Lars Crama: 0:01

In this conversation, we'll cover how a passion for travel turned into a business, growing to 10 million users and knowing when it's time to hand over as a CEO. Welcome to Start to Scale, the podcast where we explore the journeys of remarkable founders. I'm your host, lars Kramer. From a young age, koen built websites for clients, leading up to his first startup called Company Spot, which is the Dutch version of Glassdoor. Koen later played key roles at platforms like Hives, relatieplanet and Dumpert, and co-founded Upcoming, a news and entertainment platform, until in 2015, together with three co-founders, he founded Polar Steps, and today over 10 million travelers from all parts of the world use the app to plan, track and relive their adventures. In fact, so does my wife, as I found out this summer. She is a user of Polar Steps. Welcome to the podcast, koen. Thank you Cool. I checked your own Polar Steps profile, of course, and I saw you visited 70 countries from way back, so what has been the most memorable trip for you so far?

Koen Droste: 1:08

Oh, good question. I think one of the best was well, you just mentioned CompanySpot. It's one of the companies that I founded and we miserably failed, but in the end we did make a little bit of money with it, I think well, like 2000 euros, and, together with my partner, that's a good exit. It was a very, very good exit. If you count it back by the rate per hour that we made, it must have been under 1 euro. So it was not good. But we decided to go on a trip to Indonesia for diving and we went to Rasja Ampat, which is a very remote part of Indonesia and it's still one of my one of my favorite trips, both because I really love diving and it's a really, really beautiful part of the world, and also it was a nice symbolic thing after six years of trying and actually failing, to still do something nice.

Koen Droste: 1:50

Right, and then you spent the 2000 euros on the trip we had to pitch in a bit more actually to make it there, but it was fine, cool, it was a good time.

Lars Crama: 1:57

Nice. So you're also a diver, right? Yes, you like diving as well. Cool, very nice. Well, first of all, welcome, koen. Great to have you here. This is a very special episode because we're recording this episode today at Slusht in Enschede, twente, and I think you have a link to Twente, right. That's why you're here.

Koen Droste: 2:13

Yes, I'm born and bred in Twente, actually Born and bred in Twente. Small town of Albergen is where I come from.

Lars Crama: 2:18

Cool, perfect.

Lars Crama: 2:19

We'll put in the show notes where Albergen is because I didn't know it but, um, we'll dive into your founder story, entrepreneurial story, the highs and the lows, uh. But as always, we start with four statements that you can answer with, true or false. You're ready, bring it on at polar steps. We rely on paid media for our growth. False we should have taken on in international investors sooner. False my burnout has made me a better leader. True. And then a final one I've enjoyed working with cows just as much as working with UN diplomats. True. Okay, there you go.

Lars Crama: 3:02

We'll leave that as a cliffhanger for after the break Cows and diplomats, let's go into your origin story, because today Polar Steps and maybe I didn't know it, but apparently one out of every four Dutch people uses Polar Steps it connects travelers across the globe, but it started as a hobby project of your co-founder, nick right. So could you maybe take us back to that origin story? How did it all begin?

Koen Droste: 3:23

Yeah, sure, the initial idea was conceived by my co-founder, nick, who also happens to be from Twente, actually, originally, and he went sailing across the Atlantic Ocean with his dad about 15 years ago and it was before iPhones and everything were big and existed, and he figured out it would be really cool if his friends and family could follow his trip live while he was sailing across the Atlantic. So what he made? He brought on a boat, he brought a little GPS tracker, which nowadays we don't know that as much anymore, because it's in your phone these days.

Koen Droste: 3:54

Yeah, it's in your phone, but it was like a device where you could read off your geocoordinates of where you are right now.

Koen Droste: 3:59

And a satellite phone that had SMS functionality and every day he would read off his geocoordinates on that little tracker and then he would type these coordinates in an SMS message together with a short text update, and he would text that through satellites to a server that was positioned close to here, actually in Deventer, and that server would plot on a map, live on the web, where he was sailing across the Atlantic every day.

Lars Crama: 4:22

Okay, so that is like a very sophisticated experiment. Yes, Cool nice.

Koen Droste: 4:30

And, yeah, he did it once while he was sailing across the Atlantic and it was just for himself, as a hobby. But then a lot of people really liked it and started following him online and then he did more. He's a very adventurous traveler, so he went, he rode from Amsterdam to Cape Town, he did a Jeep Cherokeeerokee drive from amsterdam to kyrgyzstan, and every time when he would do one of these big overland trips he would, yeah, build like a little bit more advanced version again of that hobby project of his.

