Speaker 1: 0:00

Up next a conversation with Krijn Bouman, the CEO and co-founder of Roxys, the leading hands-free charging solution for electric vehicles. Today, we will explore how to pick the right niche to serve a future market, selling your startup to a corporate and coming back for round two, and how to build a team across two continents to scale in Europe and the US. How to build a team across two continents to scale in Europe and the US. I'm Lars Kramer and you're listening to Start to Scale, the podcast where we explore the scale of journeys of remarkable founders.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Well, krijn Bouman is a remarkable founder. He's a pioneer in EV charging. In 2005, long before EVs were a hype, he co-founded Epion, one of Europe's first fast charging startups that later sold to ABB, where he grew their EV charging business in over 50 countries. Until in 2019, he founded Roxis, making EV charging fully autonomous through a smart combination of computer vision, soft robotics and AI. With offices in the Netherlands and Portland, roxis serves fleet operators. With offices in the Netherlands and Portland, roxas serves fleet operators from automated trucks in the port of Rotterdam to robo-taxis in the street of San Francisco. He's a man on a mission and, if all goes to plan, one day he will fall asleep in a robo-taxi here in Rijswijk and wake up in Saint-Tropez. Welcome Kry.

Speaker 2: 1:19

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Well, I say welcome, but we are in your office here in Rijswijk. There's actually a charging station here in front of us. Maybe first question how many years until?

Speaker 2: 1:34

that robo-taxi to CentroPay is a reality, you think. So Europe is slightly behind the US. So I would say it will be like four to five years probably.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Four to five years. Okay, we'll come back to you in five years and see if you made it that way. Really cool to dive into your story. We're going to talk about all your technology but, I think, most importantly, the business that you're building and what you've done in there. Really curious to dive in. We start with four statements that you can answer with true or false. You ready, yes. We start with four statements that you can answer with true or false. You ready, yes, autonomous charging will be mainstream before Europe is ready for it.

Speaker 2: 2:16

True being acquired by a corporate is a dream for most deep tech founders. I would say false.

Speaker 1: 2:24

The US is a much better place to scale deep tech than Europe. True, screwing up your first key hires can kill your startup, no matter how good the tech is. True, all right, cool, we're going to probably get some of those things later on, maybe. First of all, let's go a bit back in time. You've been in the EV world for nearly 20 years, first with Epion, then with ABB, now with Roxas. Maybe explain what drew you to the world of EVs in the first place. And then the follow-up question will be after you built a company, sold it to ABB, what made you think like I'm going to do a crazy founder journey again?

Speaker 2: 3:05

so take us back to your story so how I got in the EV space. So we're going back to 2005. So I was actually studying at the Delft University of Technology and I did a master in the direction of sustainable technologies. I did my master's on a hydrogen electric propulsion scooter um hydrogen electric propulsion hydrogen electric propulsion yes, um, and that got me really intrigued by the electric vehicle world so at that time, 2005, there was almost nothing.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Um, there were mainly enthusiasts, I would say, and no real vehicles, except for professional business where you had the baggage, tow tractors at the airports or forklifts were electric but cars were not electric and there was a community of enthusiasts basically retrofitting cars, and I got into that, at least meeting the people, and I was, I was very, um, I was very intrigued by it and in my actually the first experience driving an electric vehicle was the electric bike of a friend of mine who built it.

Speaker 2: 4:21

So he actually was in the food delivery and he was driving electric bike, but now we're talking 2005.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, he built it himself so, and then I was like, oh, if you can actually build an electric vehicle yourself, that really got me started, although it was a bicycle, but yeah, that's how I got into it and but it was really enthusiast work mainly. And then, after my master's, I founded the company Appion. But we were like a typical, I would say, very tech oriented startup. It was more like a technology looking for a problem, because we were working on fast charging of batteries lithium ion batteries, which were still very new then and we were looking at various applications first consumer electronics, and at some point we got into professional vehicles uh, tow tractor, actually airport vehicles and that that business worked. So there we had actually good value proposition and from there at some point we started to develop for electric cars and then the company really took off because the electric cars was a complete greenfield, and the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S they hit the road in around 2011. And then the company really took off.

