Start to scale. Startup and Scale-up Founder Stories.
Plant whisperers unveiled: transforming agriculture and navigating the startup landscape with Berend de Klerk
Berend is on a mission to revolutionize the agriculture industry.
With a Master in High-Tech Engineering ánd a Master in Management of Technology, he founded Plense Technologies together with Thijs Bieling.
They use a patented technology with smart sensing devices that literally listen to plants - and turn that into data for growers.
In this episode, we'll talk about:
- Measuring the inner working of plants;
- The importance of tough love from critical advisors;
- How to make the most of a competition like PHIA.
Links mentioned:
- People: Berend de Klerk
- Companies: Plense Technologies, Philips Innovation Award, YES!Delft
- Other: Xylem
- Media: The Opposites - Slapeloze Nachten
Berend is on a mission to revolutionize the agriculture industry.
With a Master in High-Tech Engineering ánd a Master in Management of Technology, he founded Plense Technologies together with Thijs Bieling.
They use a patented technology with smart sensing devices that literally listen to plants - and turn that into data for growers.
In this episode, we'll talk about:
- Measuring the inner working of plants;
- The importance of tough love from critical advisors;
- How to make the most of a competition like PHIA.
Links mentioned:
- People: Berend de Klerk
- Companies: Plense Technologies, Philips Innovation Award, YES!Delft
- Other: Xylem
- Media: The Opposites - Slapeloze Nachten
Welcome to a very special edition of Start to Scale in collaboration with Philips Innovation Award, the largest student startup competition in the Netherlands. In this episode, I speak with Beren de Klerk, co-founder of Plants Technologies and winner of the Rough Diamond Award at the Philips Innovation Award 2023. And you'll learn all about measuring the inner working of plants, the importance of tough love from critical advisors and how to make the most of a competition like FIA. My name is Lars Kramer and I'm thrilled to introduce Berend to you. Berend is on a mission to revolutionize the agriculture industry. With a master in high-tech engineering and a master in management of technology. He founded Plants Technologies together with Thijs Bieling, and they use a patented technology with smart sensing devices that literally listen to plants you heard that right and they turn that data into information for growers to work on. Welcome, berend, great to have you here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:So now for the older people listening to this podcast, they might remember an old man called Robert Redford. He played the horse whisperer, with a remarkable gift for understanding horses. So are you the new Robert Redford? But then for plants? In short, are you the plant whisperer?
Speaker 2:We've been known to be called the plant whisperers indeed, Okay see but that sounds a little bit vague.
Speaker 1:It's more scientific than that okay, yeah, you can call me whatever you like okay, cool, so we'll get into the details of that. Um, I'm really excited to have you here. We spoke, uh, when you were pitching at the last event. Um, last year, 2023. Yes, great to have you here, also to dive into your journey since, because your company has been developing and growing. So we're gonna dive right in. But we start with four statements that you can answer with true or false. All right, are you ready? Yes, we are primarily a hardware company.
Speaker 1:False two years of entrepreneurship taught me more than seven years in uni uh, true yeah we are a solution in search of a problem to solve false, I must admit, the plans in my student dorm didn't make it uh wait, can we go two questions back, because I think I understood in the wrong way.
Speaker 2:Two years of entrepreneurship? No, the problem searching for a solution right away around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we go back. We are a solution in search of a problem to solve.
Speaker 2:Very true.
Speaker 1:True, there we go. The final one. I must admit, the plants in my student dorm didn't make it. Some made it Okay, so you've been killing plants in your dorm. We'll get to that you are. Some made it okay, so you've been killing plants. You don't forget. Today you are building a remarkable company. Um, you provide crop growers in greenhouses with smart sensing devices to basically help them grow the plants. Uh, that sounds super sophisticated and important. Maybe take us back to your origin story. Um, can you take us back to the inspiration behind plans and and how do you get started on working on this idea?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So we're a spin-off from university. So there was a collaboration between Wageningen University and Research and Delft University of Technology, and I got involved during my master's thesis. I helped with the development of the technology and then at one point I got a call from my professor and he asked do you want to bring this to market in the form of a startup company? Together with Thijs, and this?
Speaker 1:was it that the technology? Or was that what? Was the what was that?
Speaker 2:this part yeah, the technology, the patents that they had, but it was still a little bit fake what it what it exactly was, but something about listening to plants, okay, and together with Thijs, and I met thais, uh, once before. So we got together, we grabbed coffee and we're like, okay, what the hell, what are we gonna do? So we enrolled for a course course uh called uh, ready to startup, uh, which is formed by, yes, delf students, which teaches you all about entrepreneurship, and we got so excited that, uh, we finished our masters and we said, yeah, let's, let's go for it. Uh, we got some small funding from the nwo and that's basically the the first, yeah, first half year of our starting um, yeah, where we got excited about entrepreneurship, but we still didn't know what we were going to do okay, it was the early days but, then, going back to the plans in your dorm room, what happened to?
Speaker 1:Were they part of the process? Yeah, they were part of the process.
Speaker 2:It was actually the stage before this. Even so, I had some plants at home during Corona because, yeah, it was a lot in my room and I like nature, so I bought a lot of plants but, yeah, some of them died and I just didn't know, do they need more irrigation, do do they need less irrigation? Like this can be more convenient. So again, it was corona, so I also had a lot of free time, so I sort of made my own irrigation system with soil sensors and arduino and that sort of sparked my interest into plants and how this could be done. And then I stumbled upon a research project for my master thesis that had all the courses I liked, so signal analysis and data analysis, but it was also, yeah, on plants, and I was like, yeah, that's a bit fake, but let's give it a go. So that's actually indeed where it actually started.
Speaker 1:Super interesting to make the connection between nature and what happens in nature, and then all these sophisticated advanced analytics and understanding. We'll get into the details on how that works. But I think, as we all learn and probably also people competing in the Philips Innovation Award learn that you have to start with a customer first, right? So understanding what is the problem of the customer. So your primary customers are growers, right, so can you maybe paint a picture what is your ideal customer and what is their problem? So, indeed, our customers are growers, right? So can you maybe paint a picture what is your ideal customer and what is their problem?
Speaker 2:So, indeed, our customers are growers. Well, we actually have three types of customers, but let's today dive into the growers and what they do. They go into the greenhouse and they take a look around and with their expertise, they just know how to steer the greenhouse right. They look into the color of the plant, the thickness of the leaf, like the. They take all kinds of measurements that they are that are mainly subjective and they have a hard time also explaining what, what they, what it is they look for.
Speaker 2:But they've become very, very good at growing our crops, but there's also a scarcity of these growers. So our goal is really to help growers scale, so by collecting data about the plants, basically let the plants run the greenhouse so that the grower also has time for different stuff. But yeah, that's our end goal and that's not the real issue right now. The grower doesn't have an issue that he's becoming scarce. So we've looked into the real issues that they're facing today, and that's more about the rising energy prices. So how can we save energy while still producing our crops? Because if you put too few or too less energy into your greenhouse, then your crop is going to go bad. It's going to have quality issues. So they really want to grow on the edge, if you will, and we want to help them find this edge nice.
Speaker 1:So, um, and then you're saying so. How did you approach that? How did you just go to those growers and say, hey, hi, I'm a startup, I want to have you know insight in what you? How did you approach that?
Speaker 2:yeah so. So when we just finished our masters and we said, okay, let's go for this, we had two coaches, alex and Erik, and they wanted to help us in mentoring. And we came to them and we said, oh, we're going to do all this great scientific stuff and with ultrasound and we're going to measure crops. And they say, stop whatever you're doing and get yourselves a real job. And we were like very surprised, like what the hell? I thought we were going to build a startup company and develop the product and then no, no, you're gonna get yourself a job at a greenhouse facility because you don't know anything about your customer. Um, they said, shovel dirt, I don't care, but get yourself a job into a greenhouse company. So that that's what we did. We put a message on LinkedIn, got a lot of views and then a few weeks later, we were basically planting seeds inside a greenhouse company, just to learn about the problems that our customers face it was very good advice from our mentors.
Speaker 1:Great advice and a great hack. So did you get paid for the job as well? No, we didn't.
Speaker 2:So that's a recommendation from my from my older self or my younger self. Uh did get paid because we actually also solved a problem within this internship of two weeks where we designed also some sort of clamping mechanism to rise potted plants, uh, but it was sort of in return for them helping us out.