Koen Droste: 4:55

And every time people on the web, people who are into travel, they would follow him back then on travel forums and these kind of places where people were talking about travel and I was one of these travelers, you were an early adopter. Well, I was reading on these travel forums and I just ran into his project and I thought it was really cool. But I also thought, hey, this, actually this is a nice hobby project, but by that time the iPhone started coming up and Android and everybody had a GPS tracker and a satellite phone.

Lars Crama: 5:25

And by then that was 2013,.

Koen Droste: 5:26

When you met, this was around 2012, I would say we, uh, it's when I, I think we did our first coffee in 2012. Um, when I, yeah, approached him and said, hey, this is really cool, can we do something? And in the end, um, yeah, we clicked and we decided let's, let's do it together and let's let's turn this from a hobby project into an app and see if we can get some traction with it yeah, in in an actual business.

Lars Crama: 5:48

And it's interesting because if you look at your history and we often look at kind of you know, when do you build a successful company? And then what have you done before? It seems like you've built a lot of experiences, both entrepreneurial experiences, but also, you know, with hives and those kind of platforms from back in the day that would help you to build a platform right. So how do you think what has helped you most in that journey up until that moment that made you successful with Polar Steps?

Koen Droste: 6:15

Yeah, I think yeah, since I started quite early. It's also when you learn a lot about UX and online products basically, and that I think, think, helped me a lot just in learning all the basics of how do you build a good online product and a good UX and what is good design and how does all of that work. Also, of course, the basics around technology. In the early days I would do PHP myself and code myself the websites that I was selling. And then at Hives, I worked on a specific platform called Upcoming and that was really kind of a new spinoff when Hives, as most Dutch people will know, at some point on Facebook came in and ran over.

Koen Droste: 6:52

So this part we have to explain to people who have no idea what Hives is because we're a bit older, but it was the social network before Facebook and I was never really deeply involved in Hives itself, but I came in kind of at the moment when it already started going down, because Facebook was just like they did in every market around the world.

Koen Droste: 7:07

They just pushed out all the local social networks that existed up until that time, and the same happened in the Netherlands.

Koen Droste: 7:14

But there was a lot of very talented people, of course, at Hives, because at that time Hives was kind of the epicenter of the Dutch internet industry and it was by far the largest website that had ever existed in the Netherlands. So, as you can imagine well the the technology behind the scenes of how they were dealing with all that traffic and but also the way they were working they did like product management and well, lean startup kind of methodologies and that kind of stuff. They were already doing a lot of that stuff, while it was kind of unknown to the rest of the companies here in the Netherlands. So there was just a lot of talent and for me that was a really nice place to learn a lot from a lot of really skilled people around me and also where I found, because we have four co-founders in total at PolarSteps. Job and Maxi are the other two people and Maxi was my yeah, the technical lead of this upcoming website that I built. Ah, okay, and he then continued and became the CTO of PolarSteps.

Koen Droste: 8:09

So it's also where for your network, of course it's also really interesting to be in a high-talent environment.

Lars Crama: 8:15

Yeah, that must have been really interesting times. I think I was with the first thousand users of Hives, so I'm a big Hive adopter from the beginning. Actually, I saw you're also involved in Relatieplanet, but actually it was a dating site for me mostly.

Lars Crama: 8:27

Hives back in the days Anyway, but cool story and also nice that you now work together with Max, which came from that, I think. In Intraset you've grown to 10 million users, which I think for I mean, maybe people listening from the US go like, okay, what is 10 million? But that's a lot of people, actually a lot of users in the European space. That's impressive. I looked on Dealroom and I've seen that your revenue has grown with around 30% per year. I'm not sure if the numbers are correct With one year where it was a bit lower. Maybe we'll touch on that in a moment. Maybe in general, what has been the strategy behind the growth of your company? What has been kind of from the start to where you're now? What has been the strategy behind driving that growth?

Koen Droste: 9:08

Yeah, it's kind of funny because a lot of often when people ask about the story of Polar Shaps and how it came to be, people always use that startups and scale-ups. There's a lot of pivots in the story where they, yeah, we went out to discover X, but then we saw y and we became a y company. Um, but with us it has really not been the case, and it's quite funny that even the very first pitch deck that I built for polar step back in 2014, before we even were live, it's kind of the same basics as the pitch deck that we still have today if we go out really around and it's really um based around this vision, because what we already saw is that you know, of course, the core of our app is the travel tracker, where people can track their trips and share it, live with friends and family back home and plot their adventures, live on a map.

Koen Droste: 9:54

But we already saw in the early days that what we are actually doing there is you're building a whole history of how people travel, what are all your own travels, but also all your friends and how they travel, and there was a lot more in the data that is behind them than just tracking a trip. So already in the first vision also because we are travelers ourselves we were looking at the travel space and we were looking at hey, if you go on an Everest trip, you use 30 to 40 different apps and websites to plan, book and experience and remember that trip, and that's just a really broken experience with a lot of information scattered all over the place and a really yeah messy story actually from the traveler perspective.

