0:00

Welcome to a very special episode

0:02

of the UfRotten and Podcast . It's the

0:05

last episode of this season , so

0:07

today I am really happy

0:09

to have invited my partner in

0:11

podcast , Lisette Brackenburg

0:13

Van Bakken .

0:15

Thank you .

0:15

Can I say Van Bakken or just Lisette Brackenburg ?

0:18

You can say whatever you want . I usually just

0:20

say Lisette Brackenburg , there we go .

0:23

Okay , in this special episode we'll

0:25

explore how our scale-up ecosystem developed

0:27

over the past four years , who

0:30

you found the most interesting founders

0:32

and podcast this year , and basically everything

0:35

you ever wanted to know about UfRotten

0:37

. So this is episode 53

0:39

of the UfRotten podcast . Normally we dissect the startup

0:41

and scale-up stories of remarkable entrepreneurs

0:43

, but today myself

0:46

, lars and Lisette we just look at what we've

0:48

been up to over the past year . Now

0:50

, previously

0:52

, lisette was responsible for sales at

0:54

Rotten's largest co-working space , cic

0:57

, which many of you know , and

0:59

we've been working together since the beginning of UfRotten

1:02

, where Lisette has been responsible for

1:04

maintaining the relationships with our top 10%

1:07

founder CEOs and partners , and

1:09

she deals with special projects

1:11

. Maybe we talk about that in a moment

1:13

. Special Special . She

1:17

also sits on the board of tech advocates

1:19

Netherlands . She is a CrossFit trainer

1:21

and she is the producer of

1:24

quite a few festivals . Of course you know Epsom

1:26

Festival that we're responsible for , but also Blythop

1:28

Festival and Oranje Bitter , two great festivals

1:31

in Rotterdam . Lisette , great

1:33

to have you on this side of the mic . Finally .

1:35

Thank you . I am excited

1:37

to be here and also a little nervous .

1:40

A little nervous . Yeah , that's actually so . That

1:42

was my first question . Normally well , people

1:44

might recognize your voice from the commercials , so

1:47

what is it like to now be a

1:49

guest in your own podcast ?

1:52

I hope I don't say any stupid things , and

1:58

no , so I am . I

2:00

actually have quite

2:03

a major stage fright

2:06

, so I don't really like to be in the

2:08

spotlight , but this

2:11

is nice .

2:12

This is nice , well , so there's fluorescent

2:15

lighting , so there's no spotlight here . It's

2:17

just us . I know you're also

2:19

a great singer , but we might talk about that later because , well

2:21

, this is your stage , You've done a well

2:24

, you're doing a great job and it's great to maybe

2:26

together dissect not just your story but

2:28

, I think , the story of Rotterdam . As

2:31

you know , in this podcast we

2:33

always have a few statements that you can answer with true

2:35

or false . Are

2:39

you ready for your statements ?

2:40

I am .

2:42

The first one the

2:44

market value of startups and scalabs in

2:46

the greater Rotterdam region almost

2:48

tripled from 2019 to 2023

2:51

.

2:52

Also very , very smart marketing you're doing there , you've

2:55

read the impact report .

2:56

Okay . The second one On average

2:59

, lars says kinder or

3:01

kind of more than 10

3:03

times per podcast episode . True , okay

3:07

, that's kind of true

3:09

. Third one

3:11

I literally fell in love with

3:13

a founder .

3:14

True .

3:16

By 2025, . I will live in Spain

3:18

.

3:21

I hope that's , true .

3:22

You hope that's true . No , you have to say true or false .

3:24

Okay , I say true .

3:25

True , there we go . Okay , we got that on record

3:27

. All

3:30

right , let's . Let's maybe , lizette , start

3:32

a little bit , also for our listeners

3:34

, to see how the ecosystem

3:36

has developed over the past four years . You said

3:39

the market value has tripled . Do you know

3:41

by heart from what to what it

3:43

grew in Rotterdam ? I

3:47

have it here from me just in case .

3:49

Yeah , so that's cheating . Okay

3:51

, so over the past I

3:53

would say six weeks to two months , we

3:56

have been working on our impact reports , which

3:58

involves a lot of numbers , so

4:01

to ask me for a specific number by heart

4:03

is very difficult

4:05

. I think it has

4:07

increased with 280%

4:09

, but I do

4:11

not know from how much to how much .

4:13

Okay , but that's the most important part in the 280

4:15

. I think I'm looking , I'm

4:17

reading here . So it was 12 billion in 2019

4:20

and it grew to 35 billion

4:22

this year , which , interestingly

4:24

, actually last year or this year was been

4:26

quite rough right For quite a few companies in

4:28

the valuation . So I think in

4:30

general , we don't take credit for this , but

4:32

I think it shows how the ecosystem has been

4:34

growing . Maybe I'll just pick up

4:37

some other numbers from the report . Rotterdam

4:40

is the best connected city in Europe . According to FDI

4:42

research . Rotterdam is the

4:44

second that city when it comes to scale ups and

4:47

, what not many people know , this is part

4:49

of the third startup ecosystem in Europe

4:51

. Do you want to explain why

4:53

we're part of the third ecosystem in Europe ?

4:56

So I think that has to do with us being

4:58

a part of

5:00

the Amsterdam Delta region . So

5:04

I am assuming you're referring to the

5:06

start of genome reports , which

5:08

evaluates startup ecosystems

5:11

in Europe every year . Number

5:13

one , I think , is London .

5:16

So technically that's not Europe anymore , right ? Technically it's not even Europe . Wait

5:18

, we made it to number two then .

5:20

So officially , we are hereby

5:22

promoted to the second ecosystem

5:24

of Europe . I think number two

5:27

is Berlin .

5:28

Yeah , I think you're right .

5:30

So number three is the Amsterdam Delta and obviously

5:32

, since the Netherlands is such a

5:34

small country , that

5:36

would involve Rotterdam .

5:38

Yeah , so I think they cleverly

5:40

picked 100 kilometers radius around

5:42

Amsterdam , which then includes Rotterdam , I

5:44

think also Utrecht .

5:46

Yeah , I think it even includes Eindhoven , really

5:49

Okay . Well , so , which is smart

5:51

? That's really smart , smart marketing .

5:54

Maybe somebody else is scratching their head now like , okay , but

5:56

anyway , so we're a great ecosystem . I think that

5:58

came out of the report . So

6:00

we talked about markets value

6:02

growing . Also , the

6:05

investment raised by companies

6:07

in our region has grown quite a bit . Do

6:09

you remember how much that was ? I'm

6:12

sorry for putting you on the spot here , but you are definitely

6:14

putting me on the spot .

6:15

No same answer .

6:17

I do not know by heart but it so , so

6:19

this more than doubled . It was

6:22

392 million between 2018

6:24

and 2020 . So that's also before a broader than

6:26

started , and over the past years

6:28

it's been 880 million from 2021

6:30

to 2023 . So that means it

6:33

more than doubled , which I think . Particularly

6:35

if you look at our region , it's interesting that impact

6:38

driven companies energy , transition , circular

6:40

economy , etc . Have been growing really fast against

6:42

the market , so that's great . And finally , there's

6:46

more than 49,000 people working for startups

6:48

and scalabs in our region .

6:50

Yeah .

6:50

I think that's insane .

6:51

It's a lot , as you always

6:53

say . It translates to one

6:55

in 20 Rotterdamers .

6:57

There you go .

6:58

Working for a startup or scale up .

7:00

If you don't work for a startup or scale up yet what

7:02

are you even doing ?

7:03

What are you even doing ?

7:04

Yeah , there's a website We'll probably see

7:06

that in the commercial soon where you can go

7:08

. All right . So , Lizette , let's go to

7:10

our podcasts . You

7:12

and I have recorded 52

7:15

podcasts in the past three

7:17

seasons . 21

7:20

of those were published in 2023

7:22

. Maybe can

7:24

you run us through some

7:26

numbers , some data .

7:29

Yes , so

7:32

the number of downloads we had

7:34

grew by 52%

7:36

over the last years .

7:37

That's nice . Thank you , listeners .

7:40

People are able to listen to our podcast

7:42

via their channel of choice , but

7:44

most of the people I would say 57%

7:47

of the listeners actually listen to it via Spotify

7:50

and 21%

7:52

via Apple .

7:53

That makes you wonder the rest when

7:57

on earth are . Maybe Google podcasts

8:00

maybe just our websites , I don't know

8:02

. It's interesting .

8:06

We have a big Dutch listeners base

8:08

75% but we actually

8:10

also have 25% of our listeners

8:13

from abroad , which is the reason

8:15

that we recorded in English

8:17

. After

8:19

the Netherlands , biggest listeners base is in Germany

8:21

, followed by the US and then the UK

8:23

.

8:24

Thank you , germany , and actually

8:26

US and UK . We can just say thank you in English

8:29

.

