Husense is a highly innovative company and solution provider. They developed an alternative to camera surveillance that guarantees complete privacy and that can look where cameras can’t. Their innovation is a radar-based sensor that works for indoor and outdoor spaces, gathers human density and activity data and provides surveillance. Find out why they’re a product-market fit, what is the growth potential of the company and what kind of investors they’re looking to attract.
1. Hi Michael, thank you for agreeing to do the interview. Tell us about Husense, the idea that got it all started, and the amazing team behind it.
I came across this technology in 2019 as a low-cost chipset for high-frequency radar became available. I received many requests for an outdoor people density monitoring solution during the pandemic, which shows a need for such a system. First, we searched for an off-market sensor to integrate into our cloud platform. We could not find a robust solution for the outdoor space, so I got some great people together to develop a sensor that works with radar. Current systems are sensitive to environmental effects like sun and fog/smoke. Our approach is more robust and works even when visibility is low, uses very little energy, and contains no personally identifiable information at the source.
We received a grant from a Dutch agency, and together with the great people we selected for the company, we created this product in just 1.4 years. If you look at the state of research on classifying human activity with radar, we have done a great job, and now we have a genuinely privacy-safe product at the source. Being privacy safe dramatically reduces the risk for decision-makers, which speeds up project decisions for real-time space usage data.
2. What problems are you trying to solve? What are the benefits of Husense, and why is your startup a product-market fit?
Our main goal is to create better, safer, and protected spaces through privacy-guaranteed data.
Indoor spaces benefit enormously from real-time and historical occupancy data. The actual usage data is crucial for saving on facility and security costs, reducing energy usage and CO2 emissions, and predicting maintenance needs. Up to 60% of office spaces are left unseen. Making your building adapt to its occupancy levels can save up to 30% in energy and facility costs.
Our outdoor sensor is more focused on lower governmental clients. There is a prominent trend going on where cities are creating digital twins. These digital twins need real-time data to function as a reliable dashboard, and we provide the real-time data with guaranteed privacy. Our system can do human activity and mobility measurements with the same hardware, and it’s easy to install. The sensors also learn from each other and can do real-time surveillance in the near future. With the surveillance function, we create better and more secure spaces for 80% of public spaces where privacy is essential with the surveillance function.
3. You have a live round on Leapfunder. What makes it the right tool for your startup, and what do you expect from the round?
Husense started R&D-focused primarily, making sure the technology works. The little time left was used to fill our sales pipeline. With minimal marketing effort, we managed to land our first client and fill the prospect list to an equivalent of €140K in revenue.
Using Leapfunder reduced the preparation time of this round to 3 days and saved us on legal fees. We expect a successful €120K round and we almost filled the early bird tickets in the first five days.
4. How much growth potential do you see for Husense, and what type of investors are you looking to attract in this round?
According to the reactions we get from the market and our (potential) clients, the growth potential for Husense is huge. We see an increased demand for privacy-friendly sensors in the Dutch market and in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia.
Besides the angels from the Netherlands, it would be great to get some smart capital from investors who are familiar with our other focus countries as well.’
5. What are your plans for the upcoming months? Tell us about your go-to-market strategy and the plan to acquire customers.
We will focus on getting our hardware to the market and delivering the product to our first customers. Our main sales target is getting more B2B clients who want to optimise their space usage and reduce their energy consumption, which is relevant to current energy prices.
In the B2G market, we will focus on getting more paid pilots from governmental clients. The European Union approved Husense sensors for use in their buildings. We are now in the final stages of getting a large pilot order of 60 sensors for a European government agency.
Thank you very much for sharing your story, Michael. We wish Husense the best of luck.
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