Lars Crama: 10:33

It's interesting because if I now think back over the past 10 years of my trips indeed, I probably have parts still on my own blog I probably have a part on Facebook back in the days which I'm not using anymore Exactly. So yeah, it's everywhere and it's scattered.

Koen Droste: 10:47

And you're entering the same information everywhere you know, because you start planning and then you enter okay, I want to be in this city, you look for a hotel but then you enter the same data again somewhere else.

Koen Droste: 10:55

So, yeah, so already at the first version, what we said is hey, we want to build in one platform where you have a unified experience as a traveler, from the very first inspiration into planning your trip, then during your trip to track it and share it, real time with your friends and family back home, and after your trip to remember it for the rest of your life. And these four pillars we're already in that first pitch deck that we had before we went live and are still the core of the company that we have been building.

Lars Crama: 11:21

But then still you grew from early days a couple of users to now 10 million, so then maybe also linked to that paid media. So how did that growth then happen? Because the strategy and the pillars have been the same, yeah, but how did you then maintain that growth?

Koen Droste: 11:33

Yeah, our growth has been very organic. I would say 99,. It was one of your questions at the beginning here. Actually, 99% of our users have signed up because they got recommended the app from a friend.

Koen Droste: 11:43

Yeah, um, and that has always been the core of our growth strategy. It's also a bit of the knowledge that we brought on from previous places. We worked like hives, of course, which is very social, and other upcoming other platforms that we have worked on, um and uh, yeah, this is just a very um, attractive way to grow and basically the core of the strategy is to build a really good project and really knowing what your people want and knowing what your people want and knowing what is in need with people and make sure that you put your user first and if you do that, then over time you see that people start loving your product and if they love your product, they start recommending your product. So, for example, one thing that we really used always, as of the first days that we were building the app, is NPS as a key metric. As of the first days that we were building the app is NPS as a key metric. It's funny because there's quite a bit of it's debated.

Lars Crama: 12:26

Yeah, there's a lot of skepticism about it nowadays.

Koen Droste: 12:28

We'll put in the show notes what NPS exactly is, but it's kind of how Net promoter score to a bit more expensive and there's a lot of criticism about it, but I actually think that if you want to build a company that is based on organic user growth, that NPS is one of the best metrics that you can use, because, in its essence, with NPS, the question is how likely are you?

Koen Droste: 12:48

to recommend this app to a friend or family member and that basically means that if you ask that question and people say yes they give a 9 or a 10, they will recommend your app to a friend or family.

Lars Crama: 12:58

So in your case it really links to yeah, exactly Cool. To yeah, yeah, exactly cool. So you've tracked that over time. Yeah, it's just been what's your because we always actually we do an mps upstream festival as well. Uh, I used to work in telcos before banking, who have usually a negative mps what's the best one that you uh?

Koen Droste: 13:13

what are you used to? What is your benchmark on that, on banks or?

Lars Crama: 13:15

uh, well, in general, like you see, he said do you still know the mps? It was 59, I think, for upstream this year. Yeah, so, uh, and, and the goal for us is to go, go higher every year. And I think that's the, that's the challenge, the real challenge for us. What's yours? Do you, can, you can?

Koen Droste: 13:31

you mention Towards the year. Usually it's around 60, 65. Yeah, and then during the travel season, it goes down a little, but usually it's around 60 tracking NPS. It's a good strategy to grow and making product decisions based on it. So for me that's really the essence, you don't only track it but you look, why are people not happy?

Lars Crama: 13:56

and you fix it, and then people become more happy and let's talk investors, because you started out with a business angel Talk about that and later added investors and quite a few we know or even had on the show Nalden I saw on your list, launus Groenendijk, inkev later on. There might be founders out there thinking like do I raise, do I not raise? Do I need venture capital? When did you realize you needed venture capital and how did you approach the fundraising process and then maybe cross those different stages?

Koen Droste: 14:27

Yeah, we realized very early on that we needed to raise money for this, because we were not coming from rich families or whatever, or we had not previously found companies that we could take on 2,000 euros. You had, yeah, literally 2,000 euros, which we spent in Indonesia on diving. So that is back to zero. So we realized quite early on that, hey, if we want to build the proper product, then we need to be able to work full time on it, and if we want to work full time on it and being able to pay our mortgage, then we need to raise an investment. Yeah, um, especially because polish has.

