Join us for a groundbreaking episode featuring Chief Researcher Gabriel Mora at Real Deal Milk, where innovation meets dairy-free transformation! 🌱 Discover how Real Deal Milk is revolutionizing the dairy industry, producing your favorite dairy products without a single cow involved! Their animal-free cheese fights climate change and preserves food culture using precision fermentation. Plus, get the scoop on the Desafía food tech program, landing innovative Spanish startups in the Netherlands a...
Sep 19, 2023•17 min•Season 2Ep. 10
From melon seeds to innovation in ingredients, we delve into Väcka’s journey of creating planet-conscious plant-based cheeses. Väcka is a Barcelona-based FoodTech startup that produces plant-based cheese alternatives. Founded in 2021 by Luz Sanz and Maxime Boniface, who were inspired to create vegan cheese alternatives after changing their diet to a vegan one. Väcka's cheese alternatives are made with fermented melon seed milk and extra virgin olive oil, and are available in more than 400 points...
Aug 30, 2023•18 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Despite its lengthy decomposition time and difficulty to be recycled, over 300 million tones of plastic is produced each year. Would we ever be able to deal with the ever-growing amount of discarded plastic? Well, first believe that it is possible, and then you'll see🎙️ Hailing from Israeli, founder Tal Cohen developed a unique solution. Through PlasticBack, Tal Cohen and his team work alongside waste handlers and petrochemical companies to turn plastic back into its original form. Commercial p...
Apr 05, 2023•28 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Through virtual reality, you are immersed into a different world. Through the use of SenseGlove , you can also touch it. 🎙️ Today, our host Jurgen Nieuwenhuijsen is joined by Gijs den Butter , Co-Founder of SenseGlove. SenseGlove is the mouse and the keyboard of the future. Their haptic glove technology is enabling you to feel the touch and sensation of holding objects while being in VR. What started as a student company is now bringing VR in the hands of employees from companies such as Volksw...
Feb 22, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Did you know that the average edible insects have far higher protein content than the average protein source? To Daniela Arias, our next guest on the Unknown Stories podcast, this is no secret. Coming from Costa Rica, Sibö B.V. is working to bridge the gap between insects and food companies! Through the use of their Entowise technology, they help insect manufacturers develop high-value products with only 5% of the carbon emissions of the current alternatives. As one of the runner-ups of the Glob...
Feb 08, 2023•32 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Discover a truly unconventional solution that stores energy in liquid air. Meet Phelas, our guest on the Unknown Stories podcast. In the fifth episode of this season, Leon, one of the co-founders of Phelas, joined us from Germany to explain how their solution is crucial for the energy transition. Phelas created a battery which uses the liquification of air to store energy and release it via expansion in a highly efficient manner. After emerging as the Rising Star during the Global Meetup 2022, L...
Jan 24, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Warp VR 's vision for the future of work is where workforces leverage VR to ensure they are trained for high pressure situations. Story-based, immersive VR modules to onboard and upskill will be the way to go! In the latest episode of the Unknown Stories podcast, we are joined by Thijs de Vries , CEO at Warp VR, who explains how cutting-edge VR training modules are making onboarding handbooks obsolete in field-based roles. Check out this episode of the Unknown Stories podcast on Spotify, Apple M...
Jan 11, 2023•40 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Going carbon neutral in the horticulture industry is an ambitious dream. With BBBLS it is possible. In the third episode of Unknown Stories, our host, Jurgen , is joined by Anton Paardekooper , Founder & Managing Director at BBBLS. Using soap bubbles, BBBLS is reinventing greenhouses. Their solution equips greenhouses with extra insulation, enabling the production of high quality crops with a fraction of the energy used. How can extremely thin films of soap and water with enclosed air be the...
Dec 21, 2022•28 min•Season 2Ep. 3
When crumbs of energy come together as Powercrumbs ! Episode 2 of the second season of the Unknown Stories is here to dive deeper into overlooked energy sources. In the energy transition, all energy sources matter. For this episode, Jurgen is joined by Pieter Mans , Co-founder of Powercrumbs. On a mission to unleash the true potential of untapped energy sources - power crumbs - Pieter, together with Jelmer and Jan , are creating sustainable energy streams....
Nov 22, 2022•42 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In the first episode of Season 2, Jurgen is joined by Linda Klunder to go into an in-depth tour of the first cocoa pulp-based soft drink on the market. Living at the poverty line, cocoa farmers earn only 6% of the final value of a chocolate bar. However, to produce it, much of the cocoa fruit is discarded as waste, when in reality, it is a rich pulpy fruit. So, what can we do to increase the income of cocoa farmers? Drink more Kumasi! Kumasi fights food loss and poverty by making soft drinks and...
