Fellow MSc students turned business partners, Tianyi Xie and Nir Kalush, are aiming to create an online community where TU Delft’s international students can share all kinds of information and also get discounts from local shops.
Their budding business venture, called ourdelft.nl, is also a fine example of the entrepreneurial spirit currently sweeping the campus.
That two young guys from opposite ends of the world should feel sufficiently confident to embark on a locally based business venture says much about TU Delft’s recent drive to internationalize and ‘entrepreneurialise’. Five years ago Nir Kalush and Tianyi (Spark) Xie would’ve been exceptions. Today, if not quite yet the rule, such business ventures are becoming increasingly common here, with successful international (student) start-ups like IcySolutions and Holland Container Innovations proving that Delft can now properly support new corporate ventures.
There is Yes!Delft and its business start-up services, university courses in entrepreneurship taught by high-priced imports like MIT’s Professor Ken Morse, and, perhaps most importantly, a sufficiently open local business climate to allow two ‘foreigners’ to actually believe they can achieve business success here.
Potentialities
And that Xie (23), from Shanghai, China, and Kalush (24), from Washington D.C., are also entrepreneurial-minded emissaries from two of the world’s largest economies is precisely the kind of exciting potentialities that successful internationalisation is supposed to generate.
Xie and Kalush first met in an entrepreneurial course, ‘Starting New Ventures’, got to know each other better in the ‘Dutch Entrepreneurs sales course’, taught by prof. Morse, an expert in entrepreneurship, and then became teammates and close friends during the ‘Turning Technology into Business’ course they both followed. Emboldened by the things they’d learned, the two students began brainstorming for good business ideas to pursue.
They quickly found one. “Entrepreneurship is about having a vision, mission, and ambition”, Kalush says. “Our vision was to put digitally interactive advertisements in elevators.” The idea for this originally came from Xie, who’d read a book by a Chinese millionaire who got rich by putting ads in elevators. “Elevator advertising had been haunting my mind for a long time, Xie says. “I’d noticed that very few elevators in Germany and Holland had ad boards, while in every neighbourhood in China the elevators are crammed with them.”
Xie, Kalush and two other friends subsequently launched their venture, called ‘Interads’, which would provide interactive, commercial elevator advertising, targeting first the international students residing in Roland Holstlaan. Xie: “Unfortunately we soon discovered that it was hard to reach Duwo and get permission for elevator advertising of solely commercial products.”
Communities
Undeterred, they went back to the drawing board to tweak their idea. From Interads they then developed what they believe is their winning idea: ourdelft.nl, an online
international community website. “Ourdelft.nl will be an online forum for international students”, Xie explains, “a place where students can share all kinds of information about studying, parties, second-hand goods exchange, living tips and eventually also get discounts from local shops and other businesses.”
Xie and Karush admit that online forums are hardly new inventions, but they believe their business success will come from narrowly focusing on the needs of the local international student community.
Xie: “There are large communities of Chinese, Indian, Greek, Spanish, Indonesian… students here but no single community to link them all. Facebook can’t fulfil this task, but ourdelft.nl will.” Kalush adds: “We’ve talked to various local vendors and they’re interested in being our customers.”
Having already approached Duwo with the Interads idea, the budding entrepreneurs creatively merged their two business ideas. Duwo had balked at the idea of purely commercial elevator ads, but they did grant permission to put an ad poster in the Roland Holstlaan elevator if it primarily served to promote sustainability under the slogan ‘Duwo: save water, save life’, yet also agreed to grant Xie and Kalush some space at the bottom of this poster to promote their ourdelft.nl start-up.
“We believe that the online forum combined with elevator posters in international student residences will serve as a portal for international students,” Kalush says. “Through this service, international students will be empowered to connect with colleagues.”
Cash
For every entrepreneur, the lofty dream of launching a good idea quickly hits a cold, hard fact: cash. That is, the funds, investments and investors needed to bankroll an idea and get it to market. And ourdelft.nl? “So far we consider ourselves garage-based entrepreneurs”, Kalush explains. “We’re looking to first ensure we can refine our business model and identify long-term revenue streams. At this point we don’t have many funds, so we’re trying to avoid high costs and bootstrap until we’re ready for the expansion phase, when we’ll surely need money to launch.”
