Start to scale. Startup and Scale-up Founder Stories.
Showcasing the vibrant Dutch entrepreneurial ecosystem - and our journey to support the startup and scale-up founders responsible. Hosted by Lars Crama, edited by Lisette Braakenburg.
Episodes
66 episodes
Staffyou founder Pavle Beslic on innovating the temp staffing business and getting punched in the face
As a chartered accountant Pavle Beslic started his career at Deloitte - after which he decided to go independent and stumbled into the world of recruitment. That inspired him to found Staffyou, now one of the fastest growing on-demand staffing ...
Arctic Reflections founder Fonger Ypma on his bold mission to slow down global warming
Fonger is an experienced leader in the energy sector. He obtained his PhD in mathematics and physics at Oxford University, after which he worked as a strategy consultant and McKinsey and as head of a Eneco Smart Energy Lab. Since then, he was t...
Dekbed-Discounter's CEO Niels Verwij on growth and keeping focus when opportunities seem unlimited.
Niels Verwij is a successful e-commerce entrepreneur. He started dekbed-discounter, a disruptive online duvet webshop, in 2014 from scratch. It disrupted traditional retail and soon became one of the most successful e-commerce companies in the ...
The Seaweed Company founder and SeaEO Joost Wouters on why we should re-align business and nature
Joost is the founder and SeaEO of The Seaweed Company. A global pioneer in developing high-quality seaweed applications, with farms in the Netherlands, Ireland, Morocco, India and Greenland.After a corporate career at P&G and Pepsico...
SolarDuck founder & CEO Koen Burgers on how to prevent rookie mistakes as a founder.
Koen is the co-founder and CEO of Solarduck, the Dutch leader in offshore floating solar. He started his career as a management consultant, before he joined Damen Shipyards, where he was the Director Strategy and Business Transformation. <...
[April Fools episode - created by Chat GPT 🤗] Stealth founder Rebekah* on building better humans
***Ok, we have a confession to make. Stealth Founder Rebekah does not exist. Nor does Pilar.One, the company that raised 450 million and grew the team to 500 employees in 6 months. This episode script was written by Chat GPT and read by Lisette...
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Valyuu CEO Ferhat Topuz on building a multi-sided platform in the circular economy and taking investor calls on a train station floor
Ferhat is the CEO and Co-founder of Valyuu, the circular economy marketplace to sell and buy pre-owned goods, like smartphones and macbooks. With first hand experience from T-mobile and a first venture in b2b refurbishment, he started the compa...
Techgrounds MD Abdessamad and participant Katia on opportunities in tech for underrepresented talent
Abdessamad Dari is the MD of Techgrounds Netherlands. With a background in management, sales and system admin, in 2019 he joined Techgrounds. He is Managing Director of the Rotterdam based program that reskills talent in IT. Katia R...
Parya Lotfi, founder & CEO of DuckDuckGoose, on starting a business in deepfakes
Born in Iran, Parya moved to the Netherlands at the age of twelve. She has a background in systems engineering at Technical University of Delft. There, together with Joris Mollinga and Mark Evenblij she founded DuckDuck Goose - a remarkable com...
Peter Paul, founder and CEO of Skoon Energy, on turning crises into opportunities and dreaming big enough
With a background in engineering and business, Peter Paul started his career at the acclaimed shipbuilder Damen Shipyards. In 2017, together with Daan Geldermans he founded Skoon on a mission to make clean energy accessible.Damen Shipyar...
SocialDebt founder & CEO Jamal Oulel on helping young people to get out of problematic debt.
Born and raised in Rotterdam, Jamal has been involved in a number of social initiatives: from RefugeeHero, Edubility foundation. Starters4Communities. In 2020 he founded Social Debt, on a mission to ensure that there is no more prof...
Nowi founder & CEO Simon van der Jagt on non technical founders solving a technical problem and being acquired
Simon co founded NOWI Energy together with Omar Link, a fellow Strategic Product Design Master student at TU Delft.In 2016, they set out to design a chip that harvests energy - to replace batteries. They grew the company to forty employe...
