Dutch Entrepreneurs & The City of Amsterdam Talk Creative Entrepreneurship with ACE
The Amsterdam Creative Entrepreneurs ( ACE) Collective is a peer-peer initiative celebrating brave people doing bold things in Amsterdam. On June 13, we held the third event in our new speaker series exploring the theme “Guts to Glory”.
To open the night, Lucy von Sturmer, Founder of The Humblebrag spoke about supporting creative entrepreneurs.
“As Robin Williams said ‘You only have one little spark of madness — you mustn’t lose it.’ I created ACE to bring together bold minds to create a safe space so we can collectively listen and learn. And foster that special spark of madness!”
Semra Çelebi from the City of Amsterdam kicked off the night giving insights on the value of creative entrepreneurship to Amsterdam. She emphasized that creative entrepreneurs — “out of the box” thinkers — are an asset to the city as they spot gaps and see new solutions to pressing problems on diversity, sustainability and other pertinent topics that shape our city.
Building on the theme of celebrating “bold and brave voices” Semra also shared with us her personal journey as someone who’s carved her own path in life — leaving her family village, removing her hijab, and becoming a “modern feminist Turkish woman” today.
Daphne Gerritse, the founder of Dutch clothing company, Rain Couture spoke about the difficulties of being a local fashion brand fighting a widespread fast fashion fixation. She emphasized the importance of celebrating small victories, and demonstrated her resilience as an entrepreneur.
Giving personal insights on mindset she said:
“Your business is a reflection of you and your subconscious. So invest in yourself. Listen to your intuition. And trust that every challenge holds a vital lesson on your journey.”
Daphne recounted how her first six figure order went up in the air as her manufacturer went bankrupt, and explained how her mindset — of pushing forward, even when everything seems to go backwards — pulled her through.
“There are always opportunities in challenges. This was just one setback on my path towards creating a successful fashion brand that led me to where I am today, with two stores in Amsterdam’s centre.”
If there was an ACE Collective Comedian of the Year Award, Ricardo van Loenen Co-founder of B Building Business would be up for it. In a brutally honest, rather hysterical example of a founder that simply refuses to give up; Ricardo demonstrated the value of what he called “naive optimism”
“We had this ‘how hard can it be’ attitude and that’s what opened doors for us. It’s naive optimism; and that means “just doing it.”
As we say — what happens in ACE Collective stays in ACE Collective; so that’s all for now. If you’d like to be first in line for future events, sign up to our mailing list and or closed facebook group here.
Special thanks to our location partner Your Space Amsterdam and photography by Alina Krasieva. For more photos from the night, check The Humblebrag facebook page.
Join The Amsterdam Creative Entrepreneurs Collective on our facebook group, or sign up to our ACE mailing list.
