Don’t Fall in Love With the Solution

Making the Shift From Researcher to Entrepreneur Comes With Challenges. For Ïo Valls-Ratés, One Sentence Had a Profound Impact on Her Journey.

In entrepreneurship, the ability to change and adapt is a crucial skill when you’re trying to turn an idea into a business.

That is also true for Ïo Valls-Ratés, who participated in the Spin-outs Denmark program in 2023 and 2024 with the project VirtuVoce.

‘We have actually changed the name,’ she says right away, quickly elaborating on the reasons behind the decision:

‘When we would go to fairs and show our solution, I realized that many people struggled with the name. They would pronounce it different, and they’d also have a hard time understanding the meaning of it,’ Ïo Valls-Ratés explains.

That led to the renaming of the virtual reality app, which is aimed at strengthening people’s oral skills.

‘We now call it AppGoodSpeakers. It’s the world’s first voice gym and fits right in your pocket!’ Ïo Valls-Ratés points out.

But the name is not the only thing that has changed. The solution is now also part of a spin-off called AllGoodSpeakers, led by Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Oliver Niebuhr. AllGoodSpeakers provides objective voice analysis and data-driven insights to help people become more competent and charismatic speakers.

‘It makes a lot of sense for AllGoodSpeakers to have an extra solution and also for AppGoodSpeakers to be part of a bigger place,’ says Ïo Valls-Ratés.

As a postdoc researcher at the University of Southern Denmark at Campus Sønderborg, she applied to and was successfully accepted into the Spin-outs Denmark program. That meant she had to change her mindset – she had to become an entrepreneur.

‘It’s been a very interesting journey. When you are part of Spin-outs Denmark, you are one person that has two roles at the same time, and you need to be driving this car, but with two different aims. You have the research mindset, but also the other mindset. It’s a big challenge and you have a lot to do in just one year,’ Ïo Valls-Ratés explains.

One of the things she had to do was attend the Masterclasses at The Kitchen at Aarhus University, and that made a difference in the early part of her journey.

‘There was a lot of content that was food for thought and straight to the point, and that helped me a lot. Also, it was very good to be together with the other researchers in the program. It’s these moments where you hear people talk about having the same issues as you or someone shares some good news. You also see that everybody’s working very hard, and you are not the only one going through this. Having that group offered a lot of support,’ she says.

It was also at the Masterclasses that she heard a sentence that stuck with her: ‘Don’t fall in love with the solution.’

‘This is very easy. You feel like it’s kind of your baby. You’re creating it and you’ve spent so much time researching, with the purpose of creating something, and you kind of fall in love with the baby. So, when I heard that sentence, I was like, oh, my God, is it something that might be happening to me?’ Ïo Valls-Ratés says.

Getting out of the cave
If it was, Ïo Valls-Ratés was determined to do something about it. Se presented the idea to investors and users, talked to people, and discovered that the more she shared the idea, the more she learned about the product and its potential customers.

‘When you go and talk to people that you don’t know, and you ask: This is my solution, what are your thoughts about that? What would you change? Do you think this has a future? Well, I am being kind of vulnerable here because I’m willing to listen to things that I properly won’t like to hear,’ says Ïo Valls-Ratés, before continuing:

‘That’s why making it public – talking about it – is very necessary and very important. Otherwise, you are in your cave, and you could be there for years. If it doesn’t see the light, how would you match the solution with the reality, the solution with the people that needs it.’

Talking to investors and potential users had an impact. Initially, the product was aimed at schools that wished to strengthen their 12- to 16-year-old students’ oral skills and while the solution itself has not changed, the target group has.

‘Now we’re targeting anyone that either has public speaking anxiety or people that feel they’re kind of boring when they speak or need something else that makes their speech better and more engaging,’ says Ïo Valls-Ratés.

Switching between roles
But the biggest change was becoming an entrepreneur, and it has not been easy. Ïo Valls-Ratés found it difficult to shift between roles, constantly balancing tasks in both areas. There was always one more thing to do.

‘I think that it would have been easier, if I had switched from one field to the other, but balancing two roles is what makes it a bit more complicated. I like talking to people, I like to present ideas, but there is a point where I have to say: Do I really have to go to all these fairs, when I really need to develop the solution even more?’ Ïo Valls-Ratés ponders.

In these moments, it was invaluable to have other members of the Spin-outs Denmark program to talk to, as well as access to advice at the University of Southern Denmark. Here, her mentor, business developer Mikkel Frost, made a difference.

‘It was good to have someone who could guide me a little bit, if I was struggling with something. The external talks are great, but to also have someone who knew the project very well but had another perspective, helped a lot,’ Ïo Valls-Ratés says.

Closer to market
Ïo Valls-Ratés completed her time in the Spin-outs Denmark program in the fall of 2024, and as she reflects on it now, she feels that something was missing – a sort of last goodbye.

‘It could have been good to have a final event, where all the different projects in my cohort could have shown how far they had come. What has changed? It’s nice to acknowledge that it is something that is going to be changing little by little, or maybe drastically. So, an event, where we could all present our project for Spin-outs Denmark, the Villum Foundation, and each other. I think that could have been a nice closure,’ Ïo Valls-Ratés says.

Beyond changing the name to AppGoodSpeakers, the focus since Spin-outs Denmark has been on further testing of the solution. And as it often is in the case of entrepreneurship, there is still a bit more development to be done.

‘We have been doing a lot of testing, even down to five years old kids, that could give a speech afterwards. Also, we have had public speaking coaches try it, and they thought it was very interesting. So, now that we have a lot of feedback from those testers, we will continue its development and then we will be able to go to the market,’ Ïo Valls-Ratés concludes.

Photos: Lars Møller and Tobias Bagge