A grant from the Dick Plettenburg fund!

When I decided to continue developing OnCue beyond graduation, I found so many people willing to give me advice, have a chat or a coffee with me, and see how they could help me.

One of those moments happened during a workshop at the TU Delft Impact Contest. After I gave my pitch, one of the judges came up to me and we talked about the challenge of funding an early-stage project. He mentioned a few opportunities that could potentially be a good fit. A day later, he took the time to send me an email with a whole list of funding options. I’m still grateful for that.

Among them was the Dick Plettenburg Fund. It immediately stood out because it was created to support TU Delft–connected projects developing innovations that can improve the lives of people with physical or cognitive disabilities, helping promising ideas move from research closer to the people who could benefit from them.

So I worked on the application very carefully, trying to describe the project as clearly and thoroughly as possible. It felt like one of the many seeds I was planting with care during that period.

Then, after a few months of waiting, that seed finally started to grow. An email arrived: the committee had decided to grant me €25,000 to continue developing OnCue!

I couldn’t believe it. I had made it. I jumped, I cried tears of joy. Continuing to believe in the project, even when I didn’t have a job, had been the right decision. What an incredible feeling.

Before I even knew whether the application would be successful, I had already spoken to Fabio Piazza, a software engineer, and Arianna Caligari, an operations specialist, both lifelong friends of mine. I told them about the opportunity and asked whether they would be willing to join me and work part-time on OnCue. They both said yes!

So when I received the news that the application had been accepted, it meant more than just having the financial resources to continue developing OnCue. It meant that the three of us could finally start working on it together, each bringing our own skills and expertise to the project.

For the first time, OnCue was no longer something I was carrying forward entirely on my own. It was becoming a team.

Thank you for reading,

Alessandra