Koen Droste: 14:57

From the beginning, we really believe that it was it's and it's quite. It's quite. It's more of an american way of doing it, not so european. But our idea was, hey, we should not focus on making money in the early years. We should focus on bringing a lot of value for users and then, if we do that, we see plenty of ways to make money later on, which is an especially hard pitch to make to European investors because they're not used to that. So, yes, also, if that is your strategy, you need money even more. So, yeah, it was really clear from the beginning. So, over time and once you go on the track, of course, then you also need to keep raising money in the early years until you actually make enough money to fund yourself, which luckily nowadays is the case, so we're not dependent anymore on investors. But yeah, we raised quite a few rounds.

Lars Crama: 15:40

Yeah, and how did you then? Because it started with an angel or some like rounds, yeah, and how did you then? Uh, because it started with an angel or some like yes, we call the friends, fools and family, somebody who believed in you. And then how did you decide what kind of investors you needed when?

Koen Droste: 15:50

yeah, it was funny because the first investor really was really through the friends and family circles of somebody who really he thought it was a cool idea and he'd also seen nick's prototype. And we didn't even have a product or anything yet, we just had a few really slick designs that job my co-founderfounder made. He's an amazing designer, so whenever he would design my pitch deck then certainly investors would have interest in us and basically we went on an evening to this guy and we showed him a few of his designs and he was, oh, that's really cool, I want to invest, I'll wire, wired the money tomorrow, the the day after, without even having the whole contract and everything settled but you did negotiate the terms, yeah actually the funny story around this we negotiated terms but we we didn't even know what to negotiate because we didn't know anything and we gave away in the end way too much to him.

Koen Droste: 16:36

But then years later, when we had to raise more, further rounds, we realized, oh my god, we gave this angel way too much. And he actually came back to us and he said hey guys, that's okay, I'll hand in quite a significant portion of my shares to make it happen again. And yeah, for me that's really it's such a good example of because if you wouldn't have done that, I don't know if we would still have been on the pad where we are now.

Koen Droste: 17:05

And for him in the end end, of course, it really paid off also to to be flexible and to understand that it's not about the exact percentage, it's about together making sure that it works.

Lars Crama: 17:09

I think that's a really important lesson for any angel investor or aspirational angel investor out there to really get an understanding on what it is that you should be asking for in the beginning and also how you make yourself attractive for follow-on investment. Exactly so, but you, yeah, yeah. That seemed to have gone really, really, really well, and then later you had the other investors. So did you find them? Did they find you no?

Koen Droste: 17:32

we had to find them. So I really literally because the first round was just Angel then we did a few seed rounds of tickets, you know like 100k stuff like that, um, and for that we really had to go out and just I think I sent around out of literally hundreds called emails because I also didn't really have a network or anything, um, and then some people started replying, and then some people and but, and then what I found out is, once you're in with when a few people start believing you, then they start recommending you to their fellow investors and then it's yeah, then it went really quick and then at one point we even had a round that was oversubscribed and then we could literally choose who would invest.

Lars Crama: 18:06

So that's yeah, and then my question in the intro was no international investors, because obviously your proposition you already have a lot of international customers, but obviously you know, going to big markets. Was it intentional not to choose for maybe, an international investor?

Koen Droste: 18:22

No, it wasn't intentional, it just happened to be like that, also because you know when we did not? Our last round was in 2019, so that's quite a while ago already, and especially back then 2017, 18, 19, we were still quite Dutch and, of course, we always had international ambitions from day one. The first version of PolarStars was not even available in Dutch. It was always built in English. But over time, yeah, I think if we would do rounds again in the future, it would be way more likely to be international investors. But yeah, it's been okay for us. It's also easier and lower barrier to have a Dutch investor on board, because they can reference you easily.

Lars Crama: 19:00

It was just easier. Cool, before we go to your leadership experience, maybe the team is now more than 60 people.

Koen Droste: 19:08

Yeah, around that size yes.

Lars Crama: 19:12

You mentioned. We always talk about how do you attract and retain the right people, and you have something really interesting on your website. Maybe talk about what that is and how that works.

Koen Droste: 19:21

The teleporter.

Lars Crama: 19:21

I mean the teleporter. Yeah, that's a job benefit.

Koen Droste: 19:24

we actually have already from quite early on the teleporter. I mean, the teleporter, yeah, that's a job benefit we actually have already from quite early on and the teleporter is basically a teleport machine that we built. It's actually public. You can look it up at polarstrapscom slash teleporter and what we basically do is all of our employees on the annual anniversary of their employment so basically once per year they get to use the teleport machine and basically we make a big event out of that at the company, usually at the quarterly drinks or something and people get to push the teleport button and then on this side you'll see Big Map of the World and it randomly selects three locations around the world that have been visited before by Polarstrap users, which is basically every location around the world and then people can pick one of these three and then we give them a flight ticket to that, or train ticket if they choose for the eco-friendly option, which is also in there, or train tickets to the destination.