Although currently financing the project out of their own pockets, Xie says money will not and should not be an issue now: “We all believe in that ‘Dream Big, but Do it Small’, laying down the concrete foundation for the product and business model until everything is ready to expand. We’re kind of entering a Blue Ocean market, not many competitors within scope. Getting money would be a disaster at this start-up stage, because sometimes facing too many choices isn’t a good choice at all.”
Passion, commitment, a good idea and supportive environment. Xie and Kalush seemingly have the right recipe for success, but what about the all-important issue of partnership? Having only recently met, how can they be sure they’re suitable business partners?
“I really appreciated Spark’s enthusiasm and energy from the get-go”, Kalush says. “He’s a smart guy who likes his independence, and both of us are also driven individuals who share common ambitions.”
But common ambitions aside, business means money, and money raises risk and trust issues. Any worries there? Xie: “While it’s true we just met last year, we both cherish the feeling of being trusted and value credibility a lot. From the very beginning of our courses we had embedded in our minds the fact that integrity is the most important quality for an entrepreneur. We both understand that gaining trust is an irreversible reaction; when you lose it, there’s almost no chance of getting it back.”
Will Xie and Kalush make it, get ourdelft.nl off the ground? That is perhaps for the Fates to decide, but what is certain is that Delft’s new entrepreneurial climate is starting to bear exotic fruit. Xie and Kalush are working hard, dreaming big and developing an extracurricular business skills set that will help them wherever their future career paths lead.
Anyone (especially programmers/database developers and designers) interested in joining the ourdelft.nl team should send an introductory email to: info@ourdelft.nl
Zal het ze opnieuw lukken? De zonnewagen Nuna5 was op 17 augustus nog een laatste keer te bewonderen op de TU voor hij naar Australië werd verscheept. Daar hoopt een groep Delftse studenten, verenigd in het Nuon Solar team, voor de vijfde keer op een rij de World Solar Challenge te winnen. Het nieuwe voertuig is dertig kilo lichter en kent dertig procent minder luchtweerstand dan zijn beroemde voorgangers. Verder wordt het toestel aangedreven door een zeer efficiënt type zonnecel, dat normaal gebruikt wordt in de ruimte. Eind oktober zal blijken of deze verbeteringen voldoende zijn om de Delftse claim to fame te behouden.
That two young guys from opposite ends of the world should feel sufficiently confident to embark on a locally based business venture says much about TU Delft’s recent drive to internationalize and ‘entrepreneurialise’. Five years ago Nir Kalush and Tianyi (Spark) Xie would’ve been exceptions. Today, if not quite yet the rule, such business ventures are becoming increasingly common here, with successful international (student) start-ups like IcySolutions and Holland Container Innovations proving that Delft can now properly support new corporate ventures.
There is Yes!Delft and its business start-up services, university courses in entrepreneurship taught by high-priced imports like MIT’s Professor Ken Morse, and, perhaps most importantly, a sufficiently open local business climate to allow two ‘foreigners’ to actually believe they can achieve business success here.
Potentialities
And that Xie (23), from Shanghai, China, and Kalush (24), from Washington D.C., are also entrepreneurial-minded emissaries from two of the world’s largest economies is precisely the kind of exciting potentialities that successful internationalisation is supposed to generate.
Xie and Kalush first met in an entrepreneurial course, ‘Starting New Ventures’, got to know each other better in the ‘Dutch Entrepreneurs sales course’, taught by prof. Morse, an expert in entrepreneurship, and then became teammates and close friends during the ‘Turning Technology into Business’ course they both followed. Emboldened by the things they’d learned, the two students began brainstorming for good business ideas to pursue.
They quickly found one. “Entrepreneurship is about having a vision, mission, and ambition”, Kalush says. “Our vision was to put digitally interactive advertisements in elevators.” The idea for this originally came from Xie, who’d read a book by a Chinese millionaire who got rich by putting ads in elevators. “Elevator advertising had been haunting my mind for a long time, Xie says. “I’d noticed that very few elevators in Germany and Holland had ad boards, while in every neighbourhood in China the elevators are crammed with them.”
