A year of interviews with inspiring people from the startup scene in quotes.
December
“Information technology is going to invade every sector and as a result disrupt the whole economy.”- Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots.
“Some startups create highly paid jobs. But overall they destroy them.” - Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots.
“Non rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien, said Edith Piaf. We have no regrets and keep profiting from life, work and travel” – Christophe Lassuyt, Moneytis.
“Find a way to stick out and try to understand from my perspective what I would like to know.” – Jan Andriessen, henQ.
“The romantic days of the lone hacker to discover system vulnerabilities are long gone. Organized crime syndicates and not-so-friendly regimes are attacking essential infrastructures 24 hours a day.” – Martin Voorzanger, EclecticIQ.
November
“Because of this multidisciplinary, we really pivot a lot. And we need to, because developments in VR are going fast. That’s why we tend to move in that same pace”- Avinash Changa, WeMakeVR.
“They said: can you also launch this also in Maastricht? I said sure. It was then I realized that I could help more universities. So I started to call all the universities in the Netherlands. “– Niels van Deuren, Housing Anywhere.
October
“There is an asymmetry between the capital available earmarked for a particular stage, and the lifecycle of startups and scale-ups in our country.” – Robert Verwaayen, Keen Ventures.
“We don’t come up with solutions, we come up with new things” – Tim Gouw and Maarten van den Heuvel, Founded in Holland.
“The best thing about growth hacking is when you hit a huge win. I think it’s comparable to gold mining. It takes a good team, tons of effort and testing, but when you find that big nugget, it’s exhilarating.” – Peter van Sabben, Growth Tribe.
“The focus on the human element has been one of the key aspects of Drukwerkdeal.nl. “Each week I had breakfast with ten employees, our so-called ‘milk meeting’.”– Marco Aarnink.
“I always hire people who are better than me.”– Pierre Vermeulen, Solease.
“In ten days, we got a basic validation for our service. Our goal was to get to our first paying customer as soon as possible, so we really only implemented whatever was needed to achieve this. Well… we did some extra stuff, but that’s part of the flow, right?”– Mik Nijhuis, WP Fit.
July
“Find the bottleneck of your happy-customer process”– Ash Maurya, author Running Lean.
June
“Angel investors in the Netherlands often live in a world of their own. For an investment of 50k some ask a forty percent share. I don’t agree with that as a matter of principle. I think it kills the entrepreneur’s motivation to attain good results.”– Khuram Hussain, Fileboard.
“This is a tricky time for founders because it can be easy to confuse things that look like work with actual work.”- Aaron Harris, Y Combinator
“Our living room was full of desks. In every corner of the house we were working on the company.” Working that hard wasn’t difficult: there is nothing to do in Mountain View anyway.”– Sytse Sijbrandij, GitLab.
“Don’t underestimate the ‘touchy feely’ side of being an entrepreneur. There’s a reason why some business schools have a group therapy course where The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is a must read.”- Hans Klis, journalist.
“Nowadays, investing in startups is more lucrative than saving money on a bank account, so we are always on the hunt for deals with the envy-factor.”– Edwin Hengstmengel, Van den Ende & Deitmers.
“The process didn’t take just a few months, it started after the foundation of VanChefs two years ago. It was mentally difficult and wearying to keep going on.”- Emma Veerhuis, VanChefs.
April
“A month before bankruptcy, my partner told me we were close of being forced to quit, rather than we had a decision. It was devastating, because he told me things were steady and we actually had a shot at getting some funding to grow further.”– Milan van den Bovenkamp, SellanApp.
March
“For me, the thought of building something small never existed. It was always clear that I wanted to work on a serious, global problem.”– Fabian Dudek, Nestpick.
January & February
“I found ‘addicted passion’ in creating something that pisses off the big guys – a better user-friendly interface and a more compact technology. Then sell it to them.” – Godfried van Loo, Scoutle.