Is small-scale

5 Difficulties encountered Bison itself is just as innovative as the techno starters projects that they finance. They began with nothing and have now built up a sophisticated organization that spots ideas in the world around them and finances them. The organization was not set up in a day but the main problem was that they had to take the necessary time to set up each project, especially since they work with many different partners who all have their individual expectations of the project. So they have learnt to go slowly through the startup phase and to manage the expectations of the stakeholders and of all of those involved in a better way. Defining the criterion, pre-seed is tricky and often led to delays in the past. The startup phase took a long time and it took a year for the first loan to be awarded. The Bison foundation emphasizes the fact that it is small-scale and considers it to be an advantage. The professionals work for the foundation on top of their day jobs. This means that there is no huge administrative machinery behind it and that everything is set up based on need. So, in the beginning the set-up phase took a lot of extra time but by making smart use of the knowledge and networks of all parties, they have managed to make it a clever organization. The result is a relatively simple procedure. Impact The Bison Foundation executes Dutch government policy to stimulate the economy in the North of the Netherlands. The BISON system, as it functions today, is a really unique system. In BISON not only the triple helix is working together, citizens and students are invited to launch ideas to be developed into business cases. Moreover, local, regional and national government are co-financing the fund together with a commercial bank. And when voting in the assessment committee, this bank agreed to follow the majority vote, even if the bank is against it. In the nineteenth century, the pioneers in the Wild West meant bad news for the bison. That was not such a good idea. The bison was nearly exterminated. Now in the twenty-first century, the roles have been turned around: Bison makes the pioneers good ideas stronger. Authored by Ydwine van der Veen, Het Nederlands Tekstbureau, Leeuwarden. Translated by Mieke van der Leij, N.E. Vertaalbureau, Leeuwarden References: