Romania start-up story. What are the plans of Wyliodrin

After winning the Best Business prize at the 2013 Innovation Labs and partnering with Intel, Romanian startup Wyliodrin is planning to launch its product in California. Alexandru Radovici, CEO & founder, says that US expansion will bring international exposure.

Otilia Haraga

How did you start Wyliodrin?

We got the idea from a summer school we’ve been organizing for nine years, called IP Workshop. For two weeks, pupils and students take part in IT classes, working on various projects using last generation technologies. One of the classes we organized was about the Internet of Things. In this class, pupils tried to change ordinary things by connecting them to the internet, such as a lamp that gives a different light depending on your best friend’s mood. Before long, we realized there was a lack of software development tools in this field, and starting from our needs, we built the Wyliodrin platform, which lets the user program and control the hardware plates that are necessary for building intelligent devices.

How did you obtain funds to develop the business?

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The business developed without any type of external financing. The first version of the product was made during the Raspberry Hack competition, where we won best software prize, which also brought us a sum of money. With this money, we developed the platform and got our first customer. After that, the business reached its current state based on the revenues we obtained from contracts with various companies and users paying for more advanced accounts.

You signed a contract with Intel – what was that all about?

The partnership with Intel materialized two years ago when Wyliodrin was still in an incipient stage. Intel was basically our first customer, having contacted us for the programming and control of the Intel Galileo and Intel Edison plates via the Wyliodrin platform. Moreover, Wyliodrin users using Intel hardware have benefitted free of charge from advanced accounts for a year.

Why did you decide to expand to California?

At the moment, the business is located in Romania, but we are considering the possibility of expanding to the United States. We are thinking of this because following participation in numerous events in the US, especially California, we noticed there are more opportunities for us there and we stand a higher chance of making Wyliodrin known worldwide.

What are your targets for the next year?

We hope that over the next year we will have a high number of customers or even attract an investment that will allow us to expand the business to the US and improve the product. Also, we hope to form partnerships with educational institutions and universities that can use Wyliodrin in class. The final target is to develop a platform that will become the de facto standard in building Internet of Things devices. We are a team of five people. We will invest in expanding the team and improving our platform with new features. One component that we wish to develop greatly over the next year is the educational one. We wish to place at the disposal of students and teachers an entire set of classes, complemented with an online community where users interact and exchange ideas on the Internet of Things.