The Bootcamp for Smart Open Lisboa, Housing vertical, is starting next week. As the anticipation grows, we can finally meet all the startups that are coming for the Bootcamp.
Selection based on matching
After the applications phase, a selection of startups does a session of online pitching – showing their projects to the partners of the program and explaining how they can respond to the challenges.
The startups selected for the Bootcamp are the ones that can best respond to the challenges presented by the program and can better match their teams and technologies with the business goals of the partners.
The challenges faced
This vertical of Smart Open Lisboa – SOL Housing – focused on challenges faced in residential and commercial buildings, ranging from management of buildings, data processing and customer experience, to more sustainable solutions for management and new business models (like co-living).
Startups joining SOL Housing Bootcamp
Click “+” to know more about what they do and where they’re from!
[accordion]
[item title=”Alfredo AI”]
Alfredo was designed to bring transparency to the market. It consists of an Artificial Intelligence model, which enables in-depth quantitative analysis of the property market.
BEAD is an IoT company developing innovative, sustainable and energy-efficient digital building solutions through infrastructure integrations and our analytics & AI platform.
Construction project management software for project managers and investors/owners in a cloud system that provides real-time access to all project information.
Doinn is an online platform where short term rentals hosts and property managers can automatically schedule and buy services such as housekeeping and laundry, provided by high-quality and professional companies.
The Enerbrain system is a “plug&play” kit that can be easily installed in every building to fine-tune energy usage in real time without any drastic changes or replacements to the existing HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) system.
Heptasense is an Artificial Intelligence software that is able to recognize any threat on video and send an alert is sent to the security teams, in real-time, to act on it, and without compromising privacy.
Howz measures the use of electricity in elderly people’s homes to build a pattern of daily behaviour and then identify unusual activity and notify the family.
Idatase developed NetLume, an innovation platform that solves the key problem of the “human factor” for successful IoT initiatives by integrating domain experts and business into the IoT domain.
LumenCache shrinks Smart Grid features bringing them down the individual power loads inside buildings. It adds a secure, wired communication layer to the power distribution enabling every installed or plugged device to have a reliable foundation of energy management and safety.
MClimate is an IoT company which changes the way people use the appliances they already have, connecting to heating and cooling devices and allowing the customer to control 70% of their electricity bill – turning any home into a smart home.
Mycroft Mind developed a DeepGrid platform that collects and processes data from smart metering and smart grid infrastructures, maximizing the analytics and insights to existing sensor networks.
Nice Visions makes customizable solar facade tiles for sensitive urban areas, combining solar cells and sustainable energy production and merging it with aesthetics.
Via innovative computer vision and deep learning algorithms, Parquery analyses images to detect objects from any camera and to provide real-time information to mobility operators in the smart city.
Proximi.io is the only technology-agnostic platform that combines all indoor and outdoor mobile positioning under a shared ecosystem, combining together not only all the technologies but also all the different use cases for location data.
Trustbill is an app that manages utility bills for European families, by identifying the best value deal for each family given their consumption pattern and switching them to it, thus helping families reduce their monthly household costs.
Wear health uses off-the-shelf wearable and IoT devices from partners and proprietary cognitive technologies to build an intelligent system that can detect, prevent and predict safety and health risks of workers.
Gonçalo Faria first became interested in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship in 2011, during his MBA, where he recognized innovation was an area where his business experience and his creative and performing arts background could be tied together.
He spent the following years working in strategy consulting in Portugal, Angola and South Africa, being regularly involved with innovation projects and reports and mentoring startups, before dedicating himself fully to innovation when joining Beta-i in January 2018.
Since joining Beta-i one year ago, Gonçalo has taken on the challenge of directing Smart Open Lisboa, which was a perfect fit for his personal and professional ambitions.
It was my initial project and I don’t imagine a better fit with my purpose in life, to bring technology and innovative solutions to better people’s lives. This is a program that has a clear focus on having a positive social and environmental impact, and that is very important for me.