8:31

You also found that , but I

8:33

am immediately going to debunk this

8:35

myth . You found that

8:38

there's more people from Amsterdam

8:40

listening to our podcast than

8:42

people from Rotterdam and Delft , but I think

8:44

that our listeners are very

8:46

tech savvy . They all

8:48

work with VPNs that

8:51

tend to go via Amsterdam . Yeah

8:54

, that's true .

8:56

Because the internet connection starts

8:58

in Amsterdam , right , or

9:00

something like that . Anyway

9:03

, we welcome Amsterdamers to listen to this podcast . Okay

9:07

, and now to the point where I

9:09

asked you for a quote . My favorite filler

9:11

word , as you might have noticed

9:13

in the past 52 episodes , is kind

9:16

of or kind of . I tried

9:18

to use it less and less . You

9:20

guessed that I said it more than 10 times

9:22

. You know I like the data , so

9:25

what I did ? I downloaded the

9:27

past four episodes . I know it's not

9:29

representative , but at least it gives you an idea

9:31

. I had AI

9:34

transcribe

9:36

the audio script into text and then asked

9:38

ChatGPT to figure out how often

9:40

I said kind of or kind of , about

9:43

six times . So

9:45

on average , yeah , it's only six times . That's

9:48

not true .

9:50

That's also . You're cheating here , because you only downloaded

9:52

the last four episodes and you have been

9:54

aware of this filler word for

9:57

at least more than four episodes so

9:59

I would say it's definitely

10:01

less now , but I think if we listen to

10:03

10 episodes ago , it

10:06

might be 15 or 20

10:08

times per episode .

10:09

Okay anybody out there who wants to download

10:11

all the episodes and make the analysis , please let us know

10:14

. We'll give you a free

10:16

upstream t-shirt , I think , if you bring it . Okay

10:19

, so , listening to last year , so

10:21

what were the most popular

10:23

episodes that we found when , basically , we

10:25

looked at number of downloads per episode

10:28

in the first 30 days ? So that's what

10:30

we looked at . Would you take it away ? Who

10:32

are kind of ? The winners this

10:34

year .

10:36

So , number three , do you want to do a drum

10:38

roll ? Oh yes , number

10:40

three is Funger

10:42

Ipma with his startup

10:44

Arctic Reflections , who

10:46

dived a bit

10:48

deeper into his mission on slowing

10:51

down global warming by basically

10:54

spraying the ice caps .

10:57

That's . I mean , this was one of the boldest

10:59

missions I think we had on the show , right ? Yeah

11:01

, he has a great history . He worked for Inneco

11:04

, so he knows how to do things at scale , and

11:06

then I think we called him the ice monster .

11:09

Yeah , yeah , it's such a special story

11:11

and he's also made

11:14

the newspapers more than once with it . Obviously

11:16

it's a very special mission , but

11:19

, yeah , it seems so simple just

11:21

spraying seawater onto the ice caps

11:24

, which makes sure that it

11:26

freezes faster .

11:27

So Cool story . Go check

11:29

it out , funger .

11:30

Ipma Number two is

11:33

Coenburgers

11:37

from SolarDuck , who I think we

11:40

have to congratulate today . We can congratulate

11:42

today because it was just

11:44

announced that he raised 15

11:47

million euros .

11:48

Yes .

11:49

Yes , Congratulations Coen . He

11:51

also has a very , very interesting story

11:53

as a founder

11:56

on . Most of

11:58

it is on how to prevent rookie mistakes . So

12:00

I guess definitely a lot of valuable lessons for

12:02

a lot of aspiring or early stage founders

12:04

out there .

12:05

Yeah , he's building solar panel

12:09

was basically . Basically , he's getting

12:11

solar energy on the oceans , right , that's

12:14

his big mission that he's going for . Also , actually an experienced

12:16

founder I think he worked for Diamond Shipyards

12:19

before . Yeah , yeah , great

12:21

, okay .

12:24

So that brings us to number one . Number

12:26

one is Matijslee from Betelijder Systems

12:29

. Congratulations .

12:29

Matijs , I'm winning this prestigious

12:32

award ? We do not know what

12:34

the price is , but it will be an

12:36

upstream . T-shirt .

12:39

Matijslee from Betelijder . He recently

12:41

raised 40 million from the European

12:44

Investment Bank , so he talks a bit

12:46

more about that . He also has a very

12:48

inspiring story because two years ago he was

12:50

the only person on the steam

12:52

. In two years grew from

12:54

one to 100 people , which

12:56

is obviously hyper growth . So very

12:59

, very interesting story . And honestly

13:01

to Fongar I would say , if this is any

13:03

predictor on how

13:07

you are going to grow in skill

13:09

, then I'd say yeah , it's a good

13:11

sign .

13:11

It's a good sign . So , and obviously , when

13:14

you look at this list , there's one thing that

13:16

bothers both of us . I guess it's

13:20

three white males , but

13:23

we had some great female founders on the show

13:25

as well , and other diverse founders

13:27

on the show . Maybe they didn't

13:29

make it to the top three , but they're definitely

13:31

worth listening to , so go check them out

13:33

. I think what connects

13:36

these three is that they're working

13:38

on some really big challenges out

13:40

there right On energy , transition , climate

13:42

, those kind of things .

13:44

Yeah , and also so this

13:46

is the top three , obviously , of the last year

13:48

. They've taken

13:50

over the past the first 30 days after

13:53

their release , but actually our best

13:55

listened to podcast is a female .

13:57

There we go .

13:58

Yeah , we will get back to that later .

14:01

Well , maybe , okay , we'll get back

14:03

to it later oh . Cliffhanger , so maybe

14:05

from last year . Which

14:08

of those stories stood out to you personally

14:11

? Most of the last 21

14:13

episodes .

14:14

So I think that is the

14:17

very first episode we recorded for this season

14:19

, which is Jamal Oolal and

14:22

his company , social Debt , and

14:25

I've known Jamal for , I think , 10

14:28

years already , when

14:30

I still worked for CIC . Him

14:32

and his co-founder , jermaine , were our very

14:34

first tenants and and the

14:36

the enthusiasm they both had

14:39

was just so

14:41

, so amazing . And you still see that in

14:43

the enthusiasm that he has with his current

14:45

company and the passion that he talks

14:47

about the problem he's solving , which is Debt

14:51

among young people . It's

14:54

yeah , it's to me that's it's so inspiring

14:56

to hear someone talk so much passion

14:59

about what they're doing and actually seeing them

15:01

succeed as well .

15:02

Yeah , that's a big topic and I think quite a few founders

15:04

struggle with , you know , finding a scalable

15:06

model in Social entrepreneurship and

15:08

I think he's he's really showing the way . He's

15:11

also showing that it's not easy , but he is definitely

15:13

on a on a path . So I think also thank

15:15

you for making the introduction there , because I think he was not

15:17

, you know , standard

15:19

on a list yet , but I think you also

15:22

made us aware that we should interview him . I think he

15:24

was great .

15:25

Yeah , yeah , and so when we first talked

15:27

to him , he was he

15:29

only just began With this

15:31

, with his new company , and I think

15:33

by now he's grown a lot . Yeah

15:37

, I'm very happy to have him in our founders

15:39

community . So which was your favorite

15:41

episode .

15:42

So , since you picked a social one

15:45

, social debt . So , as you might know

15:47

, I love tech , but I even love nature

15:49

more because I think it's the greatest tech

15:52

in the world . So

15:55

I really , really , really enjoyed

15:57

the conversation we had with oyster reef

15:59

, george birch , and

16:02

why I liked

16:04

it . So one thing he said was

16:06

that oysters are

16:09

the best water filter in

16:11

the world because they can Filter

16:14

a hundred lead , 200 liters water per day , which

16:17

, if you think about it , you know

16:19

there's no filter , no mechanical filter , that can beat

16:22

that and basically . So that's that's partially interesting

16:24

, but I why ? What I really enjoyed about his story is that

16:26

he's using nature to create

16:28

a sustainable business model over

16:30

time . So listen to his podcast and you'll

16:32

find that he actually uses

16:34

his learnings from working

16:36

in asset management In restoring

16:39

and regenerating nature , and

16:41

I think he's doing a really great job . And he also

16:43

puts a perspective on why running

16:46

a business is a better idea than running

16:48

it as a kind of an NGO , subsidized

16:50

, etc . So I think it was really insightful . It's a

16:52

long episode , but if

16:54

you're into this kind of stuff , listen to it . I

16:56

really enjoyed recording it , listening

16:58

to a story .

17:00

Yeah , it's a great story , so definitely

17:03

go check it out .

17:05

Okay , and then we had a special episode

17:08

around April 1st Um

17:11

, rebecca , rebecca , so

17:13

maybe we should ask Rebecca for it . So

17:15

, okay , maybe what happened here for

17:17

those that didn't listen to it . Rebecca

17:21

was our April Fool's episodes , so

17:24

Lars had while you

17:26

do this , I take a sip of my champagne .