Speaker 1: 5:37

That's when it became mainstream right, and then you were also supplying and people in the Netherlands will know the Fastnet network and that was actually built on your technology, that right yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 2: 5:47

Yeah, actually michiel, the ceo of fastnet. He used to work at epion. He was the business developer for his job was basically to convince large corporates to start a charging network together. We wrote a white paper with the business model, but this was somewhere, I think, 2009 or 2010. And then there were very little electric vehicles on the road, so the big corporates didn't believe it was possible to build a profitable business out of it, or at least not now. And then at some point Michiel said I'm going to do it myself, and that became Fastnet.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Cool. There's actually a nice paper. Let's see if we can put it in the show notes. I think we had uh him as a speaker some some time ago. He told about the story also of fastnet going forward, but the technology in there was, uh was yours. Um, then maybe and we're gonna dive a bit deeper in the story, but just to get your timeline straight um, because your company was acquired by abb and then you started working for that corporate and now you're back into startup life again. So maybe can you talk us through that moment. What, uh, what happened after the sale to ABB? And?

Speaker 2: 6:50

and then at what point you go like I want to start my own company again yeah, so actually, um, I never had any ambition to work in a corporate, um, and no corporate career plans, um, but we were acquired. It was, at that moment, was like the best thing for the company. The market was growing very fast, we needed additional capital and we had enough challenges like any scaling up company, so it was a good thing to be acquired, and I didn't expect I would stay for six years. But ABB did the right thing. They treated us really well as a startup, so they basically had sort of a three-year hands-off policy that we would stay quite independent for a long time. Because the person who acquired us was a person named Ulrich Spiesover and he had a philosophy that ABB should become good at acquiring startups and not basically, after acquisition, hook them to death. Because that's what's often happening, right, all the big corporate processes are just killing the startup and everybody runs away yeah, and they slow down and yeah, slow down.

Speaker 2: 8:08

And he basically said well, you have out-competed us yeah that's why we buy you, so we, at least for the first three years, we leave you intact cool and and very independent. So we stayed pretty independent, and that's also probably the reason why myself and many others stayed for a long time even longer, longer.

Speaker 1: 8:25

So after the acquisition did the whole team stay?

Speaker 2: 8:30

I think the first year after acquisition. I think, like 99% of, the team still stayed. And I think, even like four or five years into it, the majority of the team was still there.

Speaker 1: 8:39

That's cool and that's a good example. And what happened after those three years?

Speaker 2: 8:42

So when the three years were over, Well, I mean it was a super nice adventure because we were growing really fast, but also as the business became quite big. So we passed 100 million in revenue and, yeah, it became a department in a large corporate and my role started to change more and more to the typical corporate unit or middle management.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Yeah, and, um, yeah, that that basically, at some point I was starting to miss the entrepreneurial spark again. And because it's uh, you know, in inside a gigantic corporate like abb, you have to. There's a lot of internal stuff in your calendar and it was more and more internally focused and I was missing the entrepreneurial spark.

Speaker 1: 9:29

So, yeah, it was time, time to move on. And then you did move on, I think, with a great idea, the idea for Roxas. So if I would explain it to my kids, it's well hands-free charging for EV vehicles. Basically, we see a thing outside here. It's actually a kind of a robot arm that charges a car or another electric vehicle. Can you maybe explain what is a problem that roxys solves and a little bit, without getting too technical, how that works?

Speaker 2: 9:59

yeah, maybe I can best relate it to the founding story of Roxas. So in the last year at ABB we had a customer which bought a significant amount of fast chargers but they were very secretive what they were doing with it. That's strange. So I went to San Francisco for another purpose and then decided can I visit this company? So I just went there and I came to this warehouse. Very, there was no logo on there, everything was like quite secretive. And inside the warehouse they built a test track for automated vehicles and there were robotaxis driving inside the warehouse for testing and at the end of the test cycle a, the car would park itself in a corner and the person would walk over and plug it in. And I was like that's funny you can.

Speaker 2: 10:54

First of all, I was completely amazed by an automated vehicle. It was the first time I I saw one um, and then I asked him like why, why can't you have it charge itself? Because if you can even let it drive itself, it seems like a small problem. But he explained that the management told everybody, like let's focus on the car first, because that problem needs to be solved first and all the rest comes later. And it just stuck with me that I saw this future direction of vehicles will start to drive themselves at some point in the future, but the infrastructure today is all built for people. And then that's how Pion or Roxas came about. Is that basically the combination of okay, all infrastructure today is built for people, but it's inevitable that vehicles will start driving themselves? And then, of course, the question is more a timeline question.