Koen Droste: 20:14

And the idea behind it is really that we really believe in that people who work with us. They should really experience our product like our users do, because when you're a developer and you're sitting in our Amsterdam glass fiber connection testing the app, it will always synchronize your photos as well.

Lars Crama: 20:25

Sure, yeah, it will work really well.

Koen Droste: 20:28

But if you're in Thailand in a hostel on a shitty internet connection, it might not work as well. So, yeah, that's brought us. Of course, our people really like it and it's really nice to test the product and to go out there and also really to get the vibe of, okay, what do travelers run into and to make sure that everybody always has the use cases of the real travelers Really cool strategy.

Lars Crama: 20:45

I wish I had a teleporter for that reason. Super cool, maybe before we go to the break. I talked about well staying sane as a founder, or your mental health, and I think your own journey has also been a tough one, right? Yes, there was a tough year Corona year, I think, also for the business you. There was a tough year, corona year, I think, also for the business. You faced a burnout. I think it's important to talk about this for other founders, so maybe can you explain how did that happen and, in hindsight, what for you were actually the early warning signs that you ignored.

Koen Droste: 21:15

Yeah, that is a good question. So basically what happened was I had quite a heavy year in 2019 with my mother passed away and my relationship ended, so I already came from a bit of personal uh back um well, things not going so well. And then in 2020, covid happened in march 2020 and, especially being in travel business, we literally, you know, for five, six years you're building and building, working around the clock to make this thing happen yeah and in two weeks, basically 80 of our users disappeared and no traveler anymore no traveler anymore.

Koen Droste: 21:47

Um, and yeah, it was, of course, and just a really stressful period, just both because of, um, what to do for the company and to make sure that the company survives and all the people going, working from home and back to the office and all the decisions you need to make around that while not being in the same room together, but also personally. I was sitting on a kitchen table for a year just working and working and working by myself and then eventually it went quite well, I think for the company. We actually managed. We got through COVID really well. There's few. We didn't have to fire anyone because we actually had.

Koen Droste: 22:19

We were making quite some good money already before that and we had a good bank account. So we some good money already before that and we had a good bank account. So we and we had a long-term vision that we're building on. So for us we already realized early. You know the company actually will be okay. But for me personally it was still a very stressful period and in the course of 21 I really felt stress building up in my body. I was literally at some point sitting at my kitchen table just working on normal stuff, yeah, and I really felt the stress flowing through my how do you feel that?

Lars Crama: 22:43

because that, Because there might be founders who go like maybe I have it, but what does it feel like?

Koen Droste: 22:47

Yeah, it's hard to describe. I think for me it was. I think for everyone it's different a bit, but for me it was. I had a lot of unrest, I was sleeping less well during the night and I just felt I felt really the stress in my body. I felt tensed all the time. I felt tensed all the time even when I was kind of not really into something that should cause tension. Of course, everybody experiences tension. If you need to go on a big stage, maybe you'll feel it a little bit in advance, but it's not supposed to happen when you're just sitting on a kitchen table doing some normal work, for example.

Koen Droste: 23:20

Yeah, and I noticed I couldn't get to sleep. I was quite often awake at night and felt quite distressed also and not relaxed anymore. And, yeah, at some point I really decided like I was thinking about it and I realized that, hey, this is not going well. So I had to go to my co-founders and say, hey, I think I need to prioritize my mental health over the company at the moment.

Koen Droste: 23:44

And maybe that's the hardest moment in the whole process, that you really need to go to your colleagues and co-founders and saying, hey, I cannot deal with it anymore, I need to stop, also because I was in the CEO position at that time, of course. And then it really feels like, oh, wow, will it be okay and can the company do without me? And if I actually was in the middle of starting to raise an investment round again, I'd already mailed the first what is it? 50 cold emails to investors and if you want, wants to start up this round, and then you really feel like, hey, wow, stepping out will be like a major setback for this company that we've built. And, yeah, that makes it really, really tough to say that.

Lars Crama: 24:22

Yeah, to acknowledge it for yourself and then to say to your co-founders.

Koen Droste: 24:25

This is the moment when I step in and how did they respond?

Koen Droste: 24:28

Well, I was very lucky to actually have very understanding. I have great co-founders in general, but also around this personal phase of me they've been really supportive. One of them had gone through a burnout himself before, so that also helps, of course, for them to have a bit of understanding. The other one took over the CEO-ship of the company when I went out. And well, the three of them actually led the company well, took over the leadership of the company when I went out. I was out for a full year. It really took me a while to, yeah, feel kind of normal again. And that's also when you learn that actually in all again, um, and that's also when you learn that actually in the end it will always be okay, because you kind of feel when you're in, when you're fully in it, like, oh, I cannot do this and I cannot get out. And of course it doesn't mean that it was nice they've had a.

