The final story of Founded in Holland
Two years ago we launched a webpage called Founded in Holland. The idea came up at one of those beer nights. We found out that there are some pretty cool startups in The Netherlands. However, they don’t always get the attention they deserve for being brave and hustling their asses off. That, we wanted to change.
Today, we discontinue support for Founded in Holland. It has been a fun ride (scroll down for an overview of our highlights). The Dutch startup ecosystem has grown and matured tremendously. The need to draw attention to our ‘gems of boldness’ has faded. We decided to pursue international growth for our company Go Weekly (get in touch when you’re in need of a Design Sprint for your product, or say hi when you’re ever in Toronto).
While we won’t accept new applications as of March 1, 2017, the site will not just disappear. It will remain part of internet history and stays available for the foreseeable future. We still welcome every startup to join this infamous startup list that got kicked of Product Hunt by Ryan Hoover personally.
What about Founded X you may ask? It turned out that Holland wasn’t the only country where startups were having a hard time getting the credits for their courage and persistence. The request from people from all over the world convinced us to launch an open source repository for making your own Founded in… . This worldwide community — not focused on famous startup hubs but built around the underdogs that develop tomorrow’s innovations — will live on in the dozens of local pages that have been created by our international community of over 1,500 founders.
Throughout our journey we met some amazing people. We’d like to say thanks to all the startups and their founders for the support and trust. As a token of appreciation we created a free Apple iMessage sticker pack with the unique logo designs made by the community.
Special thanks goes to Rahim Earteza for running the Slack community, Emile Esterhuizen, the developer guru who stepped in from the beginning, Oliver Binkhorst for taking control over @KroesControl and Suzanne Hartog, the intern who ditched us for a real job at StartupDelta.
Overview of our highlights
While Founded in Holland was growing we did lots of cool stuff together with our community. An overview of the highlights.
Events
Together with Barqo, Heineken, hackatrain, Holland Startup, Young Creators, Jacqueline de Gruijter, StartupDelta and many more, we were involved in events such as Floated in Holland, Appril, Bunk’d, TNW Conference, Accenture Innovation Awards, Social Media Week, Young Business Award and ASAS 2015.
Products
3D Hubs, Doosopmaat.nl, de Buren, Roamler and Spreadshirt helped us create a 3D printed Founded in Holland Tulip, Awards, Tees and Reports.
Newsletter
Robert, Bastiaan, Peter and Bram created the Dutch Startup News mailing — later rebranded to Founded in Holland Newsletter. This bi-weekly newsletter was the main startup news source for over 3,000 readers in the Dutch startup community and beyond. The archive is still available at Revue.
Video Series
In partnership with 10 Dutch Startups and One Minute Please, we created the Founded in Holland Saga. Showcasing the new icons of Holland.
In the wild
Sometimes we found our proud tulip lost in the wild. Bram Kanstein decorated his bike, Prince Constantijn invited us over for coffee, BNR did a radio item on Founded in Holland and our own @KroesControl still brings our tulip on her travels.
In the past years, Founded in Holland and Founded X were featured in a variety of international and local media, such as TechCrunch, The Financial Times, Product Hunt, Tech EU, Business Insider, Gründerszene, StartupJuncture, BNR, Silicon Canals, FD and Sprout.
Founded X
Founded X events have been hosted all over the world and our national symbols promoted in many local startup scenes. A couple of examples from Bangladesh, Israel and South Africa.
