A lighting engineer, a computer scientist, and a business graduate are founding a company. What do you think they're doing? Exactly, a completely new lighting system. Seven questions, seven answers — today with Stephan Förtsch, one of the three founders of HEAVN.
1. Who are you and what do you do? Please briefly introduce yourself and your product!
We are the three founders of HEAVY and sell visual caffeine. In this country, people spend a lot of time in rooms with static light—our bodies suffer as a result. Therefore, we have developed a technology that dynamically replicates the various properties of sunlight. This demonstrably makes us more productive and increases our well-being.
In mid-June, on June 21st to be precise, we'll be launching our first product on Kickstarter. The biologically perfect desk lamp "HEAVN Caffeine" brings three key innovations: fully automatic spectral control based on current research, biologically optimal geometry and Bluetooth IoT technology. We also offer our technology to other lighting manufacturers so that they can prepare their existing lights for the healthy smart home of the future.
2. But that's been around for a long time!
In fact, we're observing that the entire lighting industry is trying to move toward healthy and smart lighting. So far, however, the products of established manufacturers haven't been particularly well-received by customers.
We like to compare this to the situation with smartphones before the iPhone: Back then, manufacturers like Nokia were already on the market with innovative, "smart" devices. But they didn't sell well because they weren't user-friendly or customer-focused.
That’s why our approach is: We turn an everyday product into the “Desk Lamp 4.0”: with an attractive design, automatically controlled according to scientific findings and updatable thanks to Internet of Things technology.
3. What are the three main ingredients for your recipe for success?
• Passion: We love what we do and our mission.
• Hard work beats talent.
• Some key contacts that not everyone can reach.
4. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
As a hardware startup with a highly innovative and complex product, we are currently EXIST We've already achieved initial success with enthusiastic pilot customers and pre-orders. We'll continue this path with our Kickstarter campaign. We also have interested parties from the lighting industry who are very interested in using our technology.
5. What does Munich mean to you?
We all come from different parts of Germany and deliberately chose Munich as our location. We already had some connections: Raphael studied at the Technical University of Munich, David worked for BMW, and Stephan worked for Flixbus.
And Munich is not only a beautiful city, it's also becoming increasingly cosmopolitan, attracting more foreign talent and capital. We also receive excellent support from Munich's two major universities and have the opportunity to attract outstanding talent.
6. How will your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
Every room needs light. HEAVN supplies the lighting technology for the first true smart home standard as a modular system, also for other manufacturers. The majority of them urgently need our innovation. Therefore: We're aiming for the unicorn!
7. Helles or Prosecco?
Definitely light.
