Alumna Kjille Hoeben: a better entrepreneur after personal leadership training

“A great gift,” says the winner about the Marina van Damme Grant, which is intended for talented female alumni at one of the four universities of technology in the Netherlands. With the cash prize of nine thousand euros, which the alumna and entrepreneur received in 2021, she took the Learning to Lead training course at the INSEAD Business School in France.

Stopover

“This personal leadership training has greatly increased my self-confidence and self-awareness,” says Hoeben, who moved to the South of France eleven years ago but still works in the Netherlands. On her way to her company Purplexus in Nijmegen, she makes a stopover on campus, where she looks back, but also reveals her plans for the future.

Focus

One of the many instructive insights she gained was that entrepreneurship is primarily a matter of setting priorities. “What I learned in the training has made me a better leader and entrepreneur. My focus is now primarily on what is good for my company and less on things like wanting to be liked. Because that used to bother me quite a bit,” she acknowledges.

Passion

She actually aimed for a career as a pilot, but she was not selected – much to her regret. Because she was good at science subjects, her two brothers also studied at the TU/e and she did not know what she wanted, she chose to study Architecture. However, she did not like it and after a year she switched to Industrial Engineering and Management. “This broad study program suited me better and I was able to combine it well with my passion for sports, especially the triathlon,” she explains her choice.

Dream job

After graduating, Hoeben found herself in what she calls ‘a kind of dream job,’ which put her at the cradle of Brainport. In one of the Sports & Technology projects, she tried to involve companies and knowledge institutes in the Eindhoven region in the innovation of sports. That was right up her alley, because it allowed her to combine her passion for sports and technology once again. Top-level sports also led her to the next step in her career.

Absorbable capsule

For example, as director of the start-up MyTemp, she worked with Radboud University Nijmegen to develop an ingestible capsule that accurately measures the core temperature of top athletes, for example. She looks back on that time with satisfaction: “We did a lot of interesting things, such as helping athletes prepare for the heat during the Olympic Games in Tokyo.”

Long haul

She sees many parallels between starting your own business and top-level sport. “You have to be able to persevere and deal with setbacks. It is very uncertain because you are also very dependent on the market and whether you get enough funding. With only a small team, you have to organize a lot of things, such as marketing, communications, hiring staff, and so on. It creates a lot of pressure because you are responsible for everything. To deal with that, you really need to have patience and the will to win,” says Hoeben.

Tipping point

According to her, the capsule was a very nice product, but it was also difficult to market, mainly because of the medical certification. “The pandemic was a tipping point for us: do we continue with the capsule or do we switch to the technology? A pharmaceutical company wanted to integrate the capsule into its medication blisters, so I chose to continue with just the technology.”

Great collaborations

When the time came for her to take this step, the alumna also experienced one of the most important things she learned in the personal leadership training: “No matter how hard you try, things don't always go as you expected. You have to accept that and not consider something a failure. Because although we did not achieve the financial success we wanted with the capsule, we did have many wonderful collaborations and met some very special people.”

Develop

She believes it is important to do everything you can as well as possible, but also to enjoy the journey, regardless of the result. “Yes,” she says, “I see self-knowledge as one of the most important aspects that you, especially as an entrepreneur, must continue to develop. You should not be afraid to look at yourself and want to continue to invest in yourself.”

Sensor

It is her ambition to firmly establish her company – which currently has three employees – in the Netherlands. At the same time, she is also busy building a network in France. But her personal goal lies a little further in the future: a branch in Africa. “That's where the problems surrounding temperature are the greatest. Especially when you look at agriculture and the living environment. I can also apply my interest in climate and temperature issues there, for example with a sensor I recently developed that measures humidity and temperature for growing plants.”

Focus

For the time being, the focus will remain in our country, where a recent product, in collaboration with a company that is the world leader when it comes to measuring human temperature, can provide insight into adaptation to heat in the Netherlands. The entrepreneur hopes to contribute to a pleasant living and working environment, especially for the elderly.