When he joined Beta-i, he became involved in Data Pitch, an EU-funded Open Innovation program that aims to promote a data sharing space in Europe by putting startups working with data from corporate partners based on specific sectoral or data provider challenges.
Joining the open-innovation team was a clear path. To him it’s more and more clear that innovation can only happen in collaboration: when you get together several stakeholders with complementary views, information, needs, solutions, technologies.
Open innovation programs aim to structure that collaboration between two very important agents of change: startups and corporates.
“In a program like Smart Open Lisboa, we have several corporates within a specific sector (either Mobility or Housing/ Real Estate for the verticals we have already implemented) collaborating with the startups and among themselves. And on top of this, we have the City Hall that gives the program a political/ institutional backing and provides the program with access to the city resources and spaces for testing innovative solutions.”
He reasons that considering these factors, you can find advantages for all the stakeholders, which is fundamental to a successful project.
“The City Hall is able to improve citizen’s life and the city management with innovative solutions and to be understood as a friendly city for startups and innovation.”
But it’s in partners that we see the biggest changes: “The corporate partners, are able to tap into the global source of innovation in their specific sector and test new disruptive solutions in collaboration with startups and other program partners and we’re also seeing a budding capacity to handle innovation – it’s learning with peers coupled with learning by doing when it comes to innovation skills and mindset.
As for startups, “they get access to a group of corporate partners, typically hard to reach, and the potential to test a solution with them and eventually get a partner that can give them easy access to the market and jumpstart their growth.”
What we really aim for on our open-innovation programs is for real value added pilots to happen and for the best deals to come forward either investment or partnership deals.
He also took on another big challenge: to direct Smart Open Lisboa and to steer it into its current version – with different verticals in each edition and a very tight alignment between the program verticals and the strategic priorities of the city. “When Smart Open Lisboa started in 2016 it was structured as a one single program dealing with several smart city sectors. We soon realized that it would be much more effective if we created specific vertical programs. It would be much more aligned with the partner’s core business and would present a much stronger value proposition to the startups.”
Implementing the first vertical, Mobility, last year was a challenging feature, but one that paid off: the team immediately realized that the new structure made much more sense. “Not only the partners were much more aligned in their goals, but when they got everyone together for the bootcamp week, there was an amazing level of collaboration and exchange of ideas. Between startups and partners, there was a group of more than 40 companies in the mobility sector, together in the same room, exchanging ideas and collaborating. That’s an amazing feat in itself!”
After a successful Mobility vertical, the Housing vertical has launched and is now preparing the bootcamp. They hope to re-create the “magic” that happened in the previous edition.
We are now running our second vertical, SOL Housing, and we are seeing the same level of commitment and collaboration from the partners… we are really looking forward to getting the startups in the mix.
When asked what are the main reasons that make the program interesting for startups, validation is the top of mind answer. “The main reasons both revolve around validation. They are looking forward to validating their product, experiment their product or solution in a city like Lisbon, and make it resonate with clients. And also, validate their business – does the solution work for possible clients and are they willing to pay for it? They also have the opportunity to make a deal with a big client, that will get them access to a large market.”
Besides the fact that having the engagement of the City Hall and municipal companies is vital for the success of smart city solutions, Lisbon is also a great city to test these innovative solutions: “It’s a European capital, with a similar regulatory and market environment as the rest of the EU, but with a very manageable size in terms of area and population. And when you are piloting new solutions this becomes a critical factor, you want the pilot to have enough users and exposure to be measurable, but it shouldn’t be too big to handle. You would probably shy away from testing new solutions in a megalopolis but you would probably not want to do it in any backwater or ghost town.”
And then, sometimes, magic happens, and startups that come to test solutions end up falling in love with the city and understanding the benefits of setting up shop here. Lifestyle and quality of life, cost of living, availability of highly skilled developers and engineers at very competitive salaries compared to other European cities, and the general easiness of doing business here. Lisbon is trendy nowadays, and there surely are very strong reasons for that.
