Today’s guest entry is by Rajashree Patankar, from India, who is writing about her startup experience with Eyeware and her team: Yik long Lee (Hong Kong Chinese), Noah Lev (Canadian/Dutch), Elpida Lygerou (Greek), Beatrice Maccaferri (Italian), and Tiago Santos (Portuguese).
How wonderful would it be if you could read someone’s eyes effortlessly! Imagine a world where things work at the wink of an eye and not at the click of a mouse. The world is evolving and so are our needs with the advent of technology in our lives. Eye tracking is that opportune technology that can change the way we perceive things. Eyeware is the startup revolutionizing the integration of human-machine interaction in everyday life.Eyeware identified this gap in the existing eye tracking technology and launched with the vision to give all computers, devices and robots the ability to understand people. Its eye tracking technology can be applied in in assistive technology, home automation, behavior research, social robotics, and advertising.
We were introduced to this path-breaking technology by the CEO Kenneth Funes who is the researcher behind the Eyeware technology and has published multiple papers in top journals and conferences. We interacted majorly with Serban Mogos, the COO and Bastjan Prenaj who is the Chief Business Development Officer.
Our interactions reflect the perfect match of our entrepreneurial learnings with real world business needs. Our discussions with the Eyeware team and research led us to finding the possible arenas where such a technology would be most applicable. Through relentless dialogues with potential customers we established our findings which can work as a framework for Eyeware in the future. Our key learnings were that the market has a plethora of opportunities for technology based businesses, however the skill lies in identifying the most attractive and sustainable one. This experience also gave us a real sense of how costs are an important factor in business especially in the field of research and technology where development investments are high. Our key takeaway was a look into how the value of a technology product can drive the business.
While we are in the process of delivering the final output of this project to the Eyeware team, we look forward to seeing the progress this business makes in the future. Amidst lots of brainstorming and the diversity of our backgrounds, our team of six has bonded and evolved. Thankfully, if there is one thing we never forgot in this journey is to have fun and take everyday as it came!
Cheers to this wonderful learning experience and many more to come for the rest of the year! ?
Rajashree