Speaker 1:Anyway, in the end they gave you a lot of insights. They paid in insights very nice, nice. Well then get into your solution, because there's people out there now listening like what listening to plants, the plant whisperer, what is all this weird stuff? Without getting too technical, can you maybe explain in general how does your solution work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we use ultrasonics to measure inside crops. You can look at it at the same way as we use ultrasound for babies we put a probe on your belly and then you can see what's going on inside your belly and see how the baby develops. And we use a similar technique, where we basically send ultrasonic waves inside crops and as the plant is evaporating or getting drought, the internal structure changes, so there's less water in it or there's more tension on the tubes that transport the water. And as these internal structure changes, the vibration changes as well, and that's what we measure. So we basically measure the vibration and then, with advanced algorithms, we translate this into useful information, such as how much transpiration is going on.
Speaker 1:Wow, and that's kind of checking the stress of the plant or at least responding to its environment yeah, and then the growers obviously can use that data to optimize the growth in the end um. But how do you know if what you're measuring makes sense at all? You cannot ask a plant how he's doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very good question, also because what we're doing is very new. We're the first in the world to commercially use ultrasound to monitor what plants are doing, but since this hasn't been done before, you also don't know if it works or not, because you get some sort of data, but how do you know what it actually means if there's no way of monitoring? Yeah because if that already would exist to validate your measurements, yeah then you wouldn't have a reason to live as a company yeah because then it would already exist and that's sort of, yeah, very a paradoxic thing that we're working on.
Speaker 2:But we now use all kinds of different technologies, like heat cameras and and sap flow meters, to to get some insights in what the crop is doing, um, and hopefully, and yeah, we'll learn more about what plants can tell us getting that together.
Speaker 1:We mentioned uh thais in the introduction, your co-founder. Um, you're both from the technical university, so anybody outside got like two techies as a founder in a company. Um, how does it work? Did you balance?
Speaker 2:yeah so. So from day one, we made a distinguishment in our roles and, since I also have a business background, we said, yeah, I'm going to focus on business development so that thais can focus on technology development, and we made a very clear, distinct distinguishments in that. Of course, sometimes today I help with technology development because we have some pilots lined up and we now need to get the tech ready. So I'm still a little bit flexible, but my responsibilities are within business.
Speaker 1:Commerce. Okay, so you do commerce and he does technical Cool Berend in business, thijs in technical stuff. Indeed, there we go Before we go to Fia, and what you learned, etc. There's one thing I'm also curious about, um, are you already in the space where you've figured out your business model? So how do you, in the end, um plan to uh to get revenues out of your business?
Speaker 2:um, we, we have several options, um, but, uh, we first want to focus on what is it that we can measure and for what kind of application?
Speaker 2:So, I mentioned, for the Dutch growers it's all about saving energy. The opposite is true for, for example, in Spain, where they all experience heat stress and want to know which crops react best to heat waves, for example. So we're going to do different pilots to learn about the different problems but also the different solutions that we can provide, and from that onwards we can sort of choose a direction, where we want to go, and with that comes the business model. But in the end I think we're going to sell the data. So it's not really a hardware company, we sell data. We're also not going to build a dashboard or only software, so it's sort of a combination and in the end we want to plug in into existing systems because they already exist, right.
Speaker 1:So, on the data, that's where the primary part of your business model will be, and then you might supply some of the technology, because it's necessary to get the data.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah Cool. You've been successful in committing partners. You've committed funding from the Dutch Research Council, Routenbank Impact Fund, the RVO and IT R&D grants and some first paying customers. Can you explain what role these organizations played in your journey and how you approached them?
Speaker 2:The organizations that funded us you mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you need funding to to hire people also to pay ourselves, um, so so they really helped us, but I one, I, what you really want to stress is the the rabobank impact fund. Uh, there was a fund like a subsidy or like a grant, so it was free money of 25k and we went over there to to pitch. You first had to end in a pitch deck and then you had to pitch and we were like, okay, it's a rabobank, so it's going to be all like investors, or at least like bankers.