Besides the opportunities that the program brings to innovative startups, the impact it brings to the city is one of the reasons it is such compelling work for him. “There are two levels of impact. The first one is the cultural change and more openness to innovative solutions and working collaboratively from different departments of the city hall and the program partners, which is really important if we want to have a lasting impact.”
The second level of impact is the direct change provoked by implemented pilots. Just looking at the last edition of mobility, Gonçalo recalls several: “We now have a better understanding of the flow of people and vehicles in the city and the impact of traffic in air quality, and that can lead to more informed city management and investment decisions. There has been a reduction of traffic (thanks to better parking solutions, a reduction of corporate fleets in the city and additional personalized mobility alternatives like e.scooters). Citizens have now a better “user experience” of the city – there are several apps helping them make their mobility choices, and citizens with reduced mobility now have better service.”
Citizens have now a better user experience of the city.
In this sense, it becomes hard for him to choose the best innovative solutions the program brought to light. “It’s hard to choose because there are many of them, and all of them really interesting and impactful.
But some come to mind: Shotl(a mobility-on-demand solution for people with reduced mobility being developed with Carris), Eccocar (a shared corporate fleet solution, doing a pilot both with Ferrovial and the City Hall), E-floater(a last mile solution, using electric micro scooter that is doing a pilot with Ferrovial on the Lispolis area of Lisbon, and that had a great involvement with the City Hall in defining solutions to avoid all the major issues most other electric mini scooter startups are facing) and Meep (a journey planner with the most complete and accurate info on Lisbon mobility operators, that allows you to choose the best way to get anywhere in the city).”
Keep following the blog for more updates on Smart Open Lisboa, and subscribe to our newsletter.
CardioID’s goal was to produce a technology that would allow changing of routines of authentication and biometric identification of users and they did it by monitoring the heart signals. Each one of us has a heartbeat or a cardiac morphology that is unique – like a fingerprint.
CardioID’s core team, all comprised of electrotechnical engineers, first came into Beta-i’s fold when they participated in the first Lisbon Challenge. When the Beta-i’s team took the challenges of Smart Open Lisboa to them, they didn’t hesitate to put in their contributions towards better mobility in the city. They implemented their product CardioWheel: an Advanced Driver Assistance System that acquires the electrocardiogram (ECG) from the driver’s hands to continuously detect drowsiness, cardiac health problems, and biometric identity recognition.
We spoke with André Lourenço, one of the co-founders, about their path to the perfect product and their participation in SOL Mobility.
ReThink: What was your goal when you started CardioID?
André Lourenço: We had an ambitious goal – to have a base technology that could be applied to multiple scenarios. So we thought that authentication using the heartbeat could change our way of interacting with technology – from cell phones, computers, gaming consoles… anything where you can use your hands – we could identify the person and personalize the experience.
We talked with a lot of people but there wasn’t a go-to-market for that technology at the time – although we do hold the patent of the intellectual property – so we had to develop the technology further, to fit market needs. Because of our science background, we had a solution and we were trying to find the problem when usually it is the other way around.
RT: Is this how you got to your product, CardioWheel?
AL: Exactly! As CardioID evolved, we were looking for a market and we had always thought there was potential in the automotive industry, giving the user experience and the inherent problems of driving. So we started making changes to focus on the automotive industry.
RT: Did you change your vision to adapt to the market?
AL: Everything connected to the more operational side of the business was essential to make the product more marketable. Fleets and the managers are looking for lowering costs – those are the pains of a businessman. So, we had to integrate our base technology in a bigger idea that allows for optimization of a fleet.
But we really think this technology can make a difference and better our lives – there’s still so many car accidents. We know there are autonomous cars coming, but that’s not happening tomorrow. CardioID still maintains humans in command of cars but enhances our experience to be safer and smoother. But that is just one thing.
We believe this technology can go much further than cars.
RT: In which industries do you see CardioID in next?