Xie, Kalush and two other friends subsequently launched their venture, called ‘Interads’, which would provide interactive, commercial elevator advertising, targeting first the international students residing in Roland Holstlaan. Xie: “Unfortunately we soon discovered that it was hard to reach Duwo and get permission for elevator advertising of solely commercial products.”
Communities
Undeterred, they went back to the drawing board to tweak their idea. From Interads they then developed what they believe is their winning idea: ourdelft.nl, an online
international community website. “Ourdelft.nl will be an online forum for international students”, Xie explains, “a place where students can share all kinds of information about studying, parties, second-hand goods exchange, living tips and eventually also get discounts from local shops and other businesses.”
Xie and Karush admit that online forums are hardly new inventions, but they believe their business success will come from narrowly focusing on the needs of the local international student community.
Xie: “There are large communities of Chinese, Indian, Greek, Spanish, Indonesian… students here but no single community to link them all. Facebook can’t fulfil this task, but ourdelft.nl will.” Kalush adds: “We’ve talked to various local vendors and they’re interested in being our customers.”
Having already approached Duwo with the Interads idea, the budding entrepreneurs creatively merged their two business ideas. Duwo had balked at the idea of purely commercial elevator ads, but they did grant permission to put an ad poster in the Roland Holstlaan elevator if it primarily served to promote sustainability under the slogan ‘Duwo: save water, save life’, yet also agreed to grant Xie and Kalush some space at the bottom of this poster to promote their ourdelft.nl start-up.
“We believe that the online forum combined with elevator posters in international student residences will serve as a portal for international students,” Kalush says. “Through this service, international students will be empowered to connect with colleagues.”
Cash
For every entrepreneur, the lofty dream of launching a good idea quickly hits a cold, hard fact: cash. That is, the funds, investments and investors needed to bankroll an idea and get it to market. And ourdelft.nl? “So far we consider ourselves garage-based entrepreneurs”, Kalush explains. “We’re looking to first ensure we can refine our business model and identify long-term revenue streams. At this point we don’t have many funds, so we’re trying to avoid high costs and bootstrap until we’re ready for the expansion phase, when we’ll surely need money to launch.”
Although currently financing the project out of their own pockets, Xie says money will not and should not be an issue now: “We all believe in that ‘Dream Big, but Do it Small’, laying down the concrete foundation for the product and business model until everything is ready to expand. We’re kind of entering a Blue Ocean market, not many competitors within scope. Getting money would be a disaster at this start-up stage, because sometimes facing too many choices isn’t a good choice at all.”
Passion, commitment, a good idea and supportive environment. Xie and Kalush seemingly have the right recipe for success, but what about the all-important issue of partnership? Having only recently met, how can they be sure they’re suitable business partners?
“I really appreciated Spark’s enthusiasm and energy from the get-go”, Kalush says. “He’s a smart guy who likes his independence, and both of us are also driven individuals who share common ambitions.”
But common ambitions aside, business means money, and money raises risk and trust issues. Any worries there? Xie: “While it’s true we just met last year, we both cherish the feeling of being trusted and value credibility a lot. From the very beginning of our courses we had embedded in our minds the fact that integrity is the most important quality for an entrepreneur. We both understand that gaining trust is an irreversible reaction; when you lose it, there’s almost no chance of getting it back.”
Will Xie and Kalush make it, get ourdelft.nl off the ground? That is perhaps for the Fates to decide, but what is certain is that Delft’s new entrepreneurial climate is starting to bear exotic fruit. Xie and Kalush are working hard, dreaming big and developing an extracurricular business skills set that will help them wherever their future career paths lead.
Anyone (especially programmers/database developers and designers) interested in joining the ourdelft.nl team should send an introductory email to: info@ourdelft.nl
Editor’s note: In the above article the description ‘high priced’ to describe Professor Ken Morse is innaccurate. The intention was to convey a sense of quality only, with no monetary implications. In fact, prof. Morse does not recieve a salary from the university for his teaching and professional duties.
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