Speaker 2:Right, they want to talk about money and the rest is well less important show me the numbers exactly so we, uh, we prepared a little bit and talked about how much money we would save for a grower, etc. And then, um, then, after the pitch, we were looking around and first we had this woman that looked into us and she was silent for a while and then she said yeah, you don't recognize me. And I looked at Thijs and at one point Thijs yelled ah, radish. And it turned out it was a radish grower that we actually interviewed during our uh, yeah, customer discovery, uh phase, uh, to learn more about the problem. But she was in overalls and we didn't recognize her.
Speaker 2:Now she was very, you know, she had a nice blazer and and, uh, sharply dressed, yeah, she was very sharply dressed, um, and it turned out that the whole audience was like people from Glastuinbouw Nederland, so horticulture the Netherlands, and growers and people who really understood the market and the problems that these people faced.
Speaker 2:And we had the person from Glastuinbouw Nederland. He was saying, yeah, it's nice, but it's so much bullshit in your story and this is wrong and that is wrong. And I was quite surprised, of course, um, but in the end, we actually got the funding, uh, with the, the note that they said, yeah, you, you get it, but, yeah, follow up on this conversation with this guy from horticulture netherlands, right, because he has a lot of insights and he's still, uh, yeah, we talked with him every, uh, every once in a while and he really pushes us on the right track, um, so I think that the like, the advice that we that came with the money is even more appreciated than the money itself right making sure that you have critical advisors exactly in your in your surroundings, who really understand this world that you're operating yeah, and dare to say that that something is bullshit in your story yeah, yeah, but that's hard right.
Speaker 1:If you're a founder, you're always dedicated to making it work. And then somebody tells you yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not nice to hear, but that's what you need to look for some yeah, people that say stuff that's not nice to hear yeah, cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've bet you probably read the book the mom test of course, yeah, I understand three times.
Speaker 3:Oh, you had to read it three times cool, um, yeah, great advisors.
Speaker 1:And then the other ones, because you said robbing was a 25k grant. How have you funded the rest, because you've been running now since? Well, depends on when you start, right, uh yeah, for since 2023, when did you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so we incorporated one year ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we were running, uh, through the westlands already for half a year yeah, okay yeah, so the first funding that we got was from the nwo the take of one, which is a subsidy of 40k. You can get it to really learn if there's a problem out there for your solution, um. So we that's really where we did the internship with the greenhouse company. Yeah, we interviewed many growers, breathers, um, and yeah, we got some really great insights, uh, also some things that well were, yeah, and then we applied for the take of two, which is a loan of 250k yeah um, to really hire the first people and to really have a bit of a larger Horizon yeah instead of the 40 initial K okay, yeah and indeed some subsidies as well?
Speaker 1:yeah, and was it hard to convince these uh people to invest in you, both the loan and and the grant.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so for rabobank. I'm not sure what they really thought, but uh, with the advice they, I think they they saw that we were uh taking their feedback into account yeah um.
Speaker 2:So they they saw that we were perhaps not on the exact right track, but with this feedback we would get there. Um. And for the nwo, I'm not sure how hard it is to get this, this money um. Up until now we didn't really have a hard time raising funds, but it's also still um. Yeah, we didn't really have to prove very much. So the technology is still in development and if it might be something they're eager to fund. But yeah, after this I think it's called the customer discovery or customer validation Now comes the valley of death. So hopefully in the next two years we get enough credibility and we can actually get revenue to see that it's indeed something that investors will fund.
Speaker 1:Exciting times ahead. We'll schedule a follow-up podcast after this to check in and we'll follow you anyway. Talking about following up, let's talk FIA. So you participated in the Philips Innovation Award and for anybody listening out there and thinking, is this kind of award something for me? Maybe can you share. How did the competition of Philips Innovation Award help you in your business or as a founder?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So they have a whole trajectory with coaching moments and you have to pitch and you come in contact with a lot of investors. So it's a really good way to get all these things For example, the investor talks to speak with a lot of investors and also learn what they care for. You know what do they want to see in a few years, so that you can also take that into account with your validation process. So you get a lot of advice in that sense and, of course, especially if you win a lot of publicity and credibility as well, which is also nice. I don't think there were many growers listening, so, for example, for our customers it didn't really help a lot, but, for example, with students that want to participate as a working student or employee, it was very helpful.
Speaker 1:Right Visibility gets you out there.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Gives you access to the network. What would be your one piece of advice for aspiring VIA participants, so people that want to compete?