17:27

Yes , take a sip of your champagne . Lars had

17:29

Chad GPT write the

17:32

script About

17:34

a woman in , or

17:36

a female founder in stealth mode working

17:39

on a company , on what's

17:42

the word again . Chris genome

17:45

editing genome editing , but as she

17:47

said , creating better humans create Chris

17:51

? yeah , creating better humans , which

17:54

is obviously Ethical

17:56

question if that is an

17:58

improvement to the world . But

18:01

it was me who had the

18:03

honor of playing Rebecca in

18:05

the in the episode and I guess lessons learned

18:07

. If you just have me read from a script

18:09

, I sound like a robot . So

18:12

people actually thought that the entire podcast

18:14

was recorded with a robot , which

18:16

wasn't the case . It was my actual voice .

18:20

You know what happened . I was at a drinks at 42

18:22

workspace and I will not mention

18:24

her name , but she came up to me . She said plus

18:26

, I always listen to your podcast . Oh , you want

18:28

some champagne as well ? Yeah , go . So this is

18:30

the end of year , we're celebrating here . I

18:33

she

18:35

comes up to me , said I really enjoy your

18:37

podcast and I love to listen to it . However

18:39

, this episode I had to switch it off

18:41

Like after

18:43

10 minutes because this woman I don't

18:45

know who she is , but she really I

18:47

hate because she , I'm not here If I , if I break , I

18:50

hate her , but she didn't hate the voice . You know what she hated

18:52

. That was the Perfect

18:54

answers that she gave . It's just like horrible

18:56

. I would ask her like a really difficult question

18:59

and she would like immediately answer it

19:01

in the most perfect way , was

19:04

you ?

19:06

So I yeah , lessons

19:09

learned , so next time I will be reading off a

19:11

script , I have to make it sound more human even

19:13

more human , be more human .

19:14

Yeah , but we had good fun . Yeah

19:16

, it took us probably two and a half hours to record

19:18

, so hard

19:20

it's

19:23

still online for those of you who want to listen to it .

19:25

It's a very short episode because obviously

19:27

, when you're reading off a script , you just run through

19:29

it . So we were finished recording in 18 minutes

19:31

, I think . But to

19:33

make sure people didn't notice and to make sure

19:35

that the podcast would still have the length of

19:38

, I think , 45 minutes Is what we usually do

19:40

For the last 30

19:43

minutes or so we put an AI

19:45

generated song on repeat , so

19:48

the entire conversation only lasts for like 15

19:50

to 18 minutes and then it's 30 minutes

19:52

of an AI song on repeat .

19:54

There , you go yeah . Go

19:57

check it out . It's a great song . I guess . I

20:00

still hope that Rebecca will come and visit us . Upstream

20:02

I think we also . We also offered people

20:05

around table conversation with Rebecca and

20:07

she was , she was . So we fed

20:09

the jet tpt with a profile

20:11

For her to look like . What's

20:14

the guys ?

20:15

we , we were yeah , from we were yeah

20:17

. The Document or the docu

20:19

series is called we crashed

20:21

and it's Adam Newman . I'm new

20:23

and his wife Rebecca Newman , so we

20:26

largely based her entire appearance

20:28

and forthcoming on Okay

20:30

, go , rebecca On

20:33

AI .

20:33

Okay , so you already notched this . We

20:36

talked about the favorites of last year that our listeners

20:38

listen to most . Maybe

20:40

, maybe , quickly what ? What were the all-time

20:42

favorites ? Maybe ?

20:44

Yeah , so a spoiler alert . I already ruined the

20:46

number one , which is Ellen Sano from

20:48

from Yuki . So

20:51

Ellen is a yeah

20:55

, the CEO or the managing director I

20:57

think is our official title of Yuki

21:00

, managing two offices , one in

21:02

Rotterdam and one in Antwerp and and

21:05

she has a great story on how she

21:07

got there . She was involved with Yuki from

21:09

the very early days and Then

21:11

eventually took over the position of

21:14

a CEO , and she really has a great story , so

21:16

I would recommend everyone to listen to that one as well

21:18

.

21:18

Yeah great , restaurant tips as well . Yeah , great , that's

21:22

, true .

21:23

Yeah , number two is hon kleppen

21:25

, who is the founder and no

21:27

longer CEO because he stepped down of

21:29

lead info . Yeah and

21:32

he bootstrapped it as a single founder

21:35

, which is , yeah

21:37

. Also so many lessons

21:39

learned , I think , or

21:42

lessons to be learned for other founders

21:44

, especially those who think

21:46

that raising venture capital

21:48

is the only way to go . I would say listen to this podcast

21:51

, and Hans view

21:53

on why bootstrapping is

21:55

was his way to go .

21:56

Yeah , that's a good point and actually I think more

21:58

and more founders , I think in the

22:00

stories we had Moved

22:02

away from the traditional how much money did

22:04

you raise as a measure of success

22:06

versus how do I build a profitable company

22:09

over time . And sometimes that requires getting VC

22:11

money or other money . But I think Hans story

22:13

is awesome . He won the M&A award

22:15

of the year . Yeah , I don't know which year , probably last

22:17

year .

22:19

When he , when he was yeah , I don't know , we have

22:21

to go this year . Yeah , this year , okay

22:23

, okay , it's actually his brother . Quirene

22:25

Clapeau is now the CEO . Yeah

22:28

family business .

22:29

Yes , yeah , great , and hon also thank you for

22:31

hosting one of the dinners at your home . Yes

22:33

, okay , and the number three I

22:35

think he likes to be number one , should we mention

22:38

is number three .

22:39

What do you mean ? He likes to be number one .

22:40

I think he's really like he's a winner

22:42

.

22:43

He's . You

22:46

mentioned the number three , or yeah , oh

22:48

, okay , well .

22:49

I , so this is the number three in the number of listeners . So

22:51

it's Naldan who you

22:53

know or not nobody's the founder of we

22:55

Transfer , and he was actually working at Adelie

22:57

at the time we interviewed him . I

22:59

Think it was really interesting because

23:01

what I learned from this conversation

23:04

is you know , he founded or co-founded

23:06

this great company , we Transfer , which was awfully obviously

23:08

acquired , and then

23:10

he started kind of in this next phase

23:12

of adventuring and he

23:14

talked about you know how to stay in

23:16

the beginner's mindset and how to surrender . Surround

23:19

yourself with the right people . It

23:22

was a great conversation . I think we recorded that at

23:24

Erasmus .

23:24

Enterprise , I guess .

23:26

Thanks for joining us there . Naldan was really

23:28

nice , so there you have it . This is your top

23:30

three . We have a free t-shirt for

23:32

all the top three winners . Just reach out

23:34

to impossible email address at uprottedamcom

23:37

. We don't know where now we get

23:39

a t-shirt . If you ask for it , we're not gonna send

23:41

it , but thank you for being

23:43

the best listened podcasts of

23:46

all times . Let's shift

23:48

gears , lizette . We've

23:50

done so many things at uprottedam . I

23:52

think there's too many things to remember . People

23:55

might want to download . The impact report . Link will be in the

23:57

show notes . Looking

24:01

back at 2023 , what

24:03

? And we've been doing many things right . So

24:05

we've helped founders get access to talents . We've

24:08

helped them go international , find

24:10

other markets . We help them raise

24:12

capital . We help them connect to

24:14

each other . What , if you look back

24:16

, is your top three favorite moments

24:18

?

24:21

Yeah , and this is mostly about last year , but

24:23

I think A

24:26

lot of it just Goes back

24:28

to the entire period of our

24:30

brother them , and I think a bit of a

24:33

background story here is

24:35

that when we started up Rotterdam , we were all about

24:37

Creating

24:39

programs at

24:42

scale that would help multiple

24:45

founders in a period of , for

24:47

example , three months with their

24:49

Access to markets

24:52

or their access to talents , and we set up campaigns

24:54

and , yeah , other programs

24:57

, and then at some point we figured

24:59

out that what these

25:01

founders are most helped with is for them

25:03

to just be connected to each other and

25:07

for them also to be able to take the stage

25:09

. So then we sort of shifted

25:12

, pivoted , from

25:14

a program that creates

25:16

its programs to a Program

25:18

that is all about connecting

25:21

people and putting them on a stage .

25:23

Yeah .

25:25

And that's that's what we both like best as

25:27

well . So I think , looking back at Mostly

25:30

last year , my favorite moments all

25:32

have to do with those yeah

25:35

, those two pillars so putting

25:37

people on the kind of getting

25:39

them known out there and connecting them to each other

25:41

, yeah , yeah , okay .

25:43

What's your number three ?