Speaker 2: 11:49

So when does this actually start to happen, and so we defined a path from more professional markets. So our core market today is the ports and logistics market, where automated vehicles are already being utilized, and then the mid to long-term plan is actually passenger cars and starting with robo-taxi. But that's going a bit faster than we thought, especially in North America now.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Yeah, you see them driving around right. So maybe dive into that part of, because this is the part where you choose a niche to focus on now, to build and to test also for the future. So what made you end up up? Because you're doing a project. I saw in the port of rotterdam, I think, the mass flocked. So, um, how did you select that niche? I mean, what was the process for that?

Speaker 2: 12:35

uh well, it's a process is a big word, so it's a, it's a bit of, it's a 50 analysis, 50 like opportun, just seeing what's out there. Okay, and but it became clear that in logistics and ports, automated vehicles are already being used. So it's behind the fence application, you are not limited by public road safety rules et cetera, and the use case is usually pretty simple compared to the open road. It's a fixed process in a logistic warehouse or fixed process in a port and we thought, okay, that's a good market to start yeah and we also looked at quite a few other markets.

Speaker 2: 13:18

so in the beginning it's just a little bit seeing where where people are actually enthusiastic to spend money on it. That's a good indication if there's a market. But in the end we ended up with the ports and logistics being the first, and you need a market where you can learn fast, where you can build the basics of the company, get revenue and experience.

Speaker 2: 13:44

I think that's the most important, and not necessarily yet the market where you scale. But we saw the market is there now there is a real problem there because if there's anywhere where an automated vehicle is deployed, the whole case is built around not having people. So if you then need still people for the infrastructure side, it's a bit of um yeah, it's ruining the business case basically yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:09

So you're saying look for a place where they're actually willing to pay, because then, there's a real problem. But I think the second thing you say is within a confined space. In this case you don't have all the legal stuff of, you know, having to go in the streets, for instance. Um, but then maybe to specifically on this point, is it? Is it cost saving? Is it time saving? What is the biggest part of the business case for these kind of applications?

Speaker 2: 14:29

yeah, it's I would say um in the ports, for example in the rotterdam terminal. It's a fully automated terminal, so the you can't have people there because everything is automated, so it's a cost factor. But also shortage of personnel is always a big thing and efficiency question like how can you make the process very efficient and reliable?

Speaker 1: 14:58

that's often a thing cool and, I think, think, great testing ground to see how your technology works you've raised. The recent series A was 26 million, 2023, 36, 36, even oh, I looked on deal room bringing the total to even more the total raised to date is about 41 million, 41 million. I'm just curious what has been the hardest part of convincing people that autonomous charging is the future? Was it harder to convince investors or users, or your own team?

Speaker 2: 15:37

Let's say, our investment proposition is, of course, built on the future. So, we are like a future landscape with a complete new dynamic, and you need to find investors who believe in the future landscape. Basically, that's the trick of all kinds of startups. We are not addressing like a huge market today, so there's almost no market today for, let's say, if you look like an investor with a billion-dollar lens, there is not a billion-dollar market today for a product.

Speaker 2: 16:08

So you have to find investors who understand that within 5 to 10 years there is actually a billion-dollar market and if you are the first, you can take a significant chunk of this billion-dollar market. So I think from an investor perspective, that is the main thing. So how fast is the uptake of automated vehicles? I think that's the big thing.

Speaker 2: 16:26

So, investors who are very bullish on that. They often get our proposition immediately. Investors who are more negative about the prospect of electric or automated vehicles less so, and that's been a bit of a challenge with European investors because the autonomous vehicle landscape in the US is going so much faster than Europe and that has been a bit of a challenge. So in Europe it's like automated vehicles I've never seen one, and if you go to San Francisco now you can just download the app and take a robot taxi.

Speaker 1: 17:02

So the difference is staggering.

Speaker 2: 17:02

Yeah, and if you haven to San Francisco now, you can just download the app and take a robot taxi. So the difference is staggering.

Speaker 1: 17:04

Yeah, and if you haven't seen it, we were on the West Coast with Scalenel last year and I've seen them before, the Waymo cars driving around. But until you see it for real, it's like yeah it's happening. It's there, you can grab them.

Speaker 2: 17:19

Last month I was in San Francisco and we were in a hotel and we were counting the way most from the window yeah we saw a robot taxi average every 90 seconds passing by our hotel wow, yeah, that's growing fast, and yeah, yeah in europe we are just thinking that, oh, this is all 10 years away.

Speaker 1: 17:37

No, no, no, it's there, yeah so we're thinking limitations and then so you found your investors. What do you think has been um, um, the key distinguishing factor in in finally getting the right investors? What would you say?

