How to seed, succeed and stay up to speed?
Dutch founders, from Sendcloud to Quan, share their stories
Scale Talks is a 30-minute Dutch podcast for and by tech founders. It aims to inspire and challenge today's and to-be Dutch entrepreneurs that dream big and need to scale fast from scratch. EBITWISE founder Dany van den Berg, together with co-host Sebastiaan van Essen, are politely firing questions at founders that reached milestones we all want to hit. Together they reflect on successes, struggles, and the future.
Each and every day, EBITWISE's Dany van den Berg is energized by the startups he supports by providing them with flexible CFOs and controllers. Sebastiaan van Essen has been a business reporter for Sprout and FD.nl, a former serial marketing manager for various scaleups and nowadays chapter lead of startup accelerator FoundersBoost.
"Iris ten Teije raised more than a million for her startup Koia, which was trying to tap into a market for virtual collector's items. When that didn't take off, she made a pivot last year to a platform that provides customer services for Web3 businesses. Enter: Mava."
In 2022, Reza Sardeha achieved a milestone that many tech entrepreneurs dream of: the sale of his start-up to a large competitor. Reza talks about the ups and downs of his domain hosting company DAN.com, which is now owned by the American company GoDaddy. From a company with more than ten interns and facing bankruptcy, to the discovery that suddenly boosted the demand for DAN.
Online supermarket Picnic Technologies is growing rapidly, even amidst this period of inflation. They've gone beyond their Dutch roots and are now serving over 550,000 customers in 74 cities across North Rhine-Westphalia. Co-founder and CTO, Daniel Gebler, who's been part of the growth since the beginning of the company discussed his insights with Dany van den Berg and Sebastiaan van Essen on how their use of IoT, data analytics, and relentless drive for innovation are keeping them ahead of the curve.
"Everyone asks about that 10 million euros funding, but that was actually not the hardest part", says Marcel Alberts, CEO and founder of fishing net recycler Healix, which closed a round with Active Capital Company, the RVO and ABN Amro last year. "Is our business case that strong? Actually, no it isn't."
As investor at seed fund No Such Ventures, Sophie Heijenberg discovers new Dutch startup jewels before they gain any publicity. Sophie tells more about how an early-stage VC operates, selects and collaborates.
There are not many founders who followed the lean startup methodology as well as Quan-ceo Arosha Brouwer. Before the start of her well-being analytics start-up, she conducted lots of interviews with enterprise leaders. Results: entering Y-Combinator and an investment round of over €1 mln.
It's refreshing and at the same time delightfully easy to look at entrepreneurship through the lens of Simon Werkendam, co-founder of the Zeal program. Learn to work 'on' instead of 'in' your company, and about masculine vs. feminine founders.
Within 10 years, Bas Smeulders and three co-founders have built Europe's nr. 1 shipping automation platform Sendcloud. As of Sept. 2022, they raised over $200 mln venture capital. Bas reflects on their decisions, drawbacks and their future steps.