About my journey
Born
I was born in Amsterdam. My parents did not want to raise me there, so we moved to Amersfoort shortly after.
Youth
My mother died when I was 15. That sucked. My brother was 8, and my sister was just 1 at the time. It taught me a lot about taking responsibility and figuring things out. Saying it shaped me into who I am would be an understatement. I also played a lot of World of Warcraft. Despite everything, I'd say I had a pretty good childhood.
Figuring out what do do with life
At first I wanted to design cars. But that study was not for me. Then I dabbled in music (bass guitar), but decided the musician-life was not for me either. Ultimately I had to pick something, so I settled on 'something broad': Human Resource Management.
Student life
I moved to Utrecht and joined the Navigators student fraternity. I made friends who are still with me today, and met my wife: Anyck. I almost bought a black tie rental company with a friend. I also drank a lot of beer, but eventually graduated.
First job
Via a sales job I ended up in the world of staffing agencies. I really enjoyed the combination of people, commerce and deep understanding of the technical side.
First company
I was entrepreneurial, so chose small companies over corporate. My first two companies where not a good fit. So I decided to try build my own. That ultimately failed, but thought me a lot about myself and business that set me up for later success.
Corporate after all
I joined a publicly traded staffing agency focussing on IT roles. Knowing EXACTLY what not to do, I now became succesful quite fast. I learned a lot and had a great time. Until I got bored.
Soul searching
I dabbled in corporate recruitment, but missed the fast paced agency environment. I also started De Whisky Academie: a Dutch webshop selling whisky tasting kits, designed to help you find your taste within the whisky category. I sold that webshop in 2023.
Management
After freelancing for a while, I landed a management job at a well known SMB IT staffing agency. That one had real highs and real lows. I learned a lot about hiring and firing, but more about firing than I would have liked. After the company got acquired my role became increasingly bureaucratic.
Software entrepreneurship
I followed the ai developments closely, being fascinated by image generation at first. I saw how transformative generative ai would be on the landscape as we know it. It also enabled me to code. I had been talking to IT specialists for 8 years, so I found my way quickly. I decided to take the leap and become a fulltime entrepreneur and software developer. I had a B2B SaaS solution with 3 staffing agencies as paying customer within a year.