Speaker 2: 17:51

of course, the visionary uh, visionary aspect. So you have to an investor needs to believe that the market will be huge. Yeah, is it a venture business or is it a normal business? So you have to believe this will be a billion dollar market in the next five to 10 years.

Speaker 1: 18:09

But how did you find the right ones? That's actually my question. So how did you? Did you have to have the conversation a lot or did you find the right ones?

Speaker 2: 18:17

No, actually so? Initially we were, so our first rounds were in the 2020-2021 period, so that was actually pretty easy because everybody was extremely optimistic. And then the last round, the biggest round was the most challenging because at the moment we were pitching actually the market was sort of going down and down the general investment market so everybody was much more cautious. So that wasn't easy, but it took over 12 months to raise the last round. But, in the end it was a huge success, but yeah, it took a long time.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Hard work, yeah, okay, in interest. You said a little bit about how Europe seems to be behind US and I think, even China, in autonomous tech Maybe. Well, not to get too philosophical, what do you think we're missing over here in Europe?

Speaker 2: 19:14

I think of course I can relate it to the Epion period, which was almost 15 years ago, when we were raising money. It's been a lot better. So I would say like, especially early stage funding etc and early stage it's, it's so much better than 15 years ago okay I mean when epion started there were like order of magnitude, maybe 10 VCs in the Netherlands, that's it. Yeah. And VCs doing deep tech maybe one or two. So it's much, much better now. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:50

I think what we are still lacking in Europe is the concept of thinking big. You know, in North America there's early stage funding. In north america there's early stage funding, but there is also like if, if some company really hits the, the sweet spot of being able to scale fast, you can raise hundreds of millions and and that's not possible or very difficult in europe. So I think that's still. We end up with quite a few good companies, but like unicorns, difficult without us.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Yeah if you're really scaling up, you need to have US funding, and you see quite a few. We had one founder actually not on the podcast, but upstream who actually skipped Dutch and European VCs altogether and got his first round in the US In the US sorry, rinkkamen from Source and, I think, also Meetable. Recently you see them moving towards US-based Okay, and that's why, actually, you've set up offices here in the Netherlands, but also in Portland in the US.

Speaker 3: 20:50

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Why do you split it that way? And then my follow-up question is how do you make sure that the team operates in those two different time zones and areas?

Speaker 2: 21:00

Yeah. So what happened? Around three years ago we got our first American customer, or actually four years ago, first American customer, and then we didn't do any promotion in North America. I had no people there and nothing. And all of a sudden we had an American customer and then another one, and then another one. So we decided the traction might be bigger in North America. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:25

And so I managed to hire a former colleague from ABB, erin Gallagher. She set up the US team in Portland, oregon, and today the situation is basically that, from a sales perspective, we expect most from North America. So, especially because the logistic fleets are much bigger, like the Walmart, the FedEx, the Amazon, the DHL, they are all moving to automated vehicles and the fleets are much bigger than European fleets. And then there is the robo-taxi momentum.

Speaker 2: 21:56

So, in North America, robo-taxis are already on the street, so Waymo is doing 200,000 paid rides per week 200,000 paid rides per week. Yeah, at the moment they are growing, so they'll probably hit 250 soon.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Yeah 250,000.

Speaker 2: 22:11

So robo-taxi is at least five to 10 years ahead of Europe and that's, of course, a super interesting market for us because it's also it's an automated vehicle and it's also very scalable yeah, and yeah, and the problem is really big because no infrastructure is built for people. So if you want to scale robotaxis, you need to hire complete crews to manage discharging which is wow, that's a great market.

Speaker 1: 22:37

And then also you said the fleets obviously of those american companies are bigger, but are they also moving to EV fleets as fast as we are in Europe?

Speaker 2: 22:46

I would say that's on par more, or less On par but, the size is bigger but, it's on par. It depends very much state by state.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Sure yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:55

California is very aggressive on the electric vehicle fleets, other states less. West Coast in general is pretty aggressive, but on the, let's say, the central states they are more conservative. So I would say it's on par, but like an Amazon fulfillment center in the US is like 10 times bigger than a fulfillment center here.

Speaker 1: 23:17

The volume is there, yeah, and then. So the follow-on question on this is how do you manage the team? You say is happening in the us mostly, but how do you then, you know, balance communications between the teams, different time zones, different countries, and how do you keep one culture?

