Building the Dream

In this 11th episode of Building the Dream, my co-host Gideon van Kleij and I had a conversation with Bart Lubbers, co-founder of Fastned – Europe’s fast-charging network for electric vehicles, fully powered by 100% renewable energy. Bart shares the full story: from bootstrapping Fastned with 200 highway locations and zero capital, to growing it into a 350+ station network across Europe with €100M...

Jorn Eiting has carved out a unique path in the world of entrepreneurship and business. With a career spanning diverse industries, Jorn eventually co-founded Seenons, a groundbreaking company dedicated to making waste streams more sustainable. After leading the company to success, Jorn decided to take a step back, entrusting Joost to steer the business as he transitioned to a new role. Today, Jorn...

I’m thrilled to continue our podcast series with Rob van Straten, CEO of Skytree, a leader in Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology. 🚀 Skytree, originally founded by Max Beaumont started as a spinoff from the European Space Agency (ESA) and is leveraging its space-inspired tech to revolutionize carbon capture here on Earth. In this episode, Rob shares his remarkable career journey, from his leaders...

As we gear up for the Climate Tech Summit on October 22 in Amsterdam, I’m excited to launch a special podcast series featuring five incredible entrepreneurs who are driving real impact through their ventures. In this first episode, I had the privilege of sitting down with Lenny van Klink, the visionary co-founder of Salacia Solutions. 🧜‍♀️ Is ESG data or the CSRD just a compliance burden for your...

Michel did everything to nurture his start-up for > 5 years before it could pay him a first salary.  Another 7 years later (+- 3 million ARR, + 175 clients and +-3,8 million end users) he did a massive textbook exit. No external startup capital No sales & marketing Pure focus on building the best product And waiting for the momentum… Listen to my latest podcast with Michel Visser, the co-founder o...

Ever wondered what those VC’s, business angels or Private Equity guys are looking for and how they operate? Then listen to my latest podcast with Frank Appeldoorn, managing partner at Arches Capital. Arches Capital is a fast growing group of business angels that is bridging the gap between Venture Capitalist (VCs) and Business Angels, by joining the best of both worlds What an honor to steal some...

I had the honor to sit down and interview Feike Groen, VP of Product & Tech at Channel Engine and former IT-director at Bol.com 🎙️ This podcast is a MUST listen for every serious scale-up.  We took a deep dive into his story, from growing up in a small village to becoming a key leader in the Dutch e-commerce industry!  Our conversation covered insights you don’t want to miss: His time at the Unive...

What a pleasure to learn this time from Mees van Velzen, founder and CEO of MrWork. MrWork, based in Rotterdam, is the nr1 Recruitment Marketing Automation platform. We talked about his very inspiring journey of the last twelve years building MrWork and dealing with all the ups and downs: His motivation to start a business What to do when 90% of your traffic evaporated  Pitching only once; and sco...

This time I had the honor to dive deep with Martijn Beumer, co-founder and CPO of Producthero! Producthero currently serves >10.000 webshops and + 500 online marketing agencies, has an Ad Spend of a staggering +1.5 billion (!!) euro over their platform and works for brands like Nike, Ikea, Wehkamp, Praxis, Etos and many more. They already have + 280 million products in their database; so big chanc...

Ruben scaled Ticketscript to over $100 million in revenue; earning the title of Europe's nr1. online ticketing site before he and Frans sold it in 2017 to Eventbrite. Now he spends his time as an investor and also works as the CEO of LeadingCourses We delved deep into his wild ride into the world of entrepreneurship.  Some of the things we’ve discussed👇 How his love for coding and house music led...

After a successful launch in the United States, Daniel, CEO of GoPhoto shares some of his insights, and know-how for scaling his business.  From paparazzi in the bushes to SaaS powerhouse conquering the USA: Daniel is building his dream! Growing up as the son of a successful businessman Getting rich as a student making showbizz photos Doing the wrong investments with your first earned money Sellin...