25:44

Okay , so number three is the icons campaign , and

25:47

we launched half of it this year and we'll launch

25:49

the other half early next year , and

25:52

for this we basically Selected

25:55

ten founders and

25:57

we put them on a stage , and what

25:59

that means in practice is that Hopefully

26:02

, you've been seeing some of them already Overtown

26:05

on the different billboards and abris spread

26:08

out over Rotterdam . We

26:10

interviewed these founders on what drives them

26:12

and what led them to their , the

26:15

company that they're founding , and and

26:17

the whole thought behind that was to make

26:19

these innovations and these companies

26:21

and these founders more Almost

26:24

tangible to the average

26:27

Rotterdammer .

26:28

There's such a thing as an average Rotterdammer , but yeah , but I guess

26:30

ones

26:33

that are not connected to tech and startups

26:36

, and yeah ones that are not necessarily involved

26:38

in Innovation on a daily basis

26:40

.

26:40

So these people will probably

26:42

use the innovations of these founders

26:44

on a daily basis , but they'll have no idea that

26:47

that it

26:49

was created right under their noses

26:51

in Rotterdam . So we wanted to sort of

26:53

make a bridge between yeah , the

26:55

Rotterdammer and these , these special founders

26:57

, in our icons campaign .

26:58

Yeah , there we go . That was my number three

27:00

icons campaign .

27:01

very nice yeah number two

27:03

is the tech socials

27:05

. Love it which

27:07

, yeah , was

27:10

the idea of the lovely

27:12

team at 42 workspace , where

27:14

they wanted to create a safe space

27:16

for founders to come together

27:18

and basically bounce their challenges

27:21

off each other and learn from each other . And

27:24

, yeah , they put their money

27:26

where their mouth is and Created

27:28

the Rotterdam tech socials , or I think right now They've

27:30

just rebranded it to tech socials .

27:32

Yeah , branching out to the rest of

27:34

the Netherlands .

27:36

Exactly and it basically

27:38

means that in a , in a mastermind setting , but

27:42

then in a pressure cooker period , because

27:44

it lasts for about an hour or an hour and

27:46

a half you

27:48

are connected to four

27:50

other founders . I think it's a groups of five

27:52

and you just go around

27:54

in a setting talking about your challenges

27:56

and then the other founders can basically Briefly

27:59

pitch their ideas to you and hopefully it's

28:01

it helps you tackle the challenges that

28:03

you deal with and these

28:06

these socials have become immensely popular

28:08

and the last time one was held and

28:10

is a Few months

28:12

ago already , but I think the next one is planned for

28:14

February , so coming

28:16

up again . So I would say , keep an eye on

28:18

the LinkedIn page , oh , check it out .

28:20

What I really like is that it's run by founders . So

28:22

the the last one I was at was run by Guy

28:26

from Idri day , which is a large scale

28:28

up here , and I think that really helps putting

28:30

founders on the stage . You know what another

28:33

fun fact is ? Actually Inovat

28:36

, which is the scale up program in

28:38

Los on , switzerland has copied

28:41

the idea of tech socials , or

28:43

landed or borrowed anyway , but

28:45

I think that's a great detriment of its success

28:47

, because they were looking for a format . We

28:50

hooked them up with oh hot and

28:52

and they were really happy with it . So tech

28:54

socials go check it out .

28:55

Yeah , also worth mentioning . So this

28:58

was , I think , initially the idea of 42

29:00

workspace , but by now it's really become a community

29:02

driven event where they do it in collaboration

29:04

with the Erasmus Center of Entrepreneurship

29:07

. I think , yes , delft

29:09

, next delft .

29:10

So yeah , yeah , very

29:12

cool , very cool . Okay , and now up to

29:14

your number one number one , slightly

29:16

biased , obviously .

29:17

What else am I going to say then

29:19

? Upstream festival . I was guessing you would say this yeah

29:22

it's a yeah , it's one

29:24

of the , the proudest moments in the year

29:26

for me . Every year , our

29:29

Three-day or actually

29:31

spoiler , the next year today innovation

29:34

festival taking place in the city center of Rotterdam

29:36

, where we not only bring

29:38

the entire ecosystem together but

29:40

, yeah , serve

29:42

the the founders of

29:45

our community and also beyond our community

29:47

With their

29:50

yeah , we help them with their main challenges

29:52

in Finding investors

29:54

, finding corporate clients , finding Dell and and

29:57

connecting to each other upstream festival

29:59

, so that would also be one of my favorites .

30:01

But since you've already picked this one as your number one

30:03

, I have to find another number one .

30:04

You picked your three before . Oh yeah , that's so you

30:06

can say this , but I knew you were gonna choose this

30:08

Now , but go check out

30:11

upstream , upstream festivalcom .

30:12

Go sign up , be there . It's gonna be awesome

30:15

. And also

30:17

, is that I Mean

30:19

? I say this to you quite often , but I think Big

30:23

thanks to you for using all

30:25

your skills as a event organizer

30:27

next to all the other great things you do , in making this

30:29

success , because I think we've also learned over time

30:31

what works and what doesn't work , and

30:35

I think it's a strength to you know Make

30:37

decisions over time that make the festival better

30:39

. So you have a very important role in that . I

30:41

want to thank you for that .

30:43

Yeah , I like how we also wait . Every

30:46

year we change Things , not

30:49

minor things , quite major things actually , because we

30:51

we find out what works and then , yeah

30:53

, our setup

30:55

, our format isn't holy , so we change

30:57

it if it's necessary . Yeah , it works best

31:00

. There we go . There's no holy format .

31:01

We make it better time , All

31:04

right you're top three my top three and

31:07

you said I couldn't cheat , so I'm gonna try not

31:09

to cheat , but I probably will . No

31:11

, you can't not cheat , okay

31:14

. So , to introduce this , all my

31:16

top three moments have to do

31:18

with connecting founders . I can't help

31:20

it , but I think , from everything

31:22

we do , connecting founders is the most important

31:25

one and social thing I like most . Number

31:28

three is , you know , we organize

31:30

deep dives where we really bring a

31:32

few founders together to share their

31:35

challenges with each other , and Sometimes

31:37

we bring in a special guest . And my

31:39

number three is actually the deep dive we did with

31:41

a very special guest , dedeek Hommers

31:43

. I Think

31:45

we had eight founders at upstream it

31:47

after you VIP roundtable and we invited

31:50

Dedeek Hommers as the outsider in the group

31:52

. And I think Something remarkable

31:54

happens when you have a group of

31:56

scale-up founders , ceos , who

31:59

always talk about , you know , access

32:01

to capital , access to market , all

32:03

the stuff that comes with a scale up and then all

32:05

of a sudden you bring in an outsider , somebody who

32:07

, in this case , works in as a , you

32:10

know , in a big hospital and has been responsible during

32:12

co-vids for managing well

32:14

, quite a complex crisis . And

32:17

I loved how this conversation went , because it we

32:20

had a meta discussion more on how do you kind

32:22

of navigate big Moments or

32:24

crises in you know , your life , in

32:26

your organization , and we also like

32:28

this . Obviously we had quite a few founders

32:30

in there with a medical Business

32:33

, but also founders who were just interested , and

32:35

I think the funny thing is , after

32:38

this deep dive one of the founders actually said I'd

32:40

love to see how a hospital innovates

32:43

, and then Dedeek invited him To

32:46

come over , so he actually spent one or two days

32:48

on the In the

32:50

on the hospital floor to see how tech could

32:52

yeah , it's kind of a small internship .

32:53

He calls it an internship . He went on a sniffle

32:56

stash , sniffle stash . There we go Erasmus

32:58

. Yeah , such an awesome story .

33:00

And I think that's just great how these walls come together

33:02

. So deep dives in general , but I

33:04

think deep dive with Hommers is

33:06

my number three . The

33:09

second one this year Was

33:11

also a deep dive , but there was a special one , I

33:14

Think . As we said , we tried

33:16

to help founders to go abroad

33:18

, and that also means taking them to

33:20

scale up and start up events . There's one

33:22

event we go to we went for the

33:24

third time this year which is

33:26

slush in Helsinki , november

33:29

in Helsinki . So that's minus 20 , but

33:31

it's a great event because it brings together

33:33

5000 founders , 3000

33:36

investors and then a few other interested people , highly

33:38

curated . What I really like is that we did

33:40

a round table there and why

33:42

I picked this up as my number two . It was a round

33:44

table for impact . In fact , impact entrepreneurs

33:47

hosted at the

33:49

Ambassadors residence

33:51

, so it was a really nice spot Three

33:54

tables with three investors

33:57

on on the table as well . We

33:59

thought organizing something at slush , you

34:01

have to oversell because there's gonna be a no-show

34:03

. On fact , we

34:05

had zero no-show , which I

34:08

mean I think the ambassador still things

34:10

like we were in this Living room

34:12

, in his dining room and in the hallway

34:15

, so the house was packed , but I

34:17

think it was a great success because the founders that

34:19

were there really enjoyed the conversations with each

34:21

other and had a really big warm-up for the rest

34:23

of slush .

