“For the Italian legal system we are now an SME, we belong to the register of small and medium-sized enterprises. But in reality we are still a startup “. AND Andrea Antonini definitely has the look of a startupper: when we met him, obviously on a working Saturday morning, he greeted us dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, clearly dropped on his head. In short, dressed as a startupper. Only that his Silicon Valley is not in California, but in Genoa. And his garage are two rooms in the gigantic space of the Bic, the city Business Innovation Center, exactly below San Giorgio bridge, built on the rubble of the old Morandi bridge (Photo).
It’s not just a question of look: it’s also a question of attitude. And successful: from here (indeed, from the Italian Institute of Technology, where it all started), Antonini leads Smart Micro Optics, a startup that makes lenses capable of transforming any smartphone into a microscope. And that in less than 5 years you have managed to sell your lei products to schools and universities in Italy and around the world, as well as to the US State Department.
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From idea to production, thanks to Kickstarter
But let’s go in order. In 2016, the first fundraiser through Kickstarter for adhesive lenses was launched Blipswhich are applied to the main camera of the smartphone and offer various levels of magnification (up to 10x, with a detail that reaches 8-10 microns): “In the first 45 days we received orders from 5200 customers from 80 countries around the world, raising almost 220 thousand euros – Antonini recalled – It went really well, even too much “. In what sense? “In the sense that we had so many orders that we had to start immediately with production, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage, because everything that went into it we had to spend immediately to buy raw materials, produce and deliver to customers”.
At the beginning of 2019 it was instead the turn of primo round di equity crowdfundingwhich in the first month alone made it possible to bring home over 40 thousand euros, and the end of that year coincided with the second campaign on Kickstarter, this time focused on Diple, a real microscopy kit for the smartphone, with magnifications reaching 150x (without using the digital zoom of the phone, otherwise you go up to 1000x) and the possibility of seeing in the infinitely small, that is, up to 3, 1 or even 0 , 7 microns. Antonini told us that “that too went really well, and we collected orders from 1500 customers”, and that in general it was an excellent moment for Smo: “We produced 30 thousand lenses for a large industrial group that combined them with anti-lice shampoos on sale in pharmacies – he reminded us with a smile – Our Blips were used to find them, the lice. To be able to see them ”. Not only that: “We opened an office in New York and one in China, to start selling there too. Unfortunately, with the beginning of 2020 and the arrival of the pandemic, those plans have been slowed down a lot, but now we intend to restart them “.
In China, however, part of the production is made, however limited to boxes, packages, mechanisms and gears, that is, to everything that can be achieved on a large scale, thus containing costs. Not the lenses, however: “We can do those by ourselves here in Genoa. We make them ourselves, in the next room “. How much it is? “At peak times, we even hit 3-400 Diples per month and 600 Blips per day”.
How Blips and Diple are used
The Blips have prices ranging from 15 euros for a single lens to just over 30 for the set of 4 lenses with various levels of magnification, while Diples cost from 22 (one lens only) to 139 euros (with 3 different lenses and supports for the smartphone and slides). Both products can be purchased both on the Smo website and on Amazon, and if how they are made is understandably a secret (covered by a couple of patents), understanding how they are used is really simple. As seen from the pictures, the Blips are slow that through an adhesive strip they should be aligned with the phone’s cameramaking it capable of creating macro-effect photos of flowers, insects, details of the skin, face, eyes, clothing and so on.
The operation of the Diples is similar: you place the mini-lenses (of increasing levels of magnification, from 35x to 150x) above what you want to observe and then aligns the smartphone camera, allowing her to see down to the cellular level. In both cases, you can use the mobile phone screen as an interface, to enlarge what is framed, possibly also using the zoom of the main camera.
Who buys these lenses and why
Smart Micro Optics has 5 employees, and has so far sold over 80,000 lenses to approximately 15,000 customers in more than 100 countries around the world; in 2021 it had a turnover of around 250 thousand euros, 80% of which came from sales of Diple kits. But who is it that buys these products? “At the beginning we had the idea of turning to private individuals, to do the so-called B2C (business to consumer, ed), thus aiming at enthusiasts of photography, science, biology and mineralogy – Antonini explained – With the arrival of Diple, we realized that we could also arouse the interest of companies and institutions ”. Which actually happened: “Among the customers we have many Italian schools and universities, which have bought the kits for students to use even in the absence of a real laboratory, directly in the classroom, sitting at the desk, perhaps with your smartphone “. With the further advantage that to do this it is not necessary to travel to the institute, which has long been complicated, if not forbidden, with the anti-Covid regulations.
And abroad? “We have customers above all in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada – Antonini told us again – We recently received a large order of Diples from the University of Luxembourg, from some German schools and from American campuses in Oregon, Wisconsin and Texas, where they bought 130 ”. Again: “Also in the US, the State Department made an important order for the Mint, probably to use the Diples to check the watermark of the banknotes, while the Nistthe government agency that deals with technology standards, bought one last fall and then another 5 in January ”.
However, one of the uses of which Antonini seemed most proud of is what is done in Rwanda, where Diple lenses are part of a humanitarian project: “They use them to look for parasites in the water and understand if it is drinkable, before bringing it to the villages.” Which is also one of the purposes for which these products were born, that is, to bring the technical capabilities of expensive and cumbersome scientific machinery to developing countries. Without being expensive and bulky.
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The future is the (non) competition of smartphones
Last year, 50% of SMO’s turnover came from the United States, 25% from the Italian market and the other 25% from the rest of the world, but in 2022 things could change, also thanks to the arrival of new products. Better: upon arrival of improved versions of the same products. “Within this year we will debut the new Blips, with metal plate to better adhere to the smartphone and be more stable, and we will improve the lighting of the Diple kits, also following what has been suggested to us by customers”, Antonini anticipated.
At the end of January, the company has launched a second round of equity crowdfunding on Backtowork24: with a minimum investment of 500 euros (the goal is set at 100 thousand), anyone can become a partner and the capital obtained will be invested in research, marketing and purchase of machinery to increase production, and its CEO did not seem to us scared of competition from smartphones, whose cameras are getting better and better. Not even from that of the Oppo Find X3 Pro: “They called it a microscope, but in reality it is an ultramacro lens – Antonini explained to us – And beyond a certain level of magnification they will not be able to go, because they will always have the problem of focusing. Which can only be solved with an external accessory. That is with our Blips or Diples “. Anyway, “if smartphone cameras improve, that’s not a problem for us: The better the smartphone camera, the better the image captured with our lenses will be. For us they are not competition “. Antonini told us this, before saying goodbye, pull up your hood and go back to work.