Speaker 2:Be critical. Is it the right time to join such a contest and what do you want to get out of it? So we, we joined a bit without thought. We thought that it might be nice and might something might come out of it. Um, if we had the choice today, I wouldn't join. Because, well, we the most, the two most important tasks for a starting founder, I think, are talking with customers and developing products to validate it with customers.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, joining a pitching contest yeah, you learn about pitching, but you're not talking to customers and you're also not building products yeah so, um, in, yeah, in the phase that we're where we're now, where we, yeah, have a lot of pilots that we want to conduct, uh, it might not be the the wisest spending of our time, right? So be critical.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, if it's in line with your focus yeah, I think that's a solid advice to anybody listening, because you can only spend your time once yeah spend it wisely and spend it on what is important for you at that time exactly.
Speaker 2:I've heard someone say uh, if you're saying yes to something, that means saying no to something else.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I want to respond with yes now. Just very Great tips, great advice Before we go to the break. What do the next six to 12 months look like for you? What's your biggest challenge?
Speaker 2:So the biggest challenge with what we're working on is the pilots to really learn what can we measure and how can we help the customer solve a problem. So it's really learning about our own data and the interaction with these customers. So that's the main challenge and from that we'll strategize again.
Speaker 1:cool nice learn from customers. See what happens in the pilots and then go next phase. Yeah, very nice, we'll go to a quick break and then we'll be back you're listening to the podcast of up rotterdam.
Speaker 3:We help startups scale and grow their business by offering access to talent, access to international markets and access to capital. Curious how we can make the network work for you? Go to uprotterdamcom. This podcast was made possible by the City of Rotterdam.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. We're talking to Berend and we've covered so many parts of your journey, you know, starting with plants in your dorm room, starting the company with Thijs, learning from these growers, taking a job and also learning how to grow as you go forward, building those pilots. I think that's super inspiring. One thing we didn't cover is the importance of growers in our society, and we kind of skipped that part a little bit. But I think it's a bit of a hidden part of our world, right. So what would be your takeaway for the world to know about the role of growers in society?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think in our society, food is really, especially here in the netherlands, something we take for granted, right, you, you go to the supermarket and there's just fresh food everywhere, um, and I also, yeah, I didn't realize, uh, earlier like how how many, how much work goes into the production of this food, and that's really something that the growers what taught us is, uh, how, how much hard work goes into it, uh, and actually, how how few fame they get for it. Right, they work seven days per week. Um, they have a lot of challenges, right, with the energy prices, with diseases, with, yeah, a lot of stuff. Um, and I don't think, yeah, they get the the fame they deserve. Um, and also, if we look at sustainability especially the last time um, yeah, the the energy consumption of the horticulture is a lot in the news, but they don't talk about the efficiency, for example, about land use.
Speaker 2:So, for example, in Spain one square meter produces four kilograms of tomatoes. In the Netherlands it's 80. So think about this efficiency and how much land we can save, which we can sort of give back to nature, if we take this approach of horticulture. So I think that's something that's not talked about enough.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that you mention that because, as Dutch, I think we can take more pride in that. And I think from abroad people looking at the Netherlands are like oh you guys with those greenhouses it's super sophisticated, everybody looks innovative, we are a super innovative country, and here we are, as Dutchies, sometimes complaining.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody looks to the netherlands and here in the netherlands we kind of look away yeah, and that's uh, yeah feels weird yeah, so maybe and that's, I think, a very good addition also why you're doing this right so you're transforming an industry, uh, so you're working on transforming an industry yeah so support your growers.
Speaker 3:People support your growers.
Speaker 1:Go out there. Check out the growers. Very good, um, maybe if you want a job at a grower, go work there, and soon you'll be using the tools of plants technology to optimize your growth.
Speaker 2:Oh, very cool.
Speaker 1:Yes, there we go. Next generation of growers growing up. Okay, then it's time for the next part of our conversation, which is listeners' questions, which is always fun because we ask people around us and around you to send in some questions. They can be very random and very specific, so the first question is from jorgen his question is you're also a sailor and a windsurfer.
