High Tech Plaza, now located in one startup and scaleup dedicated building on High Tech Campus Eindhoven, will be expanding into three buildings. Alongside, a new concept was conceived to attract more promising high tech startups to the campus.
With over 40 startups and scaleups, young tech companies are already well represented at the High Tech Campus. Paul van Son, Marketing Manager of High Tech Campus Eindhoven and responsible for the development of the High Tech Plaza concept: “We see a big increase in the interest of tech startups that want to become part of the Campus. Young companies can benefit from our open and cooperative ecosystem, but until recently we simply didn’t have space to house more startups then we do today.”
Recently, over 10.000 square meters of office space and labs in existing buildings became available. “As Site Management organisation, we took this opportunity to commit it to young companies and develop a major startup hub. We strongly believe that it will be a boost for the quality of our ecosystem, since we strongly believe that diversity of companies is essential”, he explains. For the development of the concept, Campus Site Management worked closely together with other drivers of the startup community.
About five years ago, High Tech Campus Eindhoven and HighTechXL started an alliance to improve the startup ecosystem by starting a dedicated accelerator program for high tech hardware startups. The program attracted and accelerated over fifty high potential startups and two years ago, HighTechXL Plaza (HTC 12) was the beginning of a startup hub at the Campus. It was developed as the place for alumni of the program to find a first permanent place in the ecosystem.
Hans Meeske, managing director at Holland Innovative, was one of the drivers in the development of this old Philips building and will remain one of the key drivers in the new High Tech Plaza concept. “With the development of our first startup building, we learned a lot. In the past years, we got a lot of feedback and these learnings were very helpful in the evolution into the new High Tech Plaza concept.”
Paul van Son: “We now have a building to Start (HTC 12), one to Scale (HTC 29) and one to get Support (HTC 27). The buildings are adjacent to each other and are open to all members of the Plaza concept.”
The Support building will be the new home of accelerator program HighTechXL, Nextview’s Design Thinking Center and lots of other supportive services like patent specialists, venture capitalists and more. It will also be the new home for Innovation Origins.
HighTechXL CEO Guus Frericks: “We are happy with the expansion of the startup facilities at the Campus and with our next step as accelerator and driver of the startup ecosystem. The Support building will be the place for startups to get all the help they need to grow their company. It’s very valuable for us to be close to our alumni and to team up with other supportive players to help startups grow.”
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