Founder Ziemi has been an inventor since she was nine years old.

Every year, more than 200 cyclists die in traffic accidents in the Netherlands. This often happens because they are hit by a motor vehicle in the dark. Luci Santema wants to reduce that number; she founded Ziemi. The start-up makes bicycle lights that illuminate not the road, but the cyclist's trouser legs. “Cyclists need to be seen, just like Beyoncé on stage.”

Conventional bicycle lights are mainly aimed at illuminating the road. But that approach falls short when it comes to visibility from the side. Ziemi takes a different approach by directing the light onto the cyclist's moving legs. This makes users not only more visible from the side, but also immediately recognizable as cyclists. The fancy term for this is “biomotion.” Ziemi is the first in the world to make Biomotion bicycle lights.

For Santema, Ziemi is an inventor's dream come true. When I ask her if she always wanted to be an inventor, she doesn't have to think long. “I already had a drill in my hands when I was five. When I was nine, my sister and I took part in Het Beste Idee van Nederland (The Best Idea in the Netherlands). We had come up with something called the WCiraf. It was a toilet roll holder: there was a roll in the middle and when it was finished, it automatically fell down into the trash can and the next roll appeared. That's quite common now, but in 2006 it didn't exist yet.”

Santema's father is a professor at Delft University of Technology, and she always went with him when she was a child. “To play around with Styrofoam, for example. And I knew I had to study in Delft. Yes, I knew very early on that I was going to study Industrial Design.”

Visible, like Beyoncé

The idea for Ziemi (which, incidentally, stands for “see me”) came about when Santema was still a student. During her master's degree, she worked on a project for an e-bike company. The assignment was to come up with something that would make e-bikes safer for meal delivery drivers. She quickly noticed that meal delivery drivers are mainly active in the dark, so visibility is crucial. From that moment on, the idea for Ziemi began to take shape.

“I thought: meal delivery drivers want to be seen. And then I asked myself: who else wants to be seen? And then I thought of an artist on stage, like Beyoncé. She literally stands in a spotlight. So that's where the idea came from: the light shouldn't just come from the bike, but should be focused on the cyclist themselves.”

She got to work. Five years ago, a patent was filed. The entrepreneurs have now sold more than 40,000 bike lights.

“See, that's why we do it.”

Convincing investors, standing on stage: these are all fun parts of entrepreneurship. But Santema is most proud of “the added value for so many people. We recently conducted a customer survey among 1,500 people, and 99% said they felt safer with our lighting.”

The inventor recently received an email from a user: “Dear Ziemi, I just wanted to let you know: I am 82 years old and have been cycling for a long time, but I have never felt as safe as I did last winter with your lights. Thank you very much!” “See, that's why we do it.”

Incidentally, that safety is not just a feeling. “No matter how bright your headlight is, you are often very difficult to see from the side. This is also reflected in the figures: 71% of accidents happen sideways. So it's an under-exposed problem — literally,” says Santema.

An inventor's academy for children

Ziemi is going well, but it's not the end of the road for Santema. “My dream is to set up an inventor's academy for primary school children. A place for extra extracurricular stimulation, specifically aimed at children who are on the spectrum, have ADD, or are gifted, for example. I'm so enthusiastic about the idea that I'm already writing things down and making contacts.”

But for now, the focus is on Ziemi. She thinks that setting up an academy is more suited to the thirty-plus phase of life. “And I'm only 27. Everything in good time.”