Where the new Dutch founders, leaders and innovators are born
Young Creators — the most innovative and helpful community in the Netherlands.
Last week we reached a new milestone with Young Creators: We welcomed the 6,000th member to the community! Now, just a few days later, we’re at 6,349 awesome teenagers and students. The community is growing fast, reason enough for us to write about the most innovative and helpful community in the Netherlands.
Young Creators
2,5 years ago we founded Young Creators for the sole reason that we were looking for more likeminded people of our own age: Young ambitious talents that build great apps, projects and companies. Right now the group is growing rapidly and has great impact on many starting and aspiring entrepreneurs and creators. We’re most active in a group on Facebook where people gather feedback, share inspiration and find new colleagues or co-founders.
We are really enthusiastic about what is happening amongst Young Creators. People start companies together, teach each other new skills and offer advice and help for free.
7,800 posts
Up to today over 7,800 questions, ideas and other great stuff have been shared in the group. That’s a 320% increase since last year! A couple of Highlights:
The most popular post
Kenny Vleugels made over 100 logo’s for fellow young creators — for free!
Most liked product launch
Max Green posted about ‘Manus’, a virtual shopping assistant via Whatsapp and Telegram.
Funniest post
Thomas Smolders sure is the funniest guy, with his ‘Who are the real Young Creators’ post.
70,000 comments
Only 6% of the posts get no response (usually the boring and lazy job posts). Together we comment 8 times on each post!
A well deserved shout-out to the most engaged members of our community!
Thanks: Nick van Breda, Stephan Meijer, Tijmen van Alphen, Reshad Farid, Matthijs Otterloo, Mike van Hoenselaar, Luc van Gemert, Clesea Bosters, Jean-Micheal Veen, Koen Blauw!
6,300+ Members
We now have over 6,300 members in the Young Creators Community, of which 3,400 are monthly active (posting, commenting or liking, not counting readers). But what keeps these members busy? We did a little survey of 300 people to find out a bit more:
2K Developers
Almost one-third of Young Creators considers developing as their best skill, awesome!
Cool trend
30% of all developers in the group now code in NodeJS!
Great impact
You guys are inspiring: 53% of the group now wants to learn coding so they can build great stuff as well!
Launchpad for students
We’ve seen a great increase of students, right now now only 15% is not enrolled in education. Young Creators are also quite smart: 52% is enrolled or has finished University or Professional Education (HBO/WO). Computer Science and Economics are the most popular study.
21 year old boys
The average age in Young Creators is 21. The group is made up of 90% boys, and only a shameful 10% girls. We can do better on that part.
Young Creators makes real impact
We started Young Creators with the goal to ‘improve the culture, connections and projects from creative and ambitious teenagers and students’. And we can be really proud, it’s working. Of all Young Creators:
- 46% have said they started working on projects because of all the inspiring things their fellows were doing!
- 30% is making serious money because of the group and events.
- 22% found work through the group and events.
- 70% have a registered company
- of which 24% is creating new jobs
12 Events
In the past years we’ve organised several events with over 1500 visitors. We hosted Masterclass (learn from the best people at the coolest companies), Live (inspirational talks from cool founders) and our first Hackathon. We welcomed some of the most innovatie companies of the Netherlands and the World. Oh, and it seems Orange is a popular colour ;)
46 speakers
At these events we’ve welcomed great inspirational people; From Europe’s Vice-President to the most customer Friendly CEO and from The Next Web’s @Boris to Royal Dutch Blood.
Great Partners
Most of what we did in the last years would not have been possible without the support from these companies, who believe and invest in young talent:
Plans for 2015/2016
So, what’s next for Young Creators? Thanks to insightful feedback we now know what things we can improve or are just plain cool to do.
New website
Since the beginning we dreamt of heaving our own online place, not bound by the walls of Facebook. A website which showcases the most awesome project by young people. A place where you can ask great questions. A cool club online where the new kids hang out.
However, we have learned building a website like that is an awful fucking large amount of work. It’s even so hard, that we decided to found a new company, called Crowded. With Crowded we want to make it really easy for people to make great online communities. Because of Crowded, we’re now ready to launch Young Creators in just a matter of weeks, so expect cool stuff soon.
More events
Our events are insanely popular, but there is enough room for improvement. This year we want to organize more different events, like Masterclass. Also, we’re in talks to do one big ass event in September.
We will also be supporting events from others, for example, we will be back at Uprise Festival with our own room full of great stories. We are also helping the epic Fusehack hackathon to become a great succes. Besides that, we want to encourage a culture where more Young Creators will start their own events. If you are thinking about hosting one, then get in contact with us, we really like to help!
Serious challenges
Young Creators started of as a fun project and own frustration, but quickly grew to one of the most potential communities of The Netherlands. For a long while we were able to host the events on the side, and fund everything from our own savings, but we really are going to get a lot more going. For example, we face these questions:
- How are we going to teach 3,000 people to code?
- We’re doing really well in the urban parts of The Netherlands, how are we going to reach new people in the very north and south of the country? And what about the rest of Europe?
- Young Creators do love events, but how are we going to grow from 8 to 30 events a year?
- How can we reach and inspire more girls?
- More than 50% of the Young Creators are looking for new jobs or opportunities at startups or larger companies. How can we make the best matches between these two?
We have a lot of ideas to get there, but we really need your help!
You are a Young Creator and have spare time
Volunteer! We’re looking for people to help on events, the community and more. Check out more info here.
You are a cool company and want to invest in young talent
Become a partner or sponsor! We could host a masterclass at your place, help you recruit new talent and become a part of the Young Creators Family. Please do reach out: robert@getcrowded.co
You are a journalist or influencer and like cool stories
Help spread the word! We’d love it if you’d write about us, share this story, or even cooler: write about stories from inside our community. Contact
For now, we are going to keep growing and helping thousands of aspiring talents! There is nothing more in the world that gives us this great amount of energy!
— The Young Creators Team
If you are part of the Young Creators Community:
Thanks a lot, you are awesome!If this is the first time you heard about us, go check out more!
And, if you like what’s happening here, share this article with everyone who might be interested, it helps us a lot!