Speaker 2: 23:31

I think that's also a question it's absolutely a challenge always, so we're doing pretty well, I think, but it's it's. It's a something which requires constant attention.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Even if you have two offices in the Netherlands, you will find that they get disconnected at some point so what we do is we try to first of all have all the critical skills, also in North America. So we have not only sales, but we have application engineering, we have service support, customer interfacing, customer project management all in the US, yeah, and we create integral teams. So there are actually teams which consist of like six people in the Netherlands, two people from US, working with the same purpose, on the same meeting rhythm, on the same program. Lots of you know online calls, lots of calls and and just I think the most important for the founders and the management is that it's not something you set up once and then will run. It's. It requires weekly attention, so always making sure that that there's no gap in the alignment and that's a constant challenge yeah, and then I remember michael.

Speaker 1: 24:43

I used to work for us company taking the calls from the netherlands, always in the afternoons.

Speaker 2: 24:47

It's kind of finding the moment of opportunity where you can have synchronous yeah we are on the west coast, so that means the days so our us team gets up at.

Speaker 2: 24:58

They are behind the laptop at7 am yeah in the morning, so they get up at six, get behind laptop at 7 am in the morning, so they get up at 6, get behind the laptop at 7 am, and our Dutch colleagues work in the evening, so that at least we have like four hours of overlap, yeah cool, before we go to the break in a prep call.

Speaker 1: 25:16

You also shared with me that Appion nearly went bankrupt twice. Can you maybe take us back to that time? What happened and, most importantly, what did you learn from that experience?

Speaker 2: 25:28

So indeed it was a very wild ride, also for us as founders. We were first-time founders, so I always say, like, as a first-time founder, you make a million mistakes. If a second-time founder, you make only 100 mistakes. You have you got to make mistakes, else you're not going on the edge right. So, um, but um. So what happened? I've one uh, one incident was related more to hiring the wrong person, so we had somebody on finance which just didn't work and we found out too late. Also, my inexperience as a founder did you find out too?

Speaker 1: 26:04

late or did you act too late?

Speaker 2: 26:06

uh, yeah, both. So I realized that that our finances were in a worse state than I thought. Okay, um, too late. So, uh, it's just not being experienced enough to recognize the signals. Um, and luckily, crisis averted, but we shouldn't have found out later. Okay, um. And then the other thing was. The other time was just um, you need more capital. Everything takes a bit longer. Uh, technology development takes a bit longer. The customer journey takes a bit longer, everything takes a bit longer. You need more money, but at an inconvenient moment.

Speaker 1: 26:44

So, yeah, yeah, those two moments, and I think there's probably founders listening. They're like oh, I'm just in that shitty position right now. Oh, it's so tough yeah is there a helpline for? Founders yeah yeah, actually we do. So we do have a ceo circle for those scale up founders that are growing really fast and we often find that having one or two people to call in your direct network sometimes just to cry but perhaps even more important, also to reflect and sometimes get networking introductions can be really helpful.

Speaker 3: 27:15

Who do you?

Speaker 1: 27:16

go to for mentoring or advice.

Speaker 2: 27:19

Well, still one of my secret mentors in the background, a guy called hans streng. He actually helped in epion journey so he um actually in in the first epion at some point he took over as a ceo. So basically hans. So hans is a super experienced startup ceo. He's done, he's retired now, but he at that time he did like four or five startups which all were a success, and we found him. I really really immediately had a click with him so he became my mentor at that moment and then actually he joined epion one year before we were acquired and absolutely big credits to him also for making it a success.

Speaker 2: 28:08

And he's still sort of a secret mentor in the background. I don't speak to him every day, but more like once a month or so, and you can call him if you have a big question. Absolutely, and he's a great guy. He's retired now. He's spending most of his time with his grandkids and all. But yeah, he's a great guy. He's retired now he's more, spending most of his time with his grandkids and all. But yeah, he's great.

Speaker 1: 28:24

Cool. Yeah, it's good to have those people around you. This has been so insightful already. We'll go for a really quick break and then we'll be back.

Speaker 5: 28:32

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 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.

Speaker 1: 28:52

We've talked about so many things Going to the US. You know why Europe needs to step up your journey. The well let's call it fuck-ups you made, but still got you here. I can't stop thinking about that robo-taxi going to CentroPay. You also told me that you are a management book reader when you go on holiday. So, the question now is, if I sit in that robo-taxi to CentroPay and I have some time to spend, what is the one management book you would advise Well, not me, but maybe a founder to bring along?

Speaker 2: 29:27

Oh, okay, I think, like I always like Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.