AL: We have a base technology that is algorithms. We also made some hardware because it didn’t exist at the time. So we basically have a technology that can measure signals and process them locally, and that can be applied in anything. Namely, in the area of critical facilities and monitoring of “lone workers” – someone who has to climb a high voltage pole or inspect a pipeline, or other dangerous environments, by himself. Our tech can be embedded in a t-shirt or a band, and the process of analysis of fatigue and stress can be added. We can have these signals monitored by others or by the person themselves – giving him an awareness of his own conditions.
[wonderplugin_carousel id=”3″]
We saw immediately a slew of companies that we’d been trying to work with, giving that our product was ready to market. We needed a connection to them and SOL accomplished it very well.
RT: Why did you decide to join SOL Mobility? What were the main attractions the program had for you?
AL: The main attraction was the industry that was involved. We saw immediately a slew of companies that we’d been trying to work with, giving that our product was ready to market. We needed a connection to them and SOL accomplished it very well. It was an interesting deck of entities and companies, and we especially liked that several of them had national reach, even though the programme is “Smart Open Lisboa”.
RT: How was the process of working with a utility?
AL: Ferrovial in particular opened up for us, and they have been a great partner. We’re very happy to be working with them. We’ve made more contacts that are still on-going. It opened up a lot of doors for us that we are now developing relationships with. The programme aims to establish procedures and create visible milestones for both sides and it was really effective. The pilot was a real deployment of our technology with a big enough scale – that was important to us.
RT: You partnered up with Ferrovial – what is the pilot about?
AL: We are monitoring the whole driving experience of Ferrovial’s fleet. We’re using not only CardioWheel – which analyses the physiological signals of the driver – but also monitoring the car and the driving and the road itself. We applied complementary technological units to have a system that allows optimizing the costs of the operation and simultaneously greatly improve the safety of the driver.
It’s still early for the results, but we’ve observed some interesting things already. We have several driver profiles, that consider region, type of vehicle, driver’s physiology, route and incidents of the job. For example, there’s a big correlation between the number of incidents (weather, etc) and vehicle consumption.
RT: What were the biggest advantages you took from being in Smart Open Lisboa?
AL: The biggest advantage was the structure of the pilots and the contacts with the companies involved in the programme. The fact that we had all the entities and companies connected to mobility in the same room was very interesting – just having all the players in mobility there brought up ideas that connected with each other. That was a major plus.
RT: Would you recommend Smart Open Lisboa to other startups?
AL: Yes! There’s still so much to do in mobility. We’ve had so many ideas, we wish we had the time to it ourselves. But to take advantage of Smart Open Lisboa, a startup must be mature enough to develop the pilots and apply the technology on a national scale, that’s important to take notice.
You can take a look at CardioID’s pilot presentation below:
For more updates and articles, subscribe to our newsletter.
Smart Open Lisboa is back again, in its vertical SOL Housing, dedicated to upgrading Lisbon’s City Life. This vertical has a broad spectrum of opportunities in several areas: assisted living, retail experience, infrastructure and more.
The best way to identify them is to get to know the major players partnering with the programme!
Our goal is to make Lisbon one of the most competitive, innovative and creative cities in Europe. We often hear in major international media that “Lisbon is the new Berlin” or the “New Silicon Valley” to refer to the dynamics of innovation and entrepreneurship that is happening in Lisbon for the past six years. Much of what has been happening is the result of strong ambition and a global and actionable strategy that federates multiple stakeholders, positioning Lisbon in a growth and innovation trajectory unprecedented in its recent history.
Housing Partners
SONAE SIERRA
Sonae Sierra is an international retail real estate company dedicated to serving the needs of investors. We develop, manage and invest in sustainable retail assets and provide investment, architecture & engineering and property management services for clients in geographies as diverse as Europe, South America, North Africa, and Asia, while creating shared value for our business and society.
Sonae Sierra decided to embrace this open innovation program because we are a company with a strong background on Innovation, that is always searching for state-of-art solutions that allows us to reinforce our business competitiveness and our compromise with sustainable development. With this partnership we expect to benefit from the startup’s expertise in different areas, like big data, sensors, devices, etc, to improve our know-how and internal operations, but also contribute to their development and if possible to work with the most relevant ones in a near future.