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Clinton Bemont, CEO of Maxwell & Spark on accelerating the energy transition and moving to The Netherlands from South Africa.
Clinton is the founder and CEO of Maxwell & Spark, manufacturer of renewable energy systems.Originally from South Africa, he has led highly innovative engineering teams, in the fields of materials engineering and renewable energy. Fr...
Sana Commerce's Michiel Schipperus on how the lessons from the 2008 crisis still apply today.
Michiel is a b2b e-commerce veteran. He joined ISM e-company - which was founded by Jan Kees de Jager and Karel van der Woude - during his Master at Erasmus University more than 20 years ago. Later, he became Managing Pa...
Ellen Sano from Yuki on taking over from a founder CEO and what happens after your company gets acquired.
Ellen joined Yuki right after they launched in Belgium, where she grew the business with more than 100% year on year. In 2020, Yuki was acquired by the Nordic Visma Group. And a year later, Ellen took over from CEO and Yuki founder,...
Medical-X founder & CEO Dervis Demirtas on scaling a med-tech company.
Dervis studied Aerospace Engineering at Delft Technical University. Already in 2002 he invented an endoscopic simulator. In 2010 he became managing director of Epona medical until in 2015, he founded Medical-X, global market leader in simulatio...
Mapiq CEO Sander Schutte on selling to corporates and gearing up for growth in uncertain times.
Sander graduated Cum Laude in Biomedical Engineering at Delft University of Technology. Where he also did his PhD and a postdoc until he co-founded his first company Virtualock in 2009 together with Jasper Schuurmans. In 2014 this lead to their...
Minite founder & CEO Micky Chen on “Student as a Service”, hiring Gen Z and dealing with investors.
Micky is on a mission to turn today's brightest students into tomorrow's workforce. Her first successful venture was a Harry Potter platform she built and monetized at age 7. She worked at Salesforce and IBM prior to founding Minite...
Moonback CEO Niels Meijssen on building and growing an honest booking platform.
Early 2020 Niels wrote an angry post on linkedin: About large platform companies who were asking for government support while generating billions in dividends. That message went viral - and led to a 2M crowdfunding round to create a...
PHYSEE CEO Ferdinand Grapperhaus on selling sustainability to a traditional industry and the spiritual journey of entrepreneurship.
Ferdinand is the CEO of PHYSEE Technologies, which he founded together with Willem Kesteloo in 2014 in a physics lab at Technical University Delft. PHYSEE is on a mission to make the build environment energy neutral in an aesthetic ...
Hundo.Careers CEO Esther O'Callaghan on ending youth unemployment through web3.
Esther is the founder of hundo careers - dedicated to upskilling the next generation in web3 and metaverse. Esther is a Global Tech Advocate, a digital nomad and a triathlete.Her 20+ years of experience span government, CSR, ESG, arts, c...
Wouter Goedhart, co-founder of VONQ, on investing in startups and limoncello.
In 2006, together with Tycho van Paassen and Remy Verhoeven Wouter built VONQ - which turned out the household name for recruitment marketing - used every day by over 1000 leading companies - including over 25 Global Fortune 500s.
Hardt Hyperloop co-founder Tim Houter on the future of transport and finding funding.
Tim Houter is the co-founder of Hardt Hyperloop. Founded in 2016, the team at Hardt is working tirelessly to disrupt the transport industry with an innovative and sustainable mode of transport. With a recent 15 Million euro grant from the Europ...
Quan CEO Arosha Brouwer on employee wellbeing, Y combinator and traveling.
Born in SriLanka, raised in Australia and moved to the Netherlands. Arosha spent her career in Management Consulting with PwC and with companies like DSM and TNT. After a few years of consulting organizations on employee well-being, she started...
Serial entrepreneur and investor Pieter Schoen about the thin line between bankruptcy and a dream exit.
Pieter is a well known Dutch serial entrepreneur and investor. After founding a publishing business and two IT companies, in 2005 he started NLE together with his business partner Harald Swinkels. NLE opened up the Dutch market for utilities an...