Speaker 1: 29:31

Yes.

Speaker 2: 29:32

It's a bit of a classic about how big companies often miss innovation and how you can avoid it and how you can step into it as a startup founder. I think that's one I like. I would say like um, that's another one. Um, good to great was nice yeah jim collins. It's a good book. Yeah, the actual concept, yeah yeah, thaterr.

Speaker 2: 30:01

No, the former CEO of Intel, Andy Grove. Yeah, I forgot the title. Okay, but it's about it's something many founders it was one of the first management books I read it's. It's a book explaining management to founders basically so it's because founders are often very good at the idea, but at some point you also need management skills.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Yes.

Speaker 2: 30:28

It's cool. The title has management in it, but it explains the concept of management by running a breakfast restaurant.

Speaker 1: 30:34

Oh nice, I don't think I've read this, so we're going to put it in the show notes. We'll figure out the title. It will be in the show notes Innovative Dilemma, good to Great, and then this book on the Intel CEO. Okay, so there's three books we can read. Well, maybe we can do audio books as we go. Next up is listeners' questions, which is always interesting because you never know where they come from. So if you're listening, send in your questions for our next guest and perhaps we ask them here. The first one is from uh paria paria lotfi. She is the founder ceo of duck duck goose great company. I think we had her on the podcast uh last year, if I remember correct. Her question is in a sector that relies heavily on collaboration with oems, ports and logistics companies, how do you balance strategic partnerships with the need to remain competitive and distinctive as a company?

Speaker 2: 31:28

well, yeah, so for us, indeed, it's very important to um to. It's very important to to work with partners, indeed, because we are part of an ecosystem business. So you have the charging infrastructure side, the power connection, you have the vehicles, you have the fleet owner, so there's always dynamic of multiple players. They all need to have the same goal. So, indeed, but I think the trick is to pick the right position in the value chain so that you do not come, that you basically leverage the momentum which is there.

Speaker 2: 32:04

So first of all, you need to have something which adds value to the ecosystem and then position I pick the position in the value chain which is enabling everybody. That's sort of our technology. So, or positioning in the value chain that we try not to compete with players but try to make them all work for us. So we, we work for the charging infrastructure because we add more function to the charging infrastructure, but we are not going into the charging infrastructure. We basically we add value to the fleet management system, but we are not going into the fleet management system. But we create apis to the fleet management system. But we are not going into the fleet management system, but we create APIs to the fleet management system. So all the ecosystem partners become your supporter instead of your competitor. So that's sort of the.

Speaker 2: 32:51

I think picking the position in the value chain is very important to be competitive, but in the end you have to add value right. So there has to be something additional. You do, because if there's not, then you probably have no position there yeah, you have to add value.

Speaker 1: 33:05

And then you say, in those components you find your way in the value chain, um, but what is taking them from perhaps stepping into your proposition? So how do you, how do you, maintain that competitive advantage?

Speaker 2: 33:18

okay, yeah. So of course, what we do as roxxus is not simple, so we automate charging connection with robotics and computer vision ai yeah based on data sets. There's quite a few. So we have filed over 17 patents on our system, systems, um, and yeah, so I would say proprietary software, patents, patterns and a concept for us which is it's not easy to replicate. I would say I think that's so really investing a lot in the technology.

Speaker 2: 33:50

For us that's the answer. Of course, that's not the only answer. I've also seen companies who just compete by being operationally excellent, like super hardcore, scaling, excellent.

Speaker 1: 34:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:03

Maybe in the payment domain or, you see, sometimes like crazy startups. I think Revolut is one. You know it's pure execution.

Speaker 1: 34:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:12

Just fast, fast fast.

Speaker 1: 34:14

Yeah, that's also competitive, yeah, yeah, but I think in your case, and also because the whole infrastructure or the ecosystem is still developing and changing, your role is crucial and, by the way, we'll put a video in the show note on how your system works. I think it's super interesting to see how that robots thing comes in and we'll put a video in the show notes for people to take a look. Thank you, paria, for that question. Next question is from Ras Lalmi, who is the managing director of YesDelft. Obviously, you are a yes delft alumni. Um, his question is in the tech sector in general and, as such, also at the delft yes delft we see successful companies spin out in multiple new companies and in turn, they lead to more new companies, and you are a great example of this. You You're a repeat founder, great at bringing company from zero to one. So how do you look at this phenomenon and what is needed to stimulate or organize or facilitate that further in this region?