Speaker 2:What are the similarities between sailing, windsurfing and building a company? Oh, wow, um, I, I think, um, very good question. I, I think, um, one of the similarities is, um, as a sailor or as a windsurf, you want to to get somewhere, uh, but that could be uh like half wind, so then you get there easily. But sometimes, uh, it's in the wind and and at first it seems impossible to get there because you can sail in the wind. But one time you discover that if you, you sail, like not in the wind, but uh, on the wind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, close to wind, uh, and then you make a pivot and then close on the wind again. Then you actually uh get there. So I think that's a nice metaphor to uh, yeah, what entrepreneurship is about there you go and every, every now and then, overstock I don't know what the english word is oh, that's a pivot.
Speaker 3:There we go.
Speaker 1:Very good, nice question, jeroen. Thank you very much. Anita has a question. She asks oh, this is interesting, a bit off topic, but can plants improve the productivity of entrepreneurs? So this is kind of the other way around, right Do you?
Speaker 2:have any plants in our office. I'm not sure if it increases the productivity. I think we're way too focused on like does the sensor? Can it be implemented on the plant? So in that sense, yeah, it kind of does. So plants produce our food as well, right? So in that sense it also yeah, they're needed for entrepreneurship and just for our society as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, more plans. Then our favorite team of the Philips Innovation Award obviously also has questions. First question I don't know which one asked which one, I'm just going to say Lola asked this one. She says the FIA has just launched the first edition of the Find your Talent Day, with the goal to connect talented students to startups. And she said I believe you have also recently expanded your team. What do you think is more important for the success of a startup, product or team?
Speaker 2:oh, team definitely, yeah, that's an easy one, um, because, well, the team develops the product, but, um, yeah, it's. I think we're very uh fortunate with the people in our team. So I I mentioned thijs as my co-founder. We also recently hired miranda as a data scientist, and we have some, some students, and they all uh do incredibly uh good uh with their, with their job, with their work. Um, and without them, we yeah, we we wouldn't uh come any further. And also, people can change. So if your product is bad, you can still sort of change it or develop something else, and you have to have this flexibility and I think that's very important within your team. For example, if I take Miranda, we hired her as data scientist, but she's now also cloud engineer. Yeah, it's sort of a flexibility that a product perhaps doesn't have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so having a good team to move around. And the sailboat example. You're on the same boat moving forward Okay. But is it hard? You mentioned that the Philips Innovation Award helped you with attention for students that want to work for you. Is it still hard to find new people, or do you find it easy still it? Is it still hard to find new people, or?
Speaker 2:do you find it easy? Still, it depends. So we're in very good contact with Delft, so we're in YesDelft the incubator of the Delft University of Technology and our professors are still involved, so we have quite some connections with Delft University of Technology. But we also need plant scientists, for example. And that's a little bit further away.
Speaker 2:It's like a more than one hour drive, so we had a hard time connecting with the plant scientists of the netherlands, um, and now we found ways to to connect with these people, uh, so we're doing, for example, a consulting project with the act it's called, uh, with master students from plant sciences. That that's uh. Do some research about our technology, and that's a very nice way to learn to get to know some students on campus as well, before you actually start hiring. So that's also sort of advice that there are different ways to get to the right people. But it takes longer than I expected. It's not just sending out a vacancy and just wait for people to respond.
Speaker 1:No, it takes quite a bit. You have to work. I think your example is spot on finding students to work on your product. You exchange value already right, because they have something to research and work on and you have the opportunity to get to know them better.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:I think also as you're growing your business. So I was part of a company growing from 30 to 300 and we needed econometrists, which back in the day was a very small group, and we did a similar thing. So we asked the professor what do you need? Data? We provide you data. You get the students. We hired a few. So I think, keep doing that, probably also as you expand.
Speaker 1:Going to the next phase Great question, lola, thank you. Next phase great question, lola, thank you, and we'll send everybody to find your talent day, the next edition. Um final question is also from one of our fantastic fia people of this year, sophie, and her question is does it matter what crop you're growing with the ultrasound sensors?
Speaker 2:it does, uh, but so. So our technology is applicable to any crop with xylem vessels and phloem, sorry, with Xylem, so the tubes that transport the water.
Speaker 1:We're going to put that in the show notes so people can look it up on Wikipedia. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:But certain trees don't have those for example.
