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jaargang 42, 13 april 2000 English page

Twinning Center Welcome Foreign Starters Starting entrepreneurs are now perceived as serious players in the international marketplace. Even starters with only an idea are deemed worthy of support by investors. The ‘Twinning’ (technology + winning) Center opened last week on TUE campus, are competing for the best ICT starters. Jan Uylings, area director Twinning Zuid-Nederland. Area director of Twinning Zuid-Nederland Jan Uylings says foreigners who want to start a company in the Netherlands are most welcome at the center. “Actually, we want all the starters we can get,” he comments. “The only special precondition for foreigners is that they found a Dutch ‘BV’, because our goal is to encourage ICT starters in the Netherlands. Although all the new companies we support are targeting global markets.” The new Twinning Center houses seven starting companies. Two others are expected to join them soon. There is room for 25 businesses. “We already have a very international atmosphere,” says Uylings. “At MetaProjects for example. We have Russians, a Norwegian, Australians and British. A Chinese entrepreneur may soon be added to the list.” Twinning offer starting ICT entrepreneurs office space at the current market prices in their new building on the edge of TUE campus. The new offices are situated on the Rondweg, Eindhoven’s inner ring road. Five Centers There are now three Twinning centers in the Netherlands, the others are in Amsterdam and Enschede. Two more will be founded in the coming years. Twinning currently fund, advise and house a total of forty starters. The organisation have said their long-term goal is to continually support 150 starters in all five centers. These starters should stay an average of two or three years, before moving on to become fully independent. The Twinning organisation have a network of more than twenty partners. They are Dutch and American industrialists with a proven track record, among them are: Roel Pieper (Twinning chairman), Paul Baan, Pieter Adriaans, Esther Dyson (USA), Eli Zelkha (Israel), Kevin Fong (USA). Another group of 150 entrepreneurs act as advisers . They support starters with their knowledge, contacts and experience, fulfilling mentors’ roles. A number of businesses such as law firms and accountancy firms provide their services to new entrepreneurs under favourable conditions. The Twinning Center also help the foreign entrepreneurs they take on in obtaining visa or work permits. “We can get the process speeded up. Our contacts with the relevant authorities are excellent,” says Uylings. Financing Twinning offer new businesses they think have high potential financing from their ‘Seed Fund’. Entrepreneurs with promising ideas for exportable ICT products or services are provided with convertible loans or equity worth between 150,000 and 330,000 guilders. The Twinning Growth Fund targets ICT companies entering their secondary growth phase. Unlike the Twinning Seed Fund, it does not carry out an active company search, this is a co-investment fund. If a financier wants to invest in a company, he can ask the Twinning Growth Fund to share the investment on a 50/50 basis up to a maximum of 2 million guilders each. A number of businesses have entered into an alliance with Twinning. They are Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young, Giga Information Group, Houthoff Buruma, IDC (International Data Corporation), ING Bank, Meredian Technology Marketing Europe, MCI WorldCom and Young Executive Recruitment. In general, Twinning offers starting businesses access to local venture capitalists. The new Twinning Center on TUE campus. Photo: FranŤois Eyck Student Starters The Dutch government want to encourage students to start their own business. Compared to the USA, where 70% of students have plans to start their own businesses, the Netherlands lag far behind with only 17%. Various subsidies are available. One of the people in the government who advocate more help for starters and investment in ICT is minister of Economic Affairs Annemarie Jorritsma, who opened the Twinning Center building in Eindhoven last week. “We want to bring as many students and graduate students as possible into contact with Twinning and help them start their own businesses,” says Uylings. “We can also organise trainee places for students.” Twinning are also looking at recruitment possibilities abroad. “Because of the shortage of people in our job market, we can offer people from all over the world employment. We are talking to an employment agency in Eastern Europe about a form of co-operation. They have highly trained people and not enough jobs,” Uylings concludes. “We now also have a special website for recruitment purposes.”/.

Wireless Internet Test Ten staff and students at TUE will receive a mobile phone this summer with which they will be able to log-on to the Internet anywhere. This is an experiment by Ericsson and Libertel via Gigaport to use GPRS to send on high-speed data. GPRS stands for General Packet Radio Services and makes use of the gsm network. “A number of students and staff will receive a telephone with which they can Internet everywhere. Even on a bus or in a train. It’s all possible,” says Joop Schillemans of ICTS. In the pilot project’s second phase, about one hundred people will receive a mobile phone from Ericsson for testing. It is not yet clear who the lucky testers will be. “They will probably be students in their graduate year who are working on radio engineering at Electrical Engineering. The network’s coverage is limited to Eindhoven and region for now. According to Schillemans, the network will partly be in commercial use by the end of the year. Virtual Campus Shopping and moving around on a Virtual Campus will be possible as of september of this year at TUE. Cebra, a TUE initiative to promote e-commercie, have planned the development of a Virtual Campus on Internet. This campus is made up of a shopping Plaza and a Virtual Bunker, where a student community will hopefully grow. The shops taking part in the pilot are (among others) Edah supermarket, Ohra insurance, Effting travel agency, a bank, an employment agency and a pharmacist. On Wednesday April 19 an information meeting is to take place, in room 2 at the Auditorium, where the plans will be discussed. Anyone interested in taking part is welcome from 8.00 to 9.00 p.m.

Career Guidance Career guidance during a university course used to consist mainly of training for job application, these days there is increased demand for guidance at various times other than graduation,” says student counsellor Marielle Schoenmakers of the Studenten Service Centrum or STU. The demand is not always from students, faculties are also asking for counsel. “Some students don’t know which major to choose, and are sent to us by their faculty.” University career guidance is still being actively developed at STU. This year STU started a workshop in English. “Two-year graduate students began to ask for ‘Application Skills’. Foreign graduate students and students also showed interest. Although of course the workshops do target the Dutch job market,” Schoenmakers concludes. Minister Jorritsma Opens Twinning Centre Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Annemarie Jorritsma opened the new Twinning Centre Eindhoven building on Thursday April 6. The Twinning Centre offers housing, support and finance to starting ICT companies. The building on the TUE campus is five stories high and can house 25 starters. At the moment only seven starting companies make use of Eindhoven’s Twinning offices, two new companies will join them shortly. On a national level, the Twinning organisation is participating in forty start-ups. The new building should be full in about a year. Until now, the Twinning offices were in the ‘Paviljoen’. Their former space is now occupied by The Industree, a Simac spin-off. Graffiti in ST Building Three young graffiti artists have enlivened the grey walls at the Chemical Engineering building with their work. They were invited to do this by a committee consisting of Ton Sommen, Hans van Rijsewijk and Krzysztof Ptasinski of the Chemical Reactor Technology group. The young artists were asked to use lots of colour and to incorporate a ‘technological’ element in their work. The panels onto which the graffiti was sprayed are now still in Gaslab, but will soon be hung on the first floor. The English page in Cursor is written by journalist Paula van de Riet: 4441, engcur@stud.tue.nl