When an acquaintance died because of a heart failure, it was the beginning of the student Taiye Adeboye's journey to develop his product Heartalive, a device that can monitor heart activity and alert paramedics if a heart failure is about to occur.
- The goal is to help people with heart diseases and diseases that need monitoring, says Taiye Adeboye.
However, Heartalive doesn´t only work in a case of heart failure - it can also be used to monitor changes in a person's heart activity before it actually happens. This enables doctors and nurses to keep track of changes and to react before it is too late. Taiye Adeboye also decided to make Heartalive quite small and portable, as he has seen how challenging it may be to live with a heart disease.
- I also have a friend whose father has a heart disease that made him unable to leave his home for many years, says Taiye Adeboye.
Even though Taiye Adeboye had thought about developing a product that could help people with heart problems for a long time, it was only last autumn that he decided to start developing Heartalive. After that, everything happened very fast. Firstly, he won the business idea competition jagharenide.nu with Heartalive and after that; he participated in the business plan competition Venture Cup with the same idea. But Taiye Adeboye won´t stop there.
- The next step is to construct a prototype, and that is what we are working with right now, he says.
Hopefully, the prototype will be ready to be tested this autumn, before Taiye Adeboye completes his Bachelor's degree in Electronics Design in December. After this, Taiye Adeboye wants to continue developing his product in cooperation with Mid Sweden University, MIUN Innovation and his development team, consisting of Najeem Lawal - researcher at Mid Sweden University and Niklas Ekman – a fellow student at Mid Sweden University. Taiye Adeboye has already got a plan for the next five years.
- I will be the CTO of my company, making profit through products that create value. I also hope that I have completed at least my Masters' degree in Electronics and that at the same time, I will be a source of inspiration to others to follow the entrepreneurial path toward their goals, he says.
Taiye´s three best tips for entrepreneurs
- Think value - If you are planning on starting your own company, developing a product or offering a service, there is a need to deeply consider the product and gear it towards meeting specific need(s) of the intended customer.
- Dare to - Secondly, you should be prepared to work hard, ready to meet a lot of challenges and tenacious in pursuing your goal.
- Network - Get good advice and mentorship, interact with like minded people, real world entrepreneurs and business people. Participate in start-up meet ups, business incubators, conferences and the like. It surely helps.