34:24

Yeah , I loved it .

34:25

Yeah , it was a really nice yeah yeah , oh

34:29

, and also good to say , we organized this together

34:31

with Amsterdam , which basically says we

34:33

brought the two biggest startup ecosystems together

34:35

there , and then , on top of Dutch founders

34:37

, we also had founders from the UK and

34:40

from the Nordics there , so it was really international very

34:42

nice . And then my number one

34:44

which is where you're going to cheat

34:46

. I am going to cheat because I cannot shoot . It's like

34:48

choosing between your children . I cannot choose

34:50

here .

34:52

So you're just picking 12 events

34:54

I .

34:56

Picking 12 and I'll explain to you why . So

34:59

number one I choose the

35:01

founders dinner by filling

35:04

whatever name you want . Basically

35:06

, we've started organizing founders

35:09

dinners . Well , actually not we . We

35:11

ask our founders to open up their

35:13

homes and

35:15

it's our job to then , next to that

35:18

, invite six other founder CEOs to the table

35:20

and make sure there's a nice , nice

35:22

food on the table . We have a great chef

35:25

to do that and to me , these

35:27

evenings Are

35:29

most special because I think that's where a lot of magic

35:31

happens , because you're in a private space

35:33

of a founder , in his or her home

35:35

, and

35:38

the conversation really goes deep after

35:40

, I think , the first course

35:42

. So , and it goes

35:44

from everywhere , kind of how do you be , how

35:46

you're resilient as a founder , sometimes really

35:48

tactical on how you build your sales , but it goes all

35:51

over the place and I think after an evening

35:53

, not only there's a lot of exchange

35:56

of Experience and

35:58

challenges , but also just new networks

36:00

created . So I think this is the most sustainable thing that we

36:02

do . If the head , if I have to pick one , he

36:04

said because I see you nodding I'm probably gonna

36:06

pick the one that we just had recently

36:08

, which was great .

36:11

Yeah , it's a Christiana and Daniels yes

36:13

.

36:13

Christiana Daniels us , and also because they've built

36:16

such an epic house yeah , by the way , there are two

36:18

founders , so that's also really nice and

36:20

they said , no , the house not ready , the house not ready . But we

36:22

were there , it was awesome .

36:24

Yeah , it was a great group .

36:25

Yeah , and a great group it was a great

36:27

group .

36:27

Yeah , I liked the mix there in Like

36:31

serials senior serial founders

36:34

who had specific

36:36

tips from . Make sure you put this in your

36:38

contract .

36:39

Yeah .

36:40

And , and you saw everyone just grabbing their phone

36:42

to write it down yeah , yeah and one of the

36:44

founders also said he exited .

36:46

Right , I think twice how

36:49

you need to , you know , keep working on

36:51

stuff that you like , otherwise you

36:53

get bored and you're in your bathrobe all the time . So

36:56

moving forward All right . So that was my top three , and

36:59

then there's probably 25 other things that we're also really happy

37:01

with , but we don't have the time . So Before

37:04

we go to the break , that you will probably record

37:06

is that I'm not sure what you're gonna put

37:08

in the commercial this time . Maybe also think about

37:10

what has been the hardest thing for

37:12

you this year , and I know you had

37:15

to think about this for 45

37:17

minutes Before we started , so what

37:19

has been the hardest thing for you ?

37:20

Lars showed me the setup

37:22

of the conversation An

37:24

hour before we started to record , so

37:26

basically , he shows me the main questions

37:28

he wants to ask me and For

37:30

the last hour I have been staring at the , at

37:33

the ceiling , and some boy , lars , asked

37:35

me are you okay ? I have been staring

37:37

at the ceiling because , yeah

37:39

, this question what has been the hardest for you this year

37:41

and for the life of me ? I cannot

37:43

think of something that

37:45

I considered to be so

37:49

hard that it's it's worth

37:51

mentioning in this podcast

37:53

or something that has just

37:55

stuck with me . But I guess

37:58

if and

38:00

I wouldn't call this hard but something

38:04

I've been slightly struggling with over

38:06

the last year Is

38:08

how to base myself , basically

38:11

, and not just pace

38:13

. Yeah , not just myself , the

38:15

entire team , because

38:17

there's so many amazing

38:19

things that we do and also things

38:21

that we want to do . So we've we've talked about

38:24

writing a book to

38:26

organizing Founder

38:29

retreats abroad .

38:32

So we talk about the founder , talk

38:34

about a little experiment we did online .

38:38

Okay , let's talk about that , no , okay sorry

38:40

, we'll keep that .

38:41

Yeah , no , let's talk about it . You can always cut about it if it's

38:43

too long .

38:43

Yeah . So we thought about yeah

38:45

, because we're already recording for 42 minutes

38:48

. So this podcast is definitely going to be too

38:50

long , or whatever . We

38:53

had a little poll on LinkedIn asking

38:55

our founders what they'd be most interested in , and

38:57

I can't even remember what the other two options

38:59

were but the most popular option

39:01

was a psychedelic retreat

39:04

abroad , and

39:07

I really I'm super curious

39:09

about that too . But , not just a

39:11

psychedelic retreat , I think organizing

39:15

a retreat abroad with

39:17

a very small group of founders , so I

39:20

would not bring more than 10 people yeah

39:23

, basically taking them to a nice

39:25

place outside of the Netherlands where they're

39:27

outside of their normal environment

39:30

and having them talk

39:33

to each other , almost in a way

39:35

like the best designers for the

39:37

Dutch listeners here . I

39:40

think that'd be so valuable . But so

39:42

that brings me back to the point of all

39:45

of the things we still want to do . Yeah

39:48

, it just makes it hard to prioritize

39:50

, and then how to pace yourself .

39:51

Maybe we can combine this last point with going

39:54

to Spain . Maybe we need to do a test

39:56

on Spain .

39:58

Maybe that is that will be . Yeah , because

40:00

I want to move to Spain , but no clue what I'm

40:02

going to do there .

40:03

So maybe let's start with an offset . But I think

40:05

you're , and I fully

40:07

agree . We have a very small I like

40:09

to call our team small and mighty . I

40:12

think we we've set ourselves up as

40:14

a startup . I think the team

40:16

on average has five and a half employees

40:19

, six because now our marketing

40:21

lead is gone temporarily . I

40:25

think we do a lot with a few people and I think we also

40:27

try to bite off more than we can

40:29

chew . So I fully agree with

40:31

that being the hardest part , or a hard part

40:34

, ok yeah

40:36

, 45 minutes underway , lars . That's OK , people

40:38

, if you if you're still here , we're going to

40:40

talk about . We're going to

40:42

have listeners questions soon . So I mean , I

40:44

don't you have nothing else to do . It's Christmas , well

40:47

, it's probably . This is when you're listening , this yeah

40:49

.

40:49

I don't know Definitely yeah , so

40:51

you can choose .

40:52

Now you can choose now either be with

40:54

your parents in law or listen to this

40:56

podcast . Thank you for being here . Are you still

40:58

in the toilet ? This is nice

41:00

. It's a nice started podcast you can come back to every

41:02

now and then . All right , cool

41:04

, thank you for asking me the question . What has been the hardest

41:06

part for me ?

41:10

OK , lars , please . What has been the hardest

41:12

?

41:12

part for you .

41:13

I thought we keep it for after the break . Oh let's

41:15

know no , no , no , let's . Let's talk about it now .

41:19

So you know what , for me , is the hardest part . We

41:22

talk about scaling things up and

41:26

doing things at scale , and

41:29

I think we also want to leave a legacy

41:31

of scalable things . But I think quite a few of

41:33

the things we do are very

41:35

unscalable . And

41:40

I'm not sure if I and

41:43

bothered by it , but

41:45

it kind of changed my mind quite a bit because I wanted

41:47

to build formats and programs and things you can replicate

41:50

, but I realized that the most

41:52

valuable things we do are actually not scalable

41:54

and , for

41:56

instance , I mentioned the dinners . I'd like to double

41:59

or even quadruple the number

42:01

of dinners that we do . So we need to find a different way of

42:03

doing it and I

42:05

know we've been working on quite a few things . I also know

42:07

what energizes me most . So

42:10

balancing those unscalable

42:12

things with the scalable things , I think , has been the hardest part

42:14

for me , because

42:17

it's the unscalable things that energize me . Yeah

42:20

, which is weird . Maybe it's good . No , it's

42:22

not weird .

42:22

I think it's good . I think , honestly , to

42:25

be able to skill isn't the purpose

42:27

in life . Sometimes

42:29

the things that make most impact are small

42:31

. It doesn't have to be big and

42:33

hopefully there's there's sort of a ripple effect

42:36

where the founders that we

42:38

have in our dinners decide to organize a dinner

42:40

for themselves and then they invite someone outside

42:42

of our network and then that person goes back

42:44

to wherever they live and they organize a dinner . So

42:47

I don't think that being able to skill

42:49

is the holy grill in life . You're right , small

42:51

things are nice .