Speaker 2: 35:10

So, yeah, I do see it happening, because when we were in yes Delft with the first company, epion, there was also Ampelman. There were a couple of other companies which have led to repeat founding, so I think it's working. Yeah, what do we need to do? I think? Continue to basically provide the infrastructure, I would say, and make the region attractive, attractive to talent. I think that's one of the things. So I think what YesDelft is doing is already pretty good. So I see more buildings coming, more startups, more ambitious. So I would say, invest into the infrastructure, like incubator maybe, things like shared labs, because initially you have no money to hire an expensive lab. So if you can share a lab, I think those kinds of facilities can help. I think also creating maybe a community, especially around investment. I think that's a big challenge in Europe in general. So if you can create a vibe of investment around the region, I think that's been one of the Silicon Valley successes as well so a lot of investors which used to be once founders.

Speaker 2: 36:36

If you can keep them in the region for a good reason, I think that's also going to help.

Speaker 1: 36:41

Yeah, coming back, I think the good thing is we have the Graduate Entrepreneur Fund that was launched by Delft and Erasmus alumni I think 65 plus million to date and obviously that's the starting point, because then you need those people and those founders to come reinvesting again.

Speaker 2: 36:58

Regis is actually one of our investors. There you go, small world.

Speaker 1: 37:01

It's a small world, but that's how an ecosystem develops right. And I think also what you see now is that if you look at startup genome how they describe the life cycle of an ecosystem you're seeing that traction starting to happen. I mean, definitely, silicon Valley is many years before and I think it's also sometimes a different operating model than you'd have here working in Europe, but it is developing. So come back in five years, ten years, and see where we are. But great tips, I think, also for Russ to take into his incubator. Thank you, russuss, for that question, um, see you at the dinner soon. Uh, then the next question is from herbert and have? Uh? Herbert asks as many fellow entrepreneurs, I'm very impressed with the results you've achieved with roxas. What was your biggest setback and how did you tackle it?

Speaker 2: 37:52

the biggest setback, I would say. So I think still we are struggling a bit with that, honestly. So the biggest setback was that, around the 2022 period also, the investment market went from very optimistic to very pessimistic, but also this has led to a reshuffle in in the way the electric vehicle market was shaped, because at that point you had the. You had, for example, rivian Rivian going IPO with 10 billion valuation. They had zero sales.

Speaker 2: 38:35

There were quite a few more. So everybody's extremely optimistic and of course, Rivian is maybe their fine company, but there were also quite a few companies who really went bust because there was 99% promise, 1% content basically, and that has led that in the electric vehicle market there was, the sentiment went from very optimistic to extremely pessimistic.

Speaker 2: 39:03

So there is actually still a bit ongoing. There is sort of a shakeout of all kinds of companies and that has not helped the end customer, for us, the fleet owners, to to to make a firm investment decision. So at some point we start to understand like the electric vehicle market is maybe not in the shape it was and we start to focus more on automation because we we are more of, we are less of a solution for electric vehicles.

Speaker 2: 39:32

Although we're focused on electric vehicles, but we are, we have to look more with the lens of automation to our markets yeah and and that, but that took a year to figure out like, hey, this is actually where the or technology is key. If you are automating something, yeah, automated connection makes total sense. And if you look at the broader electric vehicle market, which is which is in the down curve, at least from the sentiment perspective, it's still growing, but it's not growing like a thousand percent.

Speaker 2: 40:02

It's now growing like modest rates. So it's it's a normal adjustment. I think yeah, but, but let's say, changing our internal mindset like we need to focus on automation? Yeah, but that was a big realization.

Speaker 1: 40:15

Yeah, and then that's also how you learn and how you move forward. We were just talking before we started this about the sales of even electric vehicles in the Netherlands, and when subsidies go down, people kind of react to it, but then obviously the biggest sentiment in the market you have to take into account, okay, and dealing with it and then moving forward and making the business work. Final question is from Job Nice, and actually he's also connected back to. He's now running Braventure.

Speaker 2: 40:45

I know Job very well. You know him very well. Well, he knows you as well. Great, he asked the question.

Speaker 1: 40:49

He says you have a good neck for forming teams.

Speaker 2: 40:57

What are the most important lessons you have learned in this area? I think, first of all, you have to know yourself, to know where your strength is and where maybe you can but are not great. So you need to look for complementary people, and that's not necessarily the people who would be your friends. So you need to look for very complementary skills and it's better to have a culture of constant discussion and, okay, even if you can't agree at some point, we agree on something and then let's go. So be very wary of consensus culture or like being friendly but not doing the right thing. So I think, complementary teams.

