Nathan Deutsch, Franco Burlando, Riccardo Baldini and Andrea Moroni Stampa are the co-founders of the startup Lighthouse Tech, a Ticino-based entrepreneurship that produces smart glasses to support the mobility of vision impaired and blind people.
We interviewed Nathan, who spoke on behalf of the rest of the team, to share the history, values and impactful goals of an entrepreneurial reality that is part of the Impact Hub Ticino community.
Who you are and what you do in Lighthouse Tech?
Lighthouse Tech's purpose is to design and bring to market smart glasses as a mobility aid for blind and vision impaired people.
The startup was born out of the industry experience of its original co-founders, Franco Burlando and Riccardo Baldini, who bring together many decades in fashion eyewear design. They wanted to have a positive impact on the lives of vision impaired people by extending the scope and capabilities of a product they know intimately.
Since 2020 the team has expanded to 6, including advisors, bringing in knowledge on microelectronics, social sciences, clinical, and systems integration engineering.
We all come together around the project's goal of making a positive change in the lives of people living with blindness and low vision.
What is the positive impact (in the world, in Switzerland, in Ticino) that you want to have? How are you pursuing it?
Lighthouse Tech was born in Ticino and has kept its local footprint. We've participated in the Boldbrain Startup program, completed our incubation at the USI Startup Centre in 2023, and recently recieved recognition as an innovative startup by the Canton. We have a clinical advisor who is head of ophthalmology at the EOC, Lugano.
We're lucky to have built a relationship with the Canton's blind association, UNITAS. We've developed our device with the input of blind testers and orientation and mobility trainers in the territory. We maintain relationships with several national-level blind associations, patient advocacy organisations, and Swiss clinics.
We have had the fortune of obtaining many inputs into our design process through these relationships, and have gained our first traction with Swiss customers who are waiting for us to commercialize our first product.
We will make our device available first in Ticino and Switzerland for the people who helped us build it when we go to market in 2025!
As a startup, of course, Lighthouse Tech has a big vision and global impact outlook. We aim to reach over 40 million people who live with blindness and severe low vision. Moving the needle on this ambitious mission is a challenge and will neccesarily involve strategies and products suitable for different parts of the world.
Tell us a little bit more about your entrepreneurial journey.
Just two weeks ago, we were thrilled to announce the closure of our first funding round. Previously, we've been very fortunate to receive grants and recognition through prestigious prizes.
The Toyota Mobility Foundation gave us our first equity-free funding kick that allowed us to develop our design and technology into a proof of concept (PoC) that has been tried by over 100 blind and vision impaired people.
The most important challenges we faced in product design have been surpassed and we are now aiming to leverage our funding round to go to market in 2025.
We've faced too many challenges to name, but the principal one is always the same: traction. We've got great feedback from our end users from the ideation phase through the final round of prototyping and testing, but we are not yet on the market. We're putting tones of effort right now into refining our go-to-market strategy and pre-sales campaign.
What does Impact Hub Ticino represent for you? Why did you choose it as a place to carry out your activities? What value does it give you?
Impact Hub Ticino is all things hub for us. We love IHT for its inspiring atmosphere, spaces, activities, and network. We have shared knowledge about many relevant topics to business creation and social impact through networking, coffee spills, and events.
The spaces at Impact Hub are great for getting things done and hosting meetings: they're relaxing, communal, and fun, whether on a rainy day with soft floaty music and the sound of the coffee bar and light background chatter, or on a breezy summer day under the trees out back.
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