42:52

So then I don't have a problem anymore , you don't ?

42:54

have a problem .

42:54

Thank you for solving my problem . Stop complaining , yeah

42:56

.

42:56

Oh OK .

42:57

Well , so , as you know , we'll go to

42:59

a very quick break and then we'll be back with

43:01

listeners questions .

43:03

You're listening to the podcast of Uproaderdam

43:05

. We help start up skill and grow their

43:07

business by offering access to talent , access

43:09

to international markets and access to capital

43:12

. Curious how we can make the

43:14

network work for you ? Go to Uproaderdamcom

43:16

. This podcast was made possible

43:19

by the city of Rotterdam .

43:22

Welcome back to this drunk

43:24

end of year episode .

43:26

We're not drunk , we're not drunk .

43:28

We have a bar , so I

43:30

have a favorite restaurant , and I bought a bottle of their house

43:32

champagne , which is Hon Rieu Brut

43:34

Sauvignon . I probably this is the reason

43:36

we don't do it in French , but it's really nice . You also don't

43:39

remember the name of your favorite restaurant , which is quite

43:41

recent which is true , so we're not

43:43

drunk , but the bottle is more

43:45

than halfway gone , so I

43:47

think we need to end this episode very soon . Yeah

43:50

, this and just for the record , this is the first time we drink

43:52

on an episode . We figured it's a nice end of

43:54

year thing experiment , yeah

43:56

. Anyway , I think we

43:59

talked about quite a few things and

44:02

maybe the listeners questions will add a bit to

44:04

it , but I think it's nice that we reflected on

44:07

how the ecosystem has developed , what

44:09

we've been doing , what we liked best episodes

44:11

. So we'll put all the links in the show notes

44:13

, but particularly maybe the episodes we mentioned to

44:16

go check it out . It's

44:19

the end of the year , maybe look

44:21

forward . What is what is 2024

44:24

have in store for

44:26

us ?

44:28

I think 2024 will be a weird year

44:33

. No , I'm serious , I think it's going to be a very

44:35

strange year . So obviously

44:38

we're in a position where we

44:40

will take our learnings on what works best . Take

44:43

that to next year . So

44:46

, basically , god out everything

44:48

else , everything else that we do , that

44:51

we just did to fill up the program but

44:53

doesn't have any results . So

44:55

we're basically filtering down to the

44:57

most valuable parts of our program

44:59

, but we're

45:01

also working on scaling

45:05

up , uprotter them , basically to no longer

45:07

be uprotter

45:10

them but uprotter

45:13

them delft , the Hague and everything

45:15

in between .

45:16

The right stage . Yeah , up , up , the right stage

45:18

.

45:22

And yeah , so we are having

45:24

those conversations are actually we're beyond the

45:26

conversations . We

45:28

are doing this investigation with the MRDH , the Metropolitan

45:30

Region of Rotterdam , the Hague . We have given the assignment

45:33

to Ruben Niebuijsch and

45:37

he is conducting research

45:39

on how a regional

45:42

scale up program would work

45:44

best , which means that for

45:46

next year , we're probably not going to be doing

45:48

a lot of new things . We're

45:50

just going to be maintaining

45:53

what we have , focusing on what works .

45:54

Yeah , maybe for those listening . So we do already work

45:56

for delft . So , although

45:58

we're called uprotter them , we've always been working

46:00

for delft and also schiedam , and

46:02

actually , if the occasional the Hague founder

46:04

calls us , we're obviously very happy to help . But

46:07

the program has always been funded by Rotterdam , schiedam , subtermir

46:10

, delft yeah , that was right

46:12

, and now we're . I think there's 23 cities

46:15

, 21 . 21 . We're not

46:17

going to name all the MRDH .

46:18

Please name the 21 municipalities within the MRDH

46:20

. Yeah , no , it's a good trivia question .

46:22

So anyway , so the scaling up the program , and then you

46:25

say , focusing on what works yeah

46:28

, just doing what works . And maybe

46:30

good news is because people have been asking what's

46:32

going to happen to a broader them . So a broader them will

46:34

stay right . So we're here to stay . Don't

46:36

worry , we're going to be here for my

46:39

change . But I think it's

46:41

great that the municipality of Rotterdam has said that it's

46:43

important that we're delivering big results so

46:45

that they're continuing this also as part of

46:47

their larger program in supporting

46:49

SMEs , small media

46:51

enterprises in what I think is the coolest

46:53

region of the Netherlands . I agree

46:56

too much commercial . No

46:58

no no , it's actually , it is truly

47:00

. Come to the Netherlands and then come to

47:02

the Rotterdam region . You figure out why

47:04

. Okay , doing great

47:06

stuff . As always , we have listeners questions and

47:09

obviously , if I go get some listeners questions

47:12

out , I have to figure out

47:14

who to ask . I decided to

47:16

choose people in this case

47:18

to reach out to people that actually are close to you

47:20

. So there's

47:22

no founders in here . Well , that's actually one . I

47:24

made up a question for him .

47:26

You made up a question for him .

47:27

Yes , I think so . No , there's definitely

47:30

entrepreneurs . Anyway first question is

47:32

from Akeem Sinser . Akeem

47:35

is the public leader of Rotterdam

47:37

, so where I have

47:39

the pleasure of being the private lead , she's the public lead . Basically

47:41

, she deals with all the governmental stuff

47:43

. Where we deal with the more private

47:45

stuff . She

47:49

has two questions . First question is what was an eye

47:51

opener for you when it comes to supporting

47:53

startups and scalabs ?

48:00

That's a very good question , An

48:04

eye opener for me . I think

48:07

honestly also

48:09

has to do with what we already spoke

48:11

about , where initially I thought

48:13

that they would just want

48:16

to have concrete

48:19

handles on how to perform

48:22

a specific task , such as not

48:24

a specific task , but a specific action , such

48:26

as expand to Germany or

48:28

raise to million . I

48:31

truly thought that helping

48:34

them gather the necessary

48:36

contacts , information , network , et

48:38

cetera to reach their

48:40

goal in that aspect would

48:43

be very helpful , but

48:45

not so much and I'm not saying that it's not helpful

48:47

at all . But I think founders

48:50

just want to learn from other founders .

48:54

So we've already talked about this , so

48:57

they don't need advisors or consultants . They just need

48:59

other founders who have done the same thing and

49:01

then ideally multiple founders so they can compare notes

49:03

and also listen to what worked

49:05

and didn't work .

49:07

It's also not that they don't need advisors and consultants

49:09

, I guess especially , for example , venture

49:11

lawyers et cetera , those are very necessary

49:13

. But then they will still reach out to

49:16

other founders to learn about what

49:18

venture lawyers they have used and

49:20

how . So the connections

49:22

between them is .

49:25

I think we've also compiled a list of favorite

49:27

business

49:29

providers or agencies , et cetera , from

49:31

our top 150 founders . So if

49:34

you are a scale-up founder and if you don't have access

49:36

to that list , go to .

49:38

Yeah , and so there's another thing

49:40

I want to shamelessly promote here . Well , not

49:42

shamelessly , because it's not our thing , but

49:45

Friso Schmidt from Startup

49:47

Fountain has embarked

49:49

on a mission to get

49:52

more transparency in service

49:55

providers . So , I'm

49:58

sorry , I cannot find the name of it right now

50:00

, so you're going to have to go on LinkedIn

50:02

and look for it yourself .

50:03

Three classes of champagne . Yes , but very

50:05

helpful . Yeah , I will put it in show notes

50:08

. So go there if you want to figure out who are the

50:10

agency's partners , business partners you

50:12

want to work with . To scale up Okay , great

50:15

, that's a great eye opener . They listen to each other . Akeem

50:18

has another question which I think is more personal . She

50:22

phrased it really nice in Dutch . I tried to

50:24

translate it it's what

50:26

touched your heart this year .

50:31

Oh , what

50:38

touched my heart this year ? That

50:42

is a very good question , and I don't think there's

50:45

one specific example

50:47

or moment that I can

50:50

name , but I

50:53

am usually most

50:56

inspired by a

50:59

story of a founder , and

51:01

I guess this is also why I no

51:06

, sorry , that's not relevant what

51:08

I was about to say . I'm also not

51:10

going to cut this out . It's fine , we will just leave this

51:12

in the conversation , now what I was going

51:15

to say . I am most inspired by stories

51:17

of founders that came

51:21

from a personal background . So

51:24

, for example and that was not the past year

51:26

, but we had Heesham Chateau

51:29

in the podcast the founder of Le

51:31

Quest and his

51:34

entire background story was so

51:38

special to me and he talks about the

51:40

importance of quote unquote

51:43

having an uncle and

51:46

I think that's it's super

51:48

, it's super true . And it's very relevant and

51:51

yeah , so I'm sorry

51:53

I don't have a more satisfying answer to this question

51:55

, but I guess the stories that touched

51:58

me are the stories that come from personal background

52:00

, the

52:02

founders with , yeah , just eye-opening

52:04

personal background stories .

