Together with the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism of the University of Split, the team from the Student Business Incubator Split, and a small contribution from us at Split Tech City, Silicon Castles will organize a Diamond Lab in Split.

This Design Thinking workshop will take place on May 12th and 13th, and you can still sign up for it until May 10th!

Silicon Castles’ Diamond Labs are led by experts and focus on developing innovative ideas in the field of new technologies as well as laying the foundation for motivated and competent startup teams. In two days, participants work together in teams and learn how to turn these ideas into real business opportunities.

During the two Diamond Labs days, innovators, creative individuals, inventors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and students will come together to develop new ideas, applications, and solutions for technology in specific focus areas.

To shed more light on the Diamond Lab experience, we asked the Silicon Castles team to share with us a practical example. So, here’s a story about the VIABIRDS team.

VIABIRDS is a great example of a great Diamond Lab practice. Alexander and Martin met Andreas Spechtler – CEO of Silicon Castles – at a Diamond Lab in the spring of 2019.

So, in 2019, during the Diamond Lab workshop, they developed this crazy idea – to develop an app that allows people stuck in traffic jams to buy drinks, food, and regional products from the farmers in the area where they are stuck and deliver those goods by drones directly to the car.

The idea was born from a real experience when, one summer day on the highway A10 in Austria, 150 thousand of people from different EU countries were stuck in traffic while waiting to get through the Tauern Tunnel.

The team wanted to ease the traffic jam experience for the people in the cars and to generate a sales channel for the local producers of the Lungau region.

Alexander and Martin knew that this was a very futuristic idea and that it could be viewed as a bit stupid in some ways, but it kept fascinating them enough not to give it up. So, in January 2020, they decided to found a company called VIABIRDS whose vision was to make eGrocery convenient for everyone. And then the pandemic hit!

But VIABIRDS used this opportunity in April 2020 to open the first Lungau online department store that allowed customers to shop online from various regional producers, such as a bakery, the regional organic farmer, a bookstore, etc.

All goods were picked up on the same day at a so-called FlyBy Station and were loaded directly into the trunk of a car or simply handed over without a long wait. This saved customers time and kilometers and reduced social contacts which was crucial in pandemic times.

Additionally, this also strengthened the regional economy.

It was clear from the beginning that this is an exceptionally innovative approach. The VIABIRDS was a young and dynamic team, and very quickly managed to technically set up the online department store.

In a very short time, they succeeded in creating a new sales channel for their businesses, but also for many smaller stores, which would otherwise involve a high operational effort and very high costs.

Throughout the summer, Martin spent a considerable amount of his time turning the FlyBy Station idea into a patentable form. In the fall of 2021, the first patent was eventually filed.

This experience helped them better understand the technical problems of setting up an online store for small and medium-sized manufacturers.

Then early in 2021 they also started to code their own software solutions and started to sell their services to potential retail customers. Their own FlyBy shop experience also helped VIABIRDS better understand the retail business and get new B2B customers, as the market liked the concept of the store.

Nowadays, VIABIRDS is a global acting Software Solution Provider for Digital Retail Applications with customers in Austria, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, and other countries.

The VIABIRDS team’s mission is to enable companies to offer their most convenient digital retail solution to end-users. The team already has close to over 15 employees and is currently expanding to meet the global demand.

The Silicon Castles team hopes that this story brought you closer to the possibilities offered by participating in the two-day Diamond Lab workshop and encouraged you to think about some innovative and crazy ideas as a solution to a problem in your environment.

Don’t forget that the applications are open until May 10th!

The Silicon Castles team is looking forward to your participation at Split’s first edition of Diamond Lab, so – sign up and change the world through innovation!