Design Terminal is an excellent catalyst between the world of startups and big corporations.
Attila Bolla, Head of MP Plant
Innovation Champion
´Innovation will always be an integral part of my life ´
Miki Zsigó
Smapp
Founder
Miki Zsigó became close to innovation as a child. As a high school mentor teacher, his father encouraged him all his life to dare to experiment, to try new things. He fell in love with technology at a very young age, mostly robotics and programming came close to his heart, and his first attempts at elementary school were also related to this.
During his high school years he began working on more and more serious projects, until he and his team finally got into NAK TechLab Incubation Program in 2019 with their apple moth trap he came up with in 2018. The idea was inspired by Miki’s personal experience, as the apple trees at their family house were ruined by moths. Their solution is a digital apple moth trap, the data of which can be used to provide precision spraying advice in a timely manner, which can significantly reduce the amount of pesticides used.
“The greatest value we were given at the Incubation Program was the network of contacts. We could sit down and talk to people we would never have been able to reach otherwise and learn things in a very short time that we wouldn’t know from any textbook,” Miki said. “I don’t have enough knowledge in many things, especially business, but it’s a long learning process that I can be grateful for every day.”
For the team the next step is the Design Terminal Mentoring Program, where they can gain business and strategic knowledge. Besides that they are validating their product together with KITE in a real market situation. This is a cooperation that started in the NAK TechLab Incubation Program.
The next milestone in Miki’s life is graduation and college admission. To pull himself out of his comfort zone, he applied to a major that seemed to be completely far from what he had been pursuing so far. “I submitted to sociology, I can learn technical things on my own. Futurology is my dream job, so this degree will come in handy.” He considers it more important to create something lasting than being in school, and for that, too, he has a striking, refreshingly mature idea: “People who are on a different journey are always the ones who create something out of the ordinary.”
Objective:
- Development and digitalization of the Hungarian precision agricultural sector.
Challenges:
- It is very difficult to reach and persuade large business partners.
- Placing the product on the market and operating it.
Results:
- We work together and test with large enterprise pilot partners.
- Our products got into a few, small Hungarian farms.
I have no idea what will happen in the future, exactly what I will do and when, but I know that innovation will always be an integral part of my life.