52:07

Even in the case of Heesham , a great founder

52:09

and also a big supporter of what we do , and we

52:11

support him in any way we can . But

52:14

who's your uncle is also because startup

52:17

founders often also come from kind

52:20

of advantaged backgrounds , right , and

52:23

I think it's important that we recognize that

52:26

talented entrepreneurs can come from everywhere

52:28

. And what can we

52:30

do to actually help them grow ? So

52:33

sorry , in many ways that story touched me as well

52:35

. Akeem , great questions

52:37

, and I must say thank you for

52:39

being the

52:42

other part of me when it comes to running

52:45

this program , because I think what Akeem is doing

52:47

without her we could

52:50

also not run this program , because basically , the seat

52:52

of Rotterdam is really a big support or sponsor

52:54

of everything we do and it's Akeem's

52:56

role to make sure that that keeps

52:58

going . So thank you , Akeem , for doing

53:00

that . All First

53:03

question comes from Miss Selfie , who

53:06

has been well

53:09

. She's known for many things . One is

53:11

that she is the Selfie Queen because

53:13

she takes a selfie everywhere . I stole that from her . But

53:15

she's also , I think , one of the most active

53:17

corporates , startup

53:20

liaisons that I've ever met MYA

53:22

from KPN , who

53:25

runs the scale up afternoon with a lot of scale

53:27

ups , and he's a big friend of us , I

53:29

think also privately , not just through it . Our

53:32

first question is is that

53:34

what has been your most brilliant

53:36

failure and what did you learn from it ?

53:40

I wish I had time to prepare . That's

53:42

the thing about it . Now you know what we put our

53:44

guests to Next year .

53:44

We'll do it . You interview me okay

53:47

.

53:48

My most brilliant failure

53:50

and what I have learned from it . I

53:56

need time to think about this . I just told

53:58

you that I spent an hour thinking

54:01

about what I found hardest in

54:03

the past year . I

54:06

have a lot of failures , so that's

54:09

why it's so difficult for me to

54:12

pick my most brilliant failure . I mean

54:14

, people who know me will know

54:16

that I am an open book , so

54:19

I often

54:21

respond from emotion and

54:24

you can tell

54:26

by my face how I think about something

54:28

.

54:31

That's very true . I can definitely second

54:33

that .

54:34

But it isn't always useful in

54:36

certain situations . So

54:39

probably my most brilliant failures will have

54:41

to do everything with me being very

54:45

unsubtle , very

54:47

incorrect at certain

54:49

times . Not

54:52

so much incorrect , but just not

54:54

thinking about the

54:56

consequences of my actions . There's

54:58

a lot of that .

55:00

Okay , we'll do a special episode just on failures

55:02

, that's failures . Thanks

55:05

for bringing it up . Maybe she's trying

55:07

to take a point . By the way , she made a great recommendation

55:09

for her . She's also my great recommend restaurant

55:12

recommender , Anyways

55:20

. Okay , so she has another question . I have to ask this

55:22

one as well , Because

55:25

she knows you use JetTPT quite often

55:27

. I think you are the most avid JetTPT

55:30

user . Her question is what are your

55:33

biggest time savings in your daily work with

55:35

AI ? Translation

55:38

is the number

55:40

one .

55:42

I use JetTPT mostly to quickly

55:44

translate tasks . Obviously

55:46

, everything we do is in English

55:49

, so

55:51

I find myself having to translate a lot of stuff

55:53

. So that would be my first AI

55:55

. I tend not to

55:57

ask GPT any knowledge

56:00

questions .

56:03

Because he or she I don't know what it is lies Lars

56:05

and I had a very big discussion about this .

56:08

I'm not saying JetTPT lies , but JetTPT

56:11

takes its information from the web and there's

56:13

a lot of false information on the web

56:15

. So if you ask it any

56:17

knowledge , questions it's not necessarily going

56:19

to give you the truth . Which is why I

56:22

prefer to use Google , find

56:24

a number of sources and then

56:26

sort of try to distract the truth

56:28

from that , which is also not always possible . But

56:31

I will not use JetTPT for that , and

56:35

I guess honestly

56:38

too , and

56:41

this is actually quite funny , but

56:43

we have to or let

56:46

me take this personal I

56:48

have to basically

56:51

translate a

56:54

lot of the things I read on a daily

56:56

basis and simplify

56:58

it for myself . So obviously

57:00

we work with founders that

57:03

have amazing innovations . 90%

57:06

of the time , I have no clue what

57:09

they do . So let

57:11

me take Near Field Instruments as

57:13

an example . So

57:16

the chip industry ? It's a mystery to

57:18

me . Also battle-izer

57:21

systems , hydrogen batteries

57:23

I have no clue . So

57:25

then , what I tend to do is take

57:28

I don't know a part of their website

57:30

, or I just put in their websites

57:32

or whatever

57:35

, and I ask JetTPT to explain it

57:37

like I'm 10 years old . Which

57:40

is the best prompt in the world , because it

57:42

will truly talk to you like you're a 10 year

57:44

old .

57:45

And then I understand Wow , this

57:47

is a great tip . So the

57:49

translation I had , but now I will also try to

57:51

do the 10 year old .

57:52

Explain this to me like I'm 10 years old .

57:54

Maybe by now I can ask explain this to me , like

57:56

I'm Lizette .

57:58

And then it will give you the 10 year old . Not sure

58:00

how much it learns .

58:01

That's a great tip . So anybody out there doing

58:04

advanced , sophisticated stuff , like

58:06

we do with important founders and

58:08

groundbreaking things in the world , put

58:10

it in JetTPT . Great tip , great

58:13

questions , mj , and now I know that you will be

58:15

even smarter , also with all

58:17

those complex KPN questions . Putting them

58:19

in JetTPT , explaining them to a 10 year old . Okay

58:22

, here's the question I made up . A

58:24

founder called Hans asks what

58:26

is your favorite food to eat in bed ?

58:29

Wow , this

58:33

got very personal , very quickly . Wait

58:39

, does this require some background information

58:42

?

58:42

That's allowed , if you want , if you think it's necessary

58:44

, okay , yeah , no , maybe you should , because

58:47

now nobody knows who Hans is .

58:48

Yeah , I think a lot of people

58:50

here do know so . Hans Geffer , founder

58:53

CEO of HelloPrint , but

58:55

also his new company that

58:58

is not the CEO of , but one of the founders , Engage

59:00

, and a

59:03

number of other companies , is

59:05

also my boyfriend .

59:08

You met at the first edition of Upstream .

59:10

We met at the very first edition of Upstream

59:13

Festival , which was online , and

59:16

he was one of the speakers . So yeah

59:19

, that was very nice . Hans

59:21

works in saying hours . Honestly

59:24

, I lose track . But

59:27

, he works in saying hours . Basically

59:30

, to put it in a Gen Z term , hans

59:32

has no chill . So sometimes

59:35

at the end of the week and I say sometimes

59:37

, but honestly it's quite a lot we

59:41

tend to spend the entire Sunday

59:43

in bed and we

59:45

order Chinese food and

59:48

then we eat baby pangang in bed . So that's

59:50

Chinese food , obviously not actual Chinese food

59:52

. This is very

59:54

personal and I have no clue how many people are

59:56

going to listen to the story and now know that , hans

59:58

and I eat baby pangang in bed .

1:00:00

If you've made it this far , you deserve the

1:00:02

right to know .

1:00:05

I also don't know if he's going to be thankful

1:00:07

for me putting this in the podcast . Well it depends .

1:00:09

If you spill , it's fine . I

1:00:12

hope that Kalyne will listen to this and I'm

1:00:14

going to suggest also eating baby pangang

1:00:16

in bed .

1:00:17

Honestly , I would recommend to everyone yeah , no , it

1:00:19

sounds like the one thing to do

1:00:21

, wow

1:00:24

.

1:00:25

But to your point , I think Hans

1:00:28

is not only a very big

1:00:30

supporter , I think he's also our most

1:00:32

critical voice when it comes to what we do

1:00:34

. I really appreciate

1:00:36

everything he brings and he has brought

1:00:38

, I think from the beginning of UproptoDem . He's been part

1:00:40

of our co-creation group

1:00:43

and he represents

1:00:45

everything I think that a Scalep founder has or should

1:00:47

have , also when it comes to challenging

1:00:50

a government that wants to set up a Scalep

1:00:52

program , and he's a great advisor on what

1:00:54

to eat in bed . Yeah that's

1:00:56

it . Thank you

1:00:58

for now . Seriously , thank you , hans , for

1:01:00

being a part of our

1:01:02

journey and for letting us be part of your journey . And

1:01:05

I must say we are actually recording this in

1:01:08

the Office of Hello Print because

1:01:10

Hans offered

1:01:13

us office space this month

1:01:15

. We move around with UproptoDem every four months

1:01:17

. We moved to a different location and

1:01:20

we were homeless for a month and

1:01:22

he kindly suggested , I think , we took

1:01:24

his quiet room in Hello Print .