Nov 08, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Did you know that The Netherlands offers the biggest and widest range of plant-based products? Or that Spain is emerging as one of the leading FoodTech ecosystems in the world? The synergy between the two countries should be leveraged. Our first Unknown Stories Special episode of this season welcomes Alejandro Alvarez of Quesana (former Vegetaleso) to share with us his main learnings from the Desafia Netherlands program. As a participant in last year’s edition, Alejandro dived deeper into the in...
Jun 08, 2022•26 min
Jurgen is joined by Coenraad de Vries, co-founder of Oneplanetcrowd . Oneplanetcrowd is The Netherlands' largest sustainable crowdfunding platform; with a community of 30,000 impact investors, they have financed more than 200 projects by sustainable entrepreneurs. Listen to this episode for insights on how they became the largest Dutch sustainable crowdfunding platform, their ambitions of supporting the energy transition by empowering early-stage impact entrepreneurs and a peek into their prepar...
May 04, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 21
🎙️ Meet Oscar Via, Economic and Trade Counsellor of Spain, who is guiding Spanish FoodTech startups to The Netherlands and beyond! In this parallel series of Unknown Stories, our host Willem Knaap aims to understand how governments act upon opportunities and innovation to reveal tomorrow’s taste. With the Desafia FoodTech Netherlands 2021, Unknown and ICEX aim to facilitate meaningful collaborations between leading Spanish FoodTech ventures and Dutch partners to successfully scale innovations. ...
Oct 31, 2021•21 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Ever wondered how large militaries innovate and stay ahead of the curve? Then this one's for you. Fons Van der Ham is the International Innovation Manager of Defensie Materieel Organisatie, The Netherlands Ministry of Defence. He joins Jurgen and Tom at the studio to discuss the digital NATO Innovation Challenge organised by Unknown Group in Spring 2020, further going into how innovative startups can get in touch with the Ministry of Defence for collaborations and scaling. Register for #NEDS2020...
Oct 24, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 20
It’s tough for new, innovative ventures to collaborate with McDonald’s, but not impossible. In this Unknown Specials episode, our host Willem Knaap aims to understand how corporate leaders act upon opportunities and innovation to disentangle the future of food. This time, he is joined by Jeroen Dekkers, Head of Supply Chain at McDonald’s, to draw the route for newcomers into the McDonald’s system. Scale is their biggest advantage, but also disadvantage to integrate game changing solutions. Worki...
Oct 17, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Collaboration between start-ups, scale-ups, (energy) companies and governments will fast-track the development of technologies which can help us tackle the challenges of climate change. Shell GameChanger stands out as the oldest of all corporate innovation programs. Since 1996, the Shell GameChanger program is fully focused on scouting for disruptive ideas that could be vital to meeting future energy needs worldwide. In this parallel series, our host Willem Knapp, director of Corporate Venturing...
Oct 04, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 17
"The massive challenge that we had to solve is to provide what a professor would know after teaching a domain for 50 years." Previously being featured as the Unknown Solution of the Week, KIMO is a Dutch AI firm which is making breakthroughs on personalized learning at scale. Their unconventional solution is able to reskill professionals that want to move into another knowledege domain. To provide a guided path through the never-ending online content, KIMO takes into account the already availabl...
Mar 30, 2021•37 min
We first met Vijaykant Nadadur, Co-Founder and CEO of Stride.ai, when we identified them as a viable solution for the ABN AMRO "Building the Bank of The Future" challenge in 2017. Winning this event elevated Stride.ai to process optimization superstardom especially in the Banking industry, with Stride.ai landing successful collaborations with ING's Fintech Village and EY. Today, Stride.ai is a one-stop solution that helps companies automate their processes without writing a single line of code. ...
Mar 18, 2021•54 min
"Microplastics are everywhere. In water, air, soil, and in our food, they have been found in Arctic ice, on Mount Everest, in our bodies and so on... If we do not come to working solutions as soon as possible to remove microplastics and micropollutants, we directly have bad influence on our health and we get sick. This is for sure." Dr. Katrin Schuhen is the Founder & Managing Director of Wasser 3.0. Although for many seemed like a bold direction to pursue, her extensive research on using hy...
Feb 19, 2021•47 min
Omniflow upgrade regular street lights to sustainable infrastructures essential for smart cities. Their smart IoT lamp post, powered by wind and solar, is reducing energy consumption by more than 94%, while providing EV charging, smart car parking, 5G small-cell and other value added services. After winning Get in the Ring Lisbon - Impact a couple of months ago, we were eager to discover more about how Omniflow tackles CO2 emissions, while transforming this challenge into an opportunity to expan...