Koen Droste: 25:11

Really it was really tough for them actually to take over and to step in and, um, yeah, to do that, but in the end it's also, you know, if you look at where we are today, I think i'm'm really proud of how they have taken over and where the company is today and how we've done that with actually the whole team and also the four of us as founders.

Lars Crama: 25:30

Yeah, and it's an important and a beautiful story because that's also the power of a business and having multiple people working together in a business on a shared goal or purpose whatever, and then if one has to step out, then the rest needs to take over.

Koen Droste: 25:42

I think step out, yeah, then the rest needs to take over. I think it's one of the right reasons why investors don't want to invest in a single person team because you want to be sure there's you know more people to to back it up.

Lars Crama: 25:49

Yeah yeah, maybe in the startup phase it's more difficult, but by that time you already had, you know, quite a substantial team, and and then it changes a little bit. Um, yeah, good, and I think it's important that we share this because actually I I talked about this on an earlier podcast as well I had a burnout in 2008, although it was not a year. I was out for a full month and then took time to recover. But that's why I asked you about the feeling.

Koen Droste: 26:10

How was it for you? What did you experience?

Lars Crama: 26:12

It was actually so. It was tough, like you mentioned, with your mother and your relationship. In my case it was the birth of my daughter, which for me was a really beautiful but also very stressful thing, because my wife was expecting all kinds of things of me and a really, really busy job and not being able to let go. And for me it was the fact that I drove to the office one morning and as I waited in front of the office I couldn't get out of the car and I started sweating and crying and I felt like I had a fever and I couldn't move anymore. So I had no idea what to do and I just turned around and went home and went to bed and slept for two days and also felt really sorry for that, because there was a lot of stuff happening in the company that I needed to attend.

Lars Crama: 26:56

But I called in sick. I said I don't know, and this is also a lesson the good response that I got was first understanding Same thing also a lesson. The good response that I got was first understanding same thing. So people who have had it before understand what you're going for, and I think the smartest thing is um, I went into with a personal coach back then who really helped me to understand my behaviors and to figure out how to change them, um, so that's why it was only a month, um, but obviously the, the real recovery takes longer. Yeah, I guess, and I still.

Koen Droste: 27:23

I'm still learning today. I also started coaching as of that time. It's something I would really recommend now, especially after this experience. I think it's uh, yeah, that helps to keep the same yeah, no, true, and actually make you sane again.

Lars Crama: 27:33

If you don't feel that's the thing, and use a coach while you're doing well yeah, that's the other part, they can help you uh, help you move out. Cool, I love this story. We can talk much more about this, but we'll go to a quick break and then we'll be back.

Speaker 3: 27:44

You're listening to the podcast of Up Rotterdam. We help startups scale and grow their business by offering access to talent, access to international markets and access to capital. Curious how we can make the network work for you? Go to uprotterdamcom. This podcast was made possible by the city of Rotterdam.

Lars Crama: 28:03

And we're back. We're talking to Koen from Polar Steps and I think we've touched so many things. First of all, about your insane company and the app that you're building, which I think is really nice and used by many, but also your lessons in fundraising and dealing with your own mental health. And coming back, actually, before we go to listeners' questions, what is on top of your mind? What's your biggest challenge?

Koen Droste: 28:27

Oh, good question. I think one of the things that we are really focused on at the company now is our international growth, because in the Netherlands we're even seeing the growth kind of capping off yeah there's no more people yeah there's kind of a cap to what you can do within the country and we feel we are getting quite close to that.

Koen Droste: 28:45

But in a lot of other countries like Germany, France, United States, Great Britain, we're really seeing it taking off at the moment. So for us, yeah, it's just a really exciting time. We just have a new CEO who started for us, who took over from us as founders on the CEO role, and there's just a lot of exciting stuff on our product roadmap that we feel will both help our international growth but also really bring the company in a whole different phase.

Lars Crama: 29:16

She's an external right she didn't come from inside the company from next. Okay, yeah, how did you find her? Did you do recruitment or yes, we worked with a headhunter and we did, really did well.

Koen Droste: 29:21

We first started looking in the netherlands with a dutch headhunter. It was actually really hard because we yeah, we have really big ambitions. We really see ourselves as being, in a couple of years, one of the top travel apps worldwide and it means that also the talent. We're really, really critical in hiring in general. But then when you want to hire a CEO, that bar is even higher and it actually took us over a year to find someone and in the end, people actually our staff was singing Christmas carols, making fun of us as founders, having not found a CEO yet at some point. So then you really feel the pain like, oh yes, it's taking a lot of time and should we lower the barrier? Should we take shortcuts and stuff like that? Um, but in the end we're really happy that we have not done that and that we just kept kept that bar high, kept searching. At the end we expanded the search to truly international, around the world and, yeah, we found an amazing candidate.

