TOUCHING BASE WITH MARJOLEIN HELDER - ONE OF THE FINALISTS IN THE 2011 GREEN CHALLENGE

Photo by Roy Beusker

What does participating in the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge mean for a finalist, even if you don't win?

For starters, the Green Challenge will get you a lot of media coverage. In a practical sense, it led to 37 reactions from individuals and companies that would like to do something with our technology, start a pilot project or buy a product. Fantastic! Also, from the moment you are a finalist people take you seriously. Investors figure that your product has to be good if the Postcode Lottery and the Green Challenge are backing you.

Did you meet a lot of new people?

Too many to mention. Obviously I met a lot of new people during the Green Challenge week. But also after the event numerous people contacted us because they really like the technology. The best reaction came from someone who said: "I spend part of my time doing volunteer work and I'm always looking for new projects and good causes to work on. Can I help you? Unpaid? Finally a project that gets me excited!" Isn't that great? 

What have you learned from participating in the Green Challenge?

That it's an illusion to think that you're able to control the pace by which you want to bring your product to market. The market determines how quickly a product is introduced. It's all very well to write business plans and to work out strategies and timeframes, but if the market is pulling, you have to comply otherwise you'll miss your window of opportunity. Apparently this was our moment.

How is Plant-e doing now? What are the latest developments?

We are doing great! We are now in the process of selecting the most promising projects from the bunch that we've been offered. For the past couple of years we have done quite some projects that we financed by working for free, but the number of hours in a week will only take us that far. So we can only do projects that will pay out the hours at the moment. If that's not possible, we can't do the project. Amazing how many projects there are still left to choose from though! People are just very willing to participate in the technology development. It looks like we'll be hiring at least two people in 2013, and take on some extra projects as well. Exciting!! 

Who was your source of inspiration to start as an entrepreneur? What is your motivation?

My dad Nico has had his own company for years now, and I always liked that. My plans in that direction have always been quite vague though, I still had to find something for my company to focus on. When I started writing my dissertation about generating electricity with living plants, my professor Cees Buisman immediately said this idea should turn into a company and he thought I was cut out for the job. That was an extra motivation to get started. I was still working 1 day a week for Wageningen Business School with Gitte Schober, who also guides starting entrepreneurs from Wageningen University. She gave me room to develop my own business case whilst working there, and to take classes that support entrepreneurship.

My biggest source of inspiration however turned out to be David Strik, with whom I eventually started Plant-e. He was able to switch roles from a research mentor to a business partner on equal footing. David has an endless amount of energy, enthusiasm and patience. I couldn't have found a better partner. We can take on the whole world together, even though that world is now very rapidly expanding ;-). Whenever things get tough, it is a wonderful feeling that I’m not in this alone, but that we can figure things out together.

There are so many more inspirational and motivational factors though. Students, pupils and other interested people that say: "Wow, is this really possible?!?" That never fails to make me happy. And also all the friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances who get excited for us and cut out newspaper articles and keep encouraging us when we didn't win the Green Challenge.

Have you encountered opportunities that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise?

37 opportunities even! Besides those, we are really on a roll now. It feels like the whole world is rooting for us, which is great. We went from a technology push to a market pull situation. But it's also an enormous challenge. We've always had difficulties to undertake all business activities in that one day a week that we are officially working for Plant-e (as we're both still PhD students), but now it is near impossible. We will have to start hiring people quickly now to get all the work done. Luckily, the Green Challenge has also led to new financing opportunities, which we really need at this moment.