Speaker 2: 41:48

Also. I think you have to inspire with a big mission, because if your mission is not big or attractive, it's difficult to find people who want to join that mission. So, and I would say for a founder or CEO, realize that finding the right people is probably like 50% of your role. So it's not an HR topic at the end of the agenda, that's like 50% of your role. So it's not an HR topic at the end of the agenda, that's like 50% of the role.

Speaker 1: 42:17

Yeah, finding the right people.

Speaker 2: 42:18

Getting the right people on the bus.

Speaker 1: 42:20

It's also Jim Collins, good to great.

Speaker 3: 42:22

Yeah, so that makes me curious.

Speaker 1: 42:23

What is that one thing that you need complementary to your skills? So what is your Achilles heel?

Speaker 2: 42:28

So I can do operations or, like line management, operations, execution, service execution I can do it.

Speaker 2: 42:38

I can force myself to do it. I I will be barely good enough at it, so I need somebody who's really on this. Yeah, because my strength is more on the front end. It's more on the selling, the mission, selling the product. Yeah, the strategy. That's more my core, and over the years I've become good enough at execution to understand what's needed. I can force myself to do it somewhat, but I will never be straight. I will never be fantastic.

Speaker 1: 43:11

You're an entrepreneur, so you'll find ways to fix anything. Yes, in the end you have a strength. You need to find the people around you absolutely yeah, um. Are you hiring at this moment?

Speaker 2: 43:19

you're looking for people uh, so, uh, we are hiring a uh service person in los angeles at the moment. Okay, yeah, well, if you're uh, if you're in that area, you're gonna be the audience of this podcast. Actually, I think nine percent of our listeners is from the u area.

Speaker 1: 43:31

I'm not sure if they are the audience of this podcast. Actually, I think 9% of our listeners is from the US. So I'm not sure if they're listening.

Speaker 2: 43:37

I think we are hiring more, but I know for sure we are hiring a service engineer in Los Angeles, Nice cool.

Speaker 1: 43:42

Go check it out. We'll put a link to your website and also to hackyourcareercom in the show notes. Hackyourcareercom is where where you can find the jobs at all the scaleups in our region. I think there's 750 jobs at this moment. Go check it out. Klein, thank you for allowing us into your office and sharing your story here today. It's been super insightful and we can't wait to follow the rest of your story and also I can't wait to sit in that robot taxi taking me to Centro Pay very soon, reading all those books.

Speaker 2: 44:12

Working on it. Working on it.

Speaker 1: 44:13

Working on it. Working on it. Check in soon. As always, we close off with a song, Would you like to explain, and you've actually written it on the board here as a memo to yourself.

Speaker 2: 44:22

I never forget the title.

Speaker 1: 44:24

Would you like to explain which song you chose?

Speaker 2: 44:26

and why so I chose Giorgio by Daft Punk. So it's about the start of synthesizer music. Giorgio Moroder was a guru in that space and at the beginning of the song he's sort of explaining, sleeping in his car with the synthesizers on his way from gig to gig. I thought it would be appropriate for a startup founder kind of journey.

Speaker 1: 44:48

Super cool. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep it up.

Speaker 3: 44:56

When I was 15, 16, when I really started to play guitar, I definitely wanted to become a musician. It was almost impossible because it was the dream was so big that I didn't see any chance because I was living in a little town, was studying, and when I finally broke away from school and became a musician I thought, well, now I may have a little bit of a chance, because all I really wanted to do is music, and not only play music but compose music. At that time in Germany, in 69, 70, they had already discotheques. So I would take my car, I would go to a discotheque, sing maybe 30 minutes I think I had about seven, eight songs. I would partially sleep in the car because I didn't want to drive home, and that helped me for about almost two years to survive.

Speaker 3: 45:57

In the beginning I wanted to do an album with the sounds of the 50s, the sounds of the 60s, of the 70s, and then have a sound of the future. And I said wait a second. I know the synthesizer, why, second, I know the synthesizer, why don't I use the synthesizer, which is the sound of the future? And I didn't have any idea what to do, but I knew I needed a click. So we put the click on the 24 track, which then was synced to the Moog modular. I knew that could be a sound of the future, but I didn't realize how much the impact would be. My name is Giovanni Giorgio no-transcript. Do whatever you want. So nobody told me what to do and there was no preconception of what to do. ¶¶ no-transcript.