Lars Crama: 30:07

We're really happy with claire, who has yeah, started with us uh quite a few months ago already. Nice, yeah, and then off for the international expansion. Really cool, really nice. Uh, we'll go to listeners questions, which we always do. So, uh, keep an eye on the next guest and send in your questions and they might be, uh, asked here. Um, the first one is actually a really important uh question for anybody. Any founder that has to do a has to find a midnight snack in a big city. The question is from Rory. She says in Groningen we have eierballen, in Rotterdam we have a kapsalon. What?

Koen Droste: 30:45

is the ultimate midnight snack in Twente. Good question.

Lars Crama: 30:48

Have you tried eierballen?

Koen Droste: 30:52

What I remember from my youth is a sausage sandwich you that we would get at a local bakery of the discotheque where we went, but I would not really call it a local delicacy no it is delicate maybe the krenten, maybe the krenten.

Lars Crama: 31:00

I would say let's see, let's keep it to that. Yes, maybe not at midnight. Right, you eat these things.

Koen Droste: 31:04

No, that's true, but uh, yeah, I would eat one if I would come home drunk. I think there we go there we go.

Lars Crama: 31:11

Very good, great Rory, you bring us all these information, these things really nice. Colleen asks a user of your app how do you build and implement new product improvements? You touched on it already a little bit with the NPS, right? So then, how does that work? How do you choose between what to do first?

Koen Droste: 31:32

Yeah, basically there's three key things that we use as input. We look at, actually, all the from the mps scores. We look at all the feedback that we get through that feedback channel from users. And then, secondly, we look in the, in our statistics, so really the hard data as to what's happening, what are people using and whether we see potential for what's going on. And the third part is basically our fishing for the product, because when we really, when we started building the company quite a few years ago, we had this vision that is like a 10-year vision and by now I could even say 20-year vision maybe, because we still see ourselves what do we want to move towards? How are we going to change the travel landscape?

Koen Droste: 32:03

So a lot of the feature choices that we make is also really driven by, yeah, this all-in-one traveler product and a specific problem for the traveler that we want to solve and making sure that you don't have to use 30 to 40 different app sites and your data and information is scattered everywhere, but you can just inspire, plan, track and relive all in one app. Yeah, and that's basically what then decides our roadmap. And it also changes a bit over the years because early on it was also quite you know. You know the founder's intuition that was really driving a lot of the decision. But founder's intuition is not really scalable, of course, because at some point you need to yeah, people need to make product decisions without having to ask as founders. So nowadays, for example, we also have a user researcher who is working for us, who really is full-time working on doing research with our users and finding out what are core needs and solutions that we could build.

Lars Crama: 32:51

And then there's only so many changes you can make, right, because in essence, people don't want to have an app that changes constantly, but they probably want to have improvements over time. Yeah, yeah.

Koen Droste: 33:00

Sometimes you should also not be afraid, I think, because otherwise you're going to be the next Hyves if you don't change fast enough. But it's a very delicate thing between where do you need to change and where do you want to go aggressive, maybe even in changing core aspects of what you do, and where do you want to be more gradual.

Lars Crama: 33:16

And the one thing we didn't touch up upon in the earlier part of the conversation is how you actually make money. Important part I think people know it by now, but it's your biggest revenue stream is actually the photo, right?

Koen Droste: 33:27

yes, yes, okay yeah, so when people are done tracking the trips with our app, so some people actually some user app really for the social aspect, they like it that their close friends and family can, yeah, follow them and share with them their adventures. But we've also quite a few users who use this just to create these photo books. Yeah, so basically during your trip you add all your photos and your text and your travel stories and then when your trip is over, basically within two, three minutes, you can order a printed photo album of that and uh, yeah, we're selling a lot of so.

Lars Crama: 33:54

Did that already start in the beginning, or was that one of the product improvements you made?

Koen Droste: 33:58

um, no, we, before we launched, we already had the idea of, hey, okay, one of the photo books could be one potential revenue model in the future. Um, and then, after we launched, we actually started getting user requests yeah, okay, travel stories yeah but so that was a for us and we decided to build it. Actually, two, three years after we launched- Two, three years after launch.

Lars Crama: 34:19

Yeah, it took us a few years.

Koen Droste: 34:20

So the first few years, the first two years we were live, we did not make any money. Okay, yeah, okay.

Lars Crama: 34:26

Two years, yeah, and that's why you had the fun. Okay, cool. Um, on your website it says uh, we're guided by our polar steps moral comp. Elizabeth asked this. On your website it says we're guided by our polar steps moral compass. Rather than profits, we want to make the world a richer place, not the other way around. How do you keep this balance while also maintaining growth and competitiveness? Can you give an example?