Ricardo Rosa, Head of Innovation
EPAL
EPAL is the oldest and largest Portuguese water supply company, with 150 years of outstanding history and has long been the reference supply company in the water sector, both in Portugal and internationally. The company provides drinking water to approximately three million people, covering 1/3 of the population, with the responsibility to design, build, operate and manage the water supply and sanitation systems for which it is responsible, including all related activities and businesses.
Developing products and services in the form of innovative solutions and incorporate them into our operations, with the amazing contributions of our technicians expertize, is one of the ways EPAL gets engaged with the smart cities developing programs. It’s also a consistent evidence of our ability to share solutions in the interests of a more efficient water use. EPAL, Smart Open Lisbon Housing program and all startups involved, will certainly leverage strategic innovation in water services and will contribute to improve the quality of the citizens’ lives and to the social and economic development of the cities.
GALP
Galp is positioned as an integrated energy player that develops profitable and sustainable businesses, aiming to create value to its stakeholders. It explores and produces oil and natural gas, and generates and markets electricity. Galp’s strategy is based on a resilient E&P portfolio, embedded with an efficient and competitive downstream business, supported by innovative and differentiating solutions that promote the transition into a low carbon economy.
The company believes that ensuring the protection of people, the environment and assets, as well as the communities it operates in and adopting ethical conduct is crucial for its actions and strategic execution.
MOTA ENGIL RENEWING
Mota Engil Renewing has the mission to be the reference in promotion and operation of Cities’ Renewal, in tight collaboration with municipalities, and responding to the most pressing challenges and needs facing cities and citizens in terms of energy, mobility and housing.
They are a Smart Synergy Provider of Infrastructures and Services, managed by digital platforms (IoT), in the areas of Smart Energy – Smart Charging – Mobility – New Housing, developing integrated, differentiated and competitive solutions, adapted to the reality of each Client – Cities, Companies and Citizens.
2At ME Renewing, we always seek differentiated ways and approaches to respond to and mitigate the problems and challenges that cities face today, whether in energy management, electric mobility or in the housing and real estate market. In the area of New Housing, we are developing and implementing alternative solutions to business as usual, giving priority to Housing-as-a-Service, managed by digital platforms, adding a set of services that make life easier for citizens, areas where the company operates, such as energy, smart charging and mobility solutions, in a global competitive and differentiated offer.”
GEBALIS
GEBALIS has managed, for the past 22 years, the municipal housing districts in Lisbon, ensuring an integrated management policy based on criteria of proximity, improving the quality of life of resident populations and heritage conservation. GEBALIS’ activities are supported by an operating structure located in several points of the city, covering 66 Districts and about 22 949 housing units.
Associated Partners
SANTA CASA (SCML)
Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (SCML) is the oldest and biggest Portuguese charity and its mission is to improve the quality of life of the individuals and communities in the city of Lisbon and to contribute to the well-being of its underprivileged and vulnerable citizens, irrespective of their age or social problems.
SCML is best known for his Social Action and for ensuring the exploitation of the State Social Games in Portugal, but also carries out important work in the areas of Health, Education and Teaching, Culture and Promotion of Quality of Life.
NOS
NOS is the biggest communications and entertainment group in Portugal. It offers the latest generation fixed and mobile phone, television, Internet, voice and data solutions for all market segments. It is the leader in Pay TV, new generation broadband services and in cinema exhibition and distribution in Portugal. NOS is part of the main Portuguese stock exchange index (PSI-20), and has more than 4.7 million mobile phone, 1.6 million television, 1.8 million fixed telephone and 1.3 million fixed broadband Internet customers.
CISCO
Cisco designs and sells a broad range of technologies that have been powering the Internet since 1984. Across networking, security, collaboration, and the cloud, our evolving intent-based technologies are constantly learning and adapting to provide customers with a highly secure, intelligent platform for their digital business.
