Eduardo Duenas is a 34-year-old entrepreneur who started his own company, Metrica6, when he was working as a nanotechnology researcher for an international firm. He is an engineer with a passion for new technologies, travelling, meeting new people and engaging in thrilling experiences that later on enrich his creative work. He is a bit of a workaholic too.
We had the pleasure of having a talk with him and learning more about the success of his company.
Who is Eduardo Duenas?
Eduardo is a 34-year-old entrepreneur who started his own company 7 years ago, when he was working as a nanotechnology researcher for an international firm. Eduardo is an engineer with a passion for new technologies, travelling, meeting new people and engaging in thrilling experiences that later on enrich his creative work. He is a bit of a workaholic too.
How did you start thinking of becoming an entrepreneur?
It was all very natural. In 2012, I had a job I loved, full of new challenges every week and with a great team. However, during that time, I realized that I cared and talked to my teammates about anything but the technical implementations I was responsible for. I was already very drawn to customer engagement, new marketing trends, innovation in the workplace and many other subjects. Thus, I shared these ideas with some of my friends from college, some of which were also working or still studying. One day, a couple of friends were offered a huge opportunity in their own start-up and they encouraged me to follow their steps and start creating my own company.
All in all, in 2013, those friends from college and I were already an incorporated company, with several awards and patents and an innovative technology under development for smart water management for final consumers.
What is your entrepreneurial idea and what does your company do?
One of the things we wanted to achieve was to bring R&D and innovation closer to the consumer. Nowadays, when we think about research and development, it all still sounds like rocket science, but there is much more to it. Our philosophy was “Simply Engineering” (which is quite difficult to manage, actually): the aim was to make innovations simple and accessible to consumers. Now we are engaged in many international projects on autonomous stores, smart water management, urban electric scooter chargers and so on. It is all very exciting.
Besides, I am also a mentor and investor in different entrepreneur programmes, which allows me to share our success stories and mistakes with new start-ups. The feedback I received was so welcoming that in 2019 I decided to fund another company focused on the following activity: Owners Partners.
In what stage of development is your company and what do you think your competitive advantage is? Why?
We create innovative products and services for cities, corporates and start-ups. Each project is different. We are involved in many stages, from initial research to electronic engineering, testing, certification and final product design. We complement these activities with other business and marketing-oriented services, so the solutions we develop for third parties are not only functional, but also competitive in their markets.
As regards our own creations, WAISENSE is our flagship, an IoT technology for controlling water/energy consumption in homes, gyms, hotels, etc. We have been selling part of this internationally patented technology in Spain since 2018, and the next step is to establish new partnership agreements in Europe and abroad during 2021. One of the many competitive advantages of WAISENSE is the modular concept, which allows every user to customize its own installation depending on the benefits he/she wants to receive, just by combining the number and types of modules (IoT devices) needed. We support this selection via different channels, including our app.
Tell us a bit more about your team and your ambitions.
We are a strong and committed team of 11 people (and currently hiring), aged from 22-37, with many years of experience in the field. Experienced team members train newcomers on how to get into our work dynamics as quickly as possible. Workplace innovation is crucial for us as well: R&D is not only applied to products and projects, but also to employees, specifically to how they self-organize in a group and individually to make the most out of every challenge.
Most of the team members are from around the city where our headquarters are located. However, we usually work on projects with other teams from all around the globe.
How is the overall situation – in Spain and in the world - affecting your company prospects?
The magnitude of the pandemic took us by surprise a bit, as most companies I guess. Nevertheless, we have been able to turn the tables in our favor in this situation. Consequently, 2020 has led us to the best results in our history, creating new jobs and increasing our income by over 600% in comparison to 2019.
We were able to achieve this thanks to our lean management methodology, meaning that we are very agile when we need to switch priorities and projects. This led us, for example, to develop and commercialise our own urban IoT hydro-alcoholic gel dispenser for malls and public buildings in just a couple of months, while our other projects were put in stand-by.
What do you think about the COVID emergency and its social impact?
I think it is dramatic in many ways. However, from an entrepreneurial perspective, a big risk is usually a big opportunity too.