Koen Droste: 34:50

yeah, and that's a good question. I think that the way that we've grown is always by putting the user first and developing valuable features for users, and then you know the. For example, making money isn't just a result. So for us, you know what. What guides us a lot in our decision, I think, is really focusing on, okay, what are needs that users ask for or that we ourselves, as travelers, see in the travel landscape. Hold it up also against a moral compass, because you want to be forced for good in the world rather than forced for bad. So, for example, we will never promote going on yet another tour in the overcrowded canals of Venice, for example, in our travel guides that we have in the app, but instead our travel editors will try to look for alternative destinations that are maybe a bit less crowded and where maybe a bit less of that bad tourism is going on. So, yeah, in a lot of the decisions that we take, we try to balance out user value with the moral compass. Cool.

Lars Crama: 35:51

Very nice, great question, and I think it's for talent. It's also important, right People joining the company more and more asking these kind of questions. Final question is from Lieke, and her question is what behavioral habits have you formed since your burnout?

Koen Droste: 36:09

That's a good question. I'm actually still in the process, I would say, of forming behavior, because it's not like you have a burnout for one year and then it's over and suddenly you're fine. I mean, to the day of today. I still have periods where I'm actually quite okay and periods where I still start feeling a bit stressed again and and that's especially when this kicks in um. But, for example, what I've started to do quite a lot is meditating.

Koen Droste: 36:32

Specifically, I do yoga nidra. There's some I use a house of deep relax. It's called yoga nidra. Yoga nidra, yeah, it's a kind of meditation where you just lay down on your bed and it's for me, it really helps to make my body rest again. And this house of deep relax app it's specifically in dutch, which really works well for me, because if, if I listen to a meditation in english and I get distracted because I'm translating it all the time, and if it's in dutch, then I somehow feel more relaxed and, for example, that has been one of the top things that I've discovered that for me really works.

Koen Droste: 37:00

Another thing that really works is walking in nature. So I already always used to like that quite a bit, but now I do it even more systematically. I make sure that I get my nature time and that's just where, because my head is always very busy with ideas and everywhere, all over the place, and also I'm very eager and driven, especially when it comes to the company for what I want to build and that's taking a lot of energy and I really need to make sure that I balance it out, for example, with yoga nidra or with taking enough walks in the forest, but also, for example, I try to go on a big holiday two times per year.

Koen Droste: 37:31

It doesn't need to be the other end of the world, it can also be relatively close, but then I can really turn my brain off for two weeks in a row. Yeah, for me that works well. To make sure that it's not always 110% on.

Lars Crama: 37:46

I think it's a great strategy. Meditation, travel and being in nature and that combination For me, meditation just never works. My simple meditation is I count the steps to the coffee machine. So that's the one thing. I built in because you can do it all the time. So wherever?

Lars Crama: 38:00

I am. If I walk to the coffee machine, I'll count my steps, because the guided meditation didn't work for me. I tried it, so apparently I started dog walking for that same reason. Ah nice, we have a pet B&B just for that reason, so I can walk out and go everywhere. That's nice.

Koen Droste: 38:14

Smart. My girlfriend is a psychologist and she challenged me to try doing stuff at 50%. So the whole day you cycle to work at 50%, you walk up the stairs there at 50%, you walk to the coffee machine at 50%. Wow, and when you're like me, that's a really interesting one to try out, because then you're really forced to slow down and it actually helps to your brain and if you put your body in that mode, your brain also starts slowing down a bit which yeah for me helps when I'm too busy.

Lars Crama: 38:41

I'm going to try and drink wine at 50% tonight at Slusht. I guess Something tells me, but I'm going to try. It's been awesome, Koen. I think we've touched on so many topics. Thank you for sharing your story with us here, with us at the podcast, but also with the people here at Slusht. You'll be on the stage later. So sharing your story, Every link, everything we talked about, we'll put the link in our show notes so you can find those there. But as always but as always we close off with a song that you have selected. So would you like to explain which song and why you chose it?

Koen Droste: 39:14

yes, I chose the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song and I liked it from a few perspectives. First of all, when we played a teleporter at Polar Steps. This is always a song that we have in the background when people need to press the button and see where they go, so it's a bit of a and I also like the team of pirates, because for me, pirates is also what entrepreneurship and building startups is about.

Koen Droste: 39:32

You go a bit against the stream, you go do things different than other people do it. So yeah, for me it was a nice combination of things, cool.

Lars Crama: 39:40

I can only say R. We'll close out with that. Thank you to all our listeners and viewers today for tuning in to the Start to Scale podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating Until next time. Keep it up.

Speaker 4: 39:53

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