1:01:26

We robbed the Hello Print employees of their

1:01:28

quiet room .

1:01:29

Yeah , if there's one thing we're not , it's

1:01:31

quiet .

1:01:32

I think I gave them some very valuable information

1:01:34

in return right now . Oh , it's

1:01:36

fine . Yeah , the fact

1:01:38

that we're in the Pachnokin bed , Wow okay

1:01:40

, there you go .

1:01:42

Okay , anyway . So if you listen to this , if you

1:01:44

want to use this against Hans , come check

1:01:46

us out . We'll give you a free T-shirt to make

1:01:48

sure you don't . Is that a good thing ?

1:01:50

True , we're running out of T-shirts All right .

1:01:52

final question from another good friend

1:01:54

, I think friend of the program but also

1:01:57

personal friend . We

1:01:59

talked about him , ohat , who has many

1:02:01

things but I think mostly known as the

1:02:04

father of 42 workspace , I

1:02:06

think one of the greatest tech workspaces

1:02:08

in the world that is based in Rotterdam . His

1:02:11

question is what are

1:02:14

the plans of clamshells

1:02:16

and whipped cream for 2024

1:02:18

?

1:02:19

Wow , he really ruined that secret community

1:02:21

.

1:02:22

Well , we can stop talking about it .

1:02:24

And then , because it's secret , we will not answer this question

1:02:26

.

1:02:27

Sorry , Ohat , you know how you can get an answer

1:02:29

this question . Especially

1:02:32

for this episode , we recorded

1:02:36

a secret episode .

1:02:37

We did you

1:02:39

can only access it .

1:02:41

We're going to put a link on the website where you can put your donation

1:02:43

. It can be really small or

1:02:46

can be really big . We prefer really big , but

1:02:48

it can be small , but just any kind of donation . This

1:02:51

is going to be our experiment , where we will not only

1:02:53

answer the question what are the plans

1:02:55

of clamshells and whipped cream in 2024?

1:02:58

, but we will also put all

1:03:00

the recorded audio

1:03:03

of this episode . That is

1:03:05

stuff leading up to this conversation . That is everything

1:03:08

during the break . It might be some things in Dutch . It

1:03:11

also includes what do you call this ?

1:03:13

Asemair .

1:03:14

Asemair . So there's this weird thing of making

1:03:16

weird noises . So at least at the night you had an experiment

1:03:18

with all kinds of Shall . We give

1:03:20

a sneak preview on that . No , maybe

1:03:22

leave it .

1:03:24

No , we have to leave it Asemair .

1:03:27

So for those of you who don't know , what that is . It sounds

1:03:29

, I

1:03:31

think for all the fetishists out there also . Check

1:03:33

it out . Really , there's going to be a link . If

1:03:36

you click on that link , do a small Christmas donation . You

1:03:39

know what ? Any money that comes in , we will

1:03:41

give that . Do we know

1:03:43

a nice place where we should give it to ?

1:03:46

Christmas spirit . So

1:03:49

since we've been in the Hello

1:03:51

Print office for the last

1:03:53

month , I know every Wednesday

1:03:55

part of their team cooks

1:03:59

for the Ronald McDonald's house . Like

1:04:03

eight people every Wednesday who

1:04:05

cook a meal for the Ronald McDonald's house . So I

1:04:07

would say let's donate it to the Ronald McDonald's

1:04:09

house .

1:04:09

Very nice , so find the link in

1:04:12

the show notes . You'll get the answer to the plans

1:04:14

of Clamshell and Whip Cream . You'll get all

1:04:16

the intermediate chats with the we're

1:04:19

not drunk yet , there's no use at during the break

1:04:21

and before the break , and you'll get the crazy

1:04:23

sounds . Okay , how does that sound ? Okay , wire

1:04:26

all your cash and money to

1:04:28

us and I'll let you know there . Okay , on

1:04:31

that note , that's the cliffhanger . We've

1:04:34

answered all your listeners' questions . Lisette

1:04:37

, it's been a true pleasure finally

1:04:40

having this conversation with you , opening the microphone

1:04:42

not just to Rebecca but to you

1:04:44

. So my only question is going

1:04:46

to be Well , suggestion

1:04:48

question is going to be I

1:04:50

hope we hear your voice more often in the next season

1:04:52

of Uproaderdam podcast

1:04:54

.

1:04:55

Yeah , it will be nice .

1:04:56

It will be nice yeah okay , see , I've

1:04:58

seen how we can do it , and we

1:05:00

can also do it without champagne , but it was just nice to do this

1:05:02

. From this position , I really want to thank

1:05:04

you , lisette , for sharing your story

1:05:07

of working with me here

1:05:09

, but also

1:05:12

really thank you for everything we've been doing over

1:05:14

the past couple of years with Uproaderdam . Without

1:05:16

you , it would have not been possible to do this

1:05:18

and it would also not have been

1:05:20

so much fun to do it . So thank you for being

1:05:22

my partner in crime on this .

1:05:24

It's been a pleasure .

1:05:26

Also the rest of the team , but a special thank you

1:05:28

to you for hanging out there

1:05:30

. So , since

1:05:33

this is your podcast today , we

1:05:35

close off with a song that you have selected . Would

1:05:38

you like to explain which song and why

1:05:40

?

1:05:41

Yeah . So I was doubting , because

1:05:44

I have one song that is my

1:05:48

favorite song in the whole wide world , and

1:05:50

I also have a lot

1:05:52

of songs that I like to

1:05:54

listen to when I'm working

1:05:57

, just because they energize me . But

1:06:01

for this , I chose the song that I

1:06:03

tend to listen to when I want to

1:06:06

relax or when I want to

1:06:08

put things into perspective , because

1:06:11

when I listen to the first

1:06:13

notes of this song , I

1:06:15

immediately find myself somewhere

1:06:17

in the mountains , just

1:06:20

in like a free space

1:06:23

, just relaxing and

1:06:25

sort of realizing

1:06:28

how tiny we are in

1:06:30

the grand scheme of things . And

1:06:33

that song is from Fleetwood Mac and it's called

1:06:36

Dreams , specifically the 2004

1:06:39

remastered edition

1:06:41

. Yeah , it's

1:06:44

one of my favorite songs .

1:06:46

I think I love it already . I just listened to it quickly . Thank

1:06:49

you all for listening . Hope you had a great

1:06:51

year . We hope to see you again . Listen

1:06:53

. Well , we hope to speak to you again in 2024

1:06:56

. Subscribe

1:06:58

, like , share our content , listen to Lisette's

1:07:00

song and , until next time , keep it up

1:07:02

. Well

1:07:29

, whoever I keep you down

1:07:31

, wish

1:07:36

all the right things

1:07:38

should play the way

1:07:40

you feel it

1:07:42

, but listen carefully

1:07:46

to the sound

1:07:48

Of your loneliness , like

1:07:51

a heartbeat that you made

1:07:53

In the steel of

1:07:56

your cell membrane , what

1:07:58

you have and

1:08:02

what you love , and

1:08:06

what you have and

1:08:10

what you love .

1:08:15

Thunder only happens

1:08:18

when it's raining . Players

1:08:23

only love you

1:08:26

when they're playing . Say

1:08:31

when they will come

1:08:33

and they will go when

1:08:39

the rain washes you clean , you'll know

1:08:41

, you'll know , you'll

1:09:00

know .

1:09:03

Now , here I go

1:09:06

again . I see the

1:09:08

crystal vision . I

1:09:12

keep my visions

1:09:14

to myself .

1:09:20

It's all in me who

1:09:22

wants to wrap around your

1:09:25

dreams and have

1:09:28

you when it dreams you

1:09:30

like the cell Dreams

1:09:33

of loneliness , like a heartbeat

1:09:35

that you made In

1:09:37

the steel of

1:09:40

your cell membrane what

1:09:42

you have and

1:09:46

what you love , and

1:09:50

what you have and

1:09:55

what you love . Thunder

1:10:00

only happens when it's

1:10:03

raining . Players

1:10:09

only love you when they're

1:10:11

playing . When

1:10:15

they will come

1:10:17

and they will go when

1:10:23

the rain ?

1:10:24

washes , you clean

1:10:26

, you'll know . Thunder

1:10:32

only happens when

1:10:34

it's raining . Players

1:10:40

only love you when they're

1:10:43

playing . Say

1:10:47

when they will come

1:10:49

and they will go . When

1:10:55

the rain washes , you

1:10:58

clean , you'll know , you'll

1:11:03

know , you

1:11:06

will know , you

1:11:10

will know .