Feb 10, 2021•41 min
In this episode, Jurgen is joined by Giels Brouwer - Founder of leading sport performance analytics scaleups, SciSports and BallJames . These scaleups pioneered a data-driven approach to scouting football players, which was adopted by the world’s leading football clubs such as Olympique Lyon, Leeds United and Ajax. In recent years, SciSports have built a fully-automated solution that quantifies the quality, potential and value of every professional football player in the world. Furthermore, towa...
Feb 05, 2021•37 min
New Unknown Group Chairman, Edward de Jager and CEO, Hendrik Halbe speak candidly about the motivations behind the merger between VenturesOne and Unknown Group, delving into what a Venture Engine is and how they envision it working to fuel founders of innovative solutions from all parts of the world. Both Hendrik and Edward have built numerous ventures from scratch over the course of their entrepreneurial journey - what are their key learnings? how do they use this knowledge to fuel the founders...
Feb 03, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Giving raw materials a digital identity which enables them to become traceable is a game-changing solution for the recycling industry. One that led Circularise to the Get in the Ring The Netherlands - Impact Final. Mesbah Sabur, the founder of Circularise, built a decentralized platform that brings transparency to supply chains without comprimising confidentiality. Their innovative Smart Questioning technology allows stakeholders to exchange sensitive information about products in a trusted mann...
Jan 27, 2021•49 min
(Zoom Session) The demand for protein is expected to double over the coming decades, as a result of the growing population and also a change in eating habits. Currently, the meat industry is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions around the world, but what about the moment when the demand will double? Dror Tamir, Co-founder of Hargol FoodTech, pursues an incredible difficult task - educating the market to embrace alternative-protein sources. In this Zoom session with the student entrepr...
Jan 06, 2021•1 hr 9 min
Brad Vanstone is the Founder of Willicroft, a sustainable plant-based cheese solution that aims to tackle global warming by providing a tasty alternative to dairy cheese. In two years, the finalist of Get in the Ring the Netherlands - Impact managed to put a whole range in the major supermarkets. But is it scalable? Brad joins Jurgen at the studio to touch upon Willicroft's to-market strategy and how they took the best elements of existing solutions to capitalize on the gap in the plant-based ch...
Dec 16, 2020•47 min
A water purification system driven by solar energy? One that can be rapidly deployed in times of crises, can bring relief to distressed communities and is wholly manufactured in Europe in-line with ESG frameworks? It's no surprise that Alexander van der Kleij's SolarDew were amongst the favorites of the Get in the Ring The Netherlands - Impact. Our host, Jurgen is joined by SolarDew Founder to touch upon a wide variety of topics around running an impactful venture while still being an efficient ...
Dec 09, 2020•30 min
"Innovation is not only about taking risks, but is about exploring in a structured manner before you decide to build something." Suzanne Charlotte Vos is the Innovation Coach & Consultant at ING Labs APAC in Singapore, and her main role is to scale disruptive solutions. She joins Jochem at the studio to discuss entry strategies for startups in Asia, further going into how innovative entrepreneurs can get in touch with ING for collaborations and scaling. What is the biggest misconception of d...
Nov 27, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 18
(Zoom Session) Starting an A.I.-powered solution that reduces the need for lawyers in the legal industry, an industry that is infamous for their slow adoption of new technologies -- it seems crazy until someone actually does it. And that's precisely what Shashank Bijapur, Co-Founder of Indian legal-tech innovator Spotdraft did! In this Zoom session with the student entrepreneurs of the Global School for Entrepreneurship, Shashank speaks about the challenges for disruption in the legal industry, ...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr
[Zoom Session] From being the Global Winner of Get in the Ring 2013 with his company EyeVerify (now ZOLOZ), to being acquired by Ant Group for $100 million three years later, saying Toby Rush has some valuable insights to share is an understatement. He sat down for an AMA session ealier this year with students of the Global School for Entrepreneurship to detail his journey. At Get in the Ring, we're eager to shine a spotlight on the next Toby Rush and the next Eyeverify - perhaps as soon as our ...
Nov 16, 2020•1 hr 13 min
In this new parallel series, every month our Host, Willem Knaap (Director of Corporate Venturing at Unknown Group) aims to understand how corporate industry leaders act upon opportunities, innovation and disruption. In the inaugral episode, he is joined by Sake Algra, the Managing Director of T-Systems. "Is innovation a threat or an opportunity" is where we begin, before the episode navigates to the ingredients necessary for a successful startup-corporate collaboration, how 5G will effect busine...
Nov 12, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 20