Speaker 2:But that's more the general technology. Our current sensor is a sensor that you click on the plant stem, so it does have to have a stem of a specific size. So from chrysanthemum I'm not sure if the listeners know, but it's a flower uh, that's that. That's big enough, and a tomato is perfect. A tree is a little bit bigger, so then you have to have like big amplifiers to to produce a lot of sound. Um, so we're? We're now, uh yeah, limited to a specific stem thickness range.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But in the end it should be applicable to any crop. The main difference, except for the hardware, is also the algorithms. So a different crop might have a different inner structure and we have to account our algorithms for that Okay cool.
Speaker 1:So I would say, if you're interested into this topic and you want to know more, I'm guessing you'll have vacancies and internships very soon.
Speaker 1:So go, check out Plants Technologies, check out the website or visit the Find your Talent Day. I mean, that's always a great advice to go for Students. That brings us almost to the end, berend. So thank you so much for sharing your journey. Uh, I think it's remarkable to see what you've achieved since we last met uh down there in uh in rotterdam, and, um, I think your story is inspiring. You're changing an industry and you're doing it not in the easiest way, so kudos for that. Um, we are going to follow your journey as you go forward and hopefully you'll be a scale-up soon and then we'll we have everything ready to support you on the next phase. But, as always, we close with a song that you have selected, so would you like to introduce which song that is and why you chose it?
Speaker 2:Yes, of course, the song is called Sleepless Nights or Slaapeloze Nachten, from the Opposites. It talks about well sleepless nights, or slapalos nachter, from the opposites. Uh, it talks about well sleepless nights, which sounds very bad, but it's in a in a good kind of way. Right, you have, as entrepreneur, I think, many sleepless nights where you're sort of in the back of your mind, you have a problem and you want to fix it, and then at one night you sort of get a solution and you just can't get up in the morning fast enough to to test it and to go out there. So it's about, yeah, getting your hands dirty and, yeah, tingling feeling for the next morning, so in a very positive kind of way. So I think it's a good song very nice song.
Speaker 1:Thank you, berend. Thank you for listening. If you like us to keep making these podcasts, please help subscribe like. Share the content. Until next time I'm passing through Sleepless nights.
Speaker 4:The sun breaks through, my eyes already closed, but I think when I sleep I'm away from all my dreams. But I'm sleepless nights. Lights are shining in the darkness. With the endless dream, no reason to close my eyes because I can find my future in my fantasy Daydream and see the chances Unbounded to the limits, lives, my life in complete anarchy and seen everything can change in gold Without the love of gold. But in the words of the netter mouth, you don't see me so soon, nothing to do and have to bite my teeth with my tongue. So I'm awake all night to dream Healthy tension about what's coming Tomorrow.
Speaker 4:We start the day with joy. I see the sun rising. Outro Music. My eyes are already closed. I think when I sleep I'm away from all my dreams. But I'm sleepless at night. Yeah, and I want back to the future.
Speaker 4:My feet burned in the morning. I'm running behind city lights, stare at ice in the city in front of my skunk Zone, number one. My vision is pure Sweat in my bed. I want love and a bite and my thoughts on a master plan and I dance with. The devil then shows how far I am. Eyes follow me Just like I'm in a movie, fingers on the keyboard as I sit, still Ready for the action. You see, the laline kicks Sleep, just like you're on the heroin. The clock ticks Time to sleep, because then I stay my dreams. The sun breaks After a while. To my future, so a urge to tomorrow. That's why I Lie awake in my bed, my head full of thoughts. I'm going slowly.
Speaker 4:Sleepless nights. The sun is going slowly. My eyes are already closed. I think when I'm asleep I'm away from all my dreams. But I'm sleepless nights, sleepless nights. I'm alone. I'm out Planning for morgen. Door my nose, take four Over bark and border. Bark and border. De zon breekt door de sterren aan de lucht. Dat is ons decor. Planning for morgen. Door my nose, take four Over bark and border. Ligt wakker in m'n bed, yeah, m'n hoof vol met gedachten. De tijd dikt langzaam door Slapeloze nachten. De zon breekt langzaam door M'n ogen, reeds gesloken Den. The sun is slowly setting. My eyes are already closed. I think when I sleep I'm just away from all my dreams, my deep, sleepless nights. Thank you.