PickCells in The Hague

The last two weeks have been intense for PickCells, and among so many achievements, we couldn’t forget to mention the details of our trip to The Netherlands, more precisely, to The Hague.

PickCells was selected to be part of the delegation of Porto Digital (Recife-PE) in the Bootcamp Emerging Markets. The bootcamp, which was promoted by the Brazilian Embassy in The Hague with support of the Innovation Diplomacy Program of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty), happened between 9th and 11th of April.

The main goal of the program was to develop closer ties between high impact business from emerging countries and The Netherlands. The BitJá, another startup from Recife, was also selected and Victor (BitJá’s CEO) traveled with Rodrigo to The Hague.

In the following lines, we are going detail the activities executed throughout the 3 days of bootcamp and why this event was important to us.

First Day

Nothing more Dutch than to use a bike to go everywhere, and on the first day of bootcamp wasn’t different. By bike, we visited four innovation hubs: The Hague Tech, YESDelft!, The Humanity Hub and Apollo 14.

The Hague Tech is an incubator and, as YESDelft! is also a coworking focused on technology-related startups. The Hague Humanity Hub can be defined as a co-working with incubator programs focused on business with social impact in all of the world. Last but not least, Apollo 14 is a coworking which aims to attract startups with high impact.

Although there are several innovation hubs in the city, each one has its niche and objectives, and they work together creating a harmonic ecosystem which provides to startups an environment that promotes their development and growth in The Netherlands.

Second Day

The second day was dedicated to presentations on the reality of business and startups in emerging countries, highlighting Brazil and South Africa. Furthermore, the presentations gave the general steps to open a startup in the Netherlands.

Mariana, from Porto Digital, gave an overview of the technology park and innovation environment in the main area of Recife, Brazil. Peter, responsible for attracting innovative companies to The Hague, explained what was needed and how to expand a business to The Netherlands.

This day also held sessions dedicated to explain how to overcome cultural barriers and gave examples of successful cases of Dutch that expanded innovative business to emerging markets.

Third Day

In the third day, all selected startups have to present their pitch and receive feedback. The feedbacks received were regarding what PickCells can accomplish, the possible approaches to proceed working within microscopy, and the most important: that we are indeed a startup with social impact.

This was such an enriching moment mainly because our purpose at PickCells is to become more than a company that created a Portable Lab, we want to impact the world health.

Later, we headed to Rotterdam, where we attended an event at the Venture Kaffe, in which several Dutch startups were present. There, we made contacts with people from other countries and presented our Pitch to a large international audience.

Last Day

The fourth day was a free day, but since Rodrigo didn't go to the Netherlands as an ordinary tourist, he used the spare time to visit our partner: Spark. It is the company that manufactures our devices, and while we were in the Netherlands, they introduced us to the Philips Foundation, which has a social impact program.

Going to Holland to participate in Bootcamp has brought more than just business opportunities and knowledge. It reaffirmed to the whole team what kind of startup we are and what is the legacy that PickCells can leave to this world.

Being recognized as a startup of social impact by a country that is a reference of sustainable development initiatives, only proves to us, one more time, that PickCells is on the right way to change the world health.