From lab to business
2017 was a great year for confocal.nl! Starting with the opening of our new office (Sciencepark 406, 1098XH, Amsterdam), where Irene Stellingwerf, the first ever employee, had the honour of cutting the ribbon. Our own facility away from the university labs was a big step for us as a company.
First units of RCM were shipped to customers in 2017. All RCM units are tested in our office before shipment, which can create sometimes a bit of a chaos, but it is always a great pleasure to see boxes being packed and prepared for a route to far away destinations.
Research and development
We have been doing pioneering work for Near Infra Red (800nm ex.) in the lab and we were really lucky to be awarded an Eurostars grant (called Detector) to study the potential deep imaging of single photon NIR.
Suring the summer 2017 we had 6 students helping us with different RCM applications. They worked on neuro imaging (Maaike), lipid vesicle imaging (Alesha), comparing SIM imaging and RCM imaging (Thomas), and NIR imaging (Stan). Danny started to work on the uManager driver and Fleur even designed a new microscope for the RCM. These were inspired times, happy and creative for all of us!!
Many meetings and conferences
We attended the HOLM in Luxembourg, FOM in Bordeaux, ELMI in Dubrovnik, MMC in Manchester. Seeing is Believing in Heidelberg, the Bangalore microscopy course, and finally ASCB in Philadelphia. What a nice feeling, setting up, demonstrating the RCM, showing our 170nm resolution even on the exhibition floor, and talking to potential customers. The feedback was overwhelming: signal to noise ration, value for money, but most important “the extreme ease of use”! In 2018 we plan to do all this again and even more….
Expanding the team
Stan and Danny stayed working with confocal.nl. Stan is working with us full time now, as a field service engineer, setting up RCM at customer locations and supporting users.
Danny is working part time, providing uManager support. Riina joined us to take care of our website and activities in the social media. In September, Carla joined the team to take care of all the sales activities. I am really proud of this talented, young and enthusiastic team!
From start-up to scale-up
For me, 2017 was the transition year from a start-up to scale-up. 2018 will be the year for scale up. We are discussing with different investors how to drive this scale up phase the best forward. More news soon. We have set ourselves an ambitious sales target for 2018, but I am confident that with the current team and the support from Erik and Ronald from the University lab, we can achieve this! In case you are interested learning more about what RCM can do for you in your lab or would like to know more about the upcoming RCM-NIR, please contact one of us!
May you all reach your (new year) resolutions in 2018!
