Get to know ACE startup founders & find out what drives them!
The ACE-List: We are proud and excited to introduce our awesome startup founders. The ACE-List is a regular installment where startup teams from the ACE Incubation Program introduce themselves and share a little insight into their startup journey!
Meet the founders!
Name(s): Gijs Bos, Rogier Mars
Title(s) + field(s) (MSc/PhD or other): MSc Computer Science, MSc Information Science
Company: Stebble
Industry: Financial Services, Mobile Apps
Founded in: April 2019
In short
We create a mobile application for users to pay in whatever payment method they prefer, blurring the lines between in-store and online payments and merging banking with payments.
Tell us more!
How did you come up with your startup idea?
In April 2018, DGTL, ACE and MoneYou organized the Future Festival Bootcamp where they challenged the participants to solve several problems including using digital tokens, digital token sharing, shortening queues and collecting useful purchase data. We won the people’s choice award and that’s how our idea for an application was born.
What is your company’s unique proposition?
Turning banking and payments into a single application, eliminating transaction costs for merchants and provide banking convenience to our users.
What has been your ACE moment? (or: when did you feel like you really nailed something?)
When we created a survey to see what people thought about our value proposition for events, festivals, token sharing, pre-ordering and payments. We found out that we had to use a different approach to solve the problem, which ultimately lead to a different product. From that point on, we feel like we have a concept that really can make an impact.
What has the shift from academia to entrepreneurship been like for you?
The shift was quite seamless but we had to develop a practical mindset, you cannot solve every problem in your head but you need to get out there and do what needs to be done. My academic background prepared me for setting up projects and creating software which is useful but in real-life, businesses are way ahead of the theory presented during your academic years.
What is the best advice you could give someone who wants to start their own business?
If you have an idea which you think solves a problem or creates a unique opportunity. Don’t speculate and make assumptions for months but start validating your idea. Don’t try to do everything yourself, get help where you can, people can help you. Last but not least, find a partner who complements you. You will need someone to help you, someone who is equally invested as you and wants to make your idea succeed.
What are your next steps for the coming months/half year?
Validating our concept and value propositions and acquiring investments and/or partners to start developing our concept and acquire our first customers and users.
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