“Entrepreneurship and innovation are in the DNA of Cisco, who has been a partner of the SOL program since the first edition. It is thus with great naturalness and enthusiasm that we are once again present and, together with the startups, we seek to solve the future challenges of Mobility and Urbanism. “
Sofia Tenreiro, General Manager at Cisco Portugal
AXIANS
Axians is the VINCI Energies brand dedicated to information and communications technology (ICT) and the digital transformation challenge. We answer to all ICT needs through human-centered methodologies with differentiated solutions in telecoms infrastructures, cloud, and data centers, enterprise networks, digital workspace and data analytics. Cybersecurity is a priority within all these areas. The best of ICT with a human touch.
Axians is proud to partner with Smart Open Lisboa. As a startup implementation program devoted to effectively upgrade city life, it fits exactly with our role in society: to improve the life of people, through the meaningful ICT we deliver to our clients. And our VINCI Energies’ way of life is in fact fueled through an entrepreneurial spirit. We truly believe that the key to a smarter and prosper city lies on startups and big corporate companies cooperation, learning from each other, evolving and preserving that unique human touch, at the heart of digital transformation.
Pedro Faustino, Board Member, Axians Portugal
TURISMO DE PORTUGAL
Turismo de Portugal is the National Tourism Authority in charge of promoting, improving and guaranteeing the sustainability of tourism as one of the most important economic activities in the country. As part of the Ministry of Economy, it groups together all the institutional powers related to invigorating tourism, from supply to demand.
“Turismo de Portugal is actively involved in shaping the future of smart cities and implementing projects that solve their challenges: SOL acceleration program enables the development and showcasing of solutions to overcome these challenges and promote sustainable cities. Sustainability is one of our tourism policy priorities and it’s a key driver to innovation.”
Luis Araujo, Presidente do Turismo de Portugal
SHARING CITIES
The Sharing Cities ‘lighthouse’ programme is a proving ground for a better, common approach to making smart cities evermore efficient. By fostering international collaboration between industry and cities, the project seeks to develop affordable, integrated, commercial-scale smart city solutions with high market potentialities. The project draws on €24 million in EU funding. It aims to trigger €500 million in investment and to engage over 100 municipalities across Europe.
At three strategic locations – London, Lisbon, and Milan – the programme will demonstrate the effectiveness of new technologies in improving urban mobility, increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and reducing carbon emissions.
TOMI
TOMI WORLD is a Portuguese technology company that created and developed TOMI, which is an innovative and interactive urban solution that delivers all information that matters in the right place at the right time. TOMI’s goal is to bring cities closer to people who live, work and travel in it.
Currently, TOMI WORLD has offices in Portugal, Brazil, UK, and China and is planning to open offices in main cities across the world as part of its internationalization process.
Do you have a solution that you would like to test with these market leaders? Don’t waste one more minute – apply to SOL Housing!
What makes SOL Housing, the new Smart Open Lisboa vertical, the place for your startup? Explore the reasons why you should consider participating in the programme if you have a startup with a solution for these challenges: urban management & smart infrastructure, construtech, proptech, resource efficiency, smart homes, buildings & retail properties, home care & assisted living, customer & community experience and financial services.
1. Work directly with Lisbon’s Municipality
Lisbon is a city that is now going through a lot of changes: the birth of several innovation hubs, the foreign investment, real-estate development and several programmes from the municipality to invest in the upgrading of the city’s quality is making it a perfect hotspot for new projects to be tested and applied.
Through this programme, you will be working directly with the partners – in this case, Lisbon’s Municipality is the main partner of the programme and you will get access to the decision makers.
2. Test your solution in different industries and sectors
In Smart Open Lisboa, you’ll get the opportunity to test your solution in different industries and sectors, co-operating with different partners of the programme.
You can read here about some of the pilots being developed in the last vertical.
3. Meet prospective clients and the key players in the industry
The main goal of the programme is to promote the cooperation between startups and companies – you don’t need to give up any equity of your company to join.
5. Applications are closing soon
The applications for SOL housing, the new vertical of Smart Open Lisboa, are closing on the 13th of February. So, don’t waste any time and click here to apply now!
