The Startup Hunter Diary — A Month Long Trip Around Europe — Episode 12 & 13
I-Amsterdam
The thing about writing every freaking day
Sorry it took me a few days to publish the last 2 episodes of your “daily” dose of entertainment. Though this made me wonder a few things that I thought I’d share.
More than keeping you up to date with what’s going on with this trip (which you can do on Instagram if you don’t already…), this diary is a really challenging exercise for me. I try to write as often as I can, but most often I ended up procrastinating. There are few things that block me from publishing more. I start questioning the quality of my writing, struggle with the time constraints, have nothing to say… (which is actually a version of too much to say but don’t know how to say it in a smart and efficient way), and plenty more reasons. Though writing everyday is a good exercise to help you structure your thoughts. I realised that I got better everyday at writing my daily dairy. Though the thing to keep improving is to never stop any day otherwise you get rusty and lose your flow…
But let’s talk about Amsterdam.
Too cool for School
We value long term relationships and are eager to help entrepreneurs as early as we can. So what’s better to get to know them than visiting the incubator of the University of Amsterdam, Ace Ventures? Not much… I say it quite often, but it’s just because we do visit amazing places, and Ace Ventures Lab wasn’t an exception. We loved it. And to keep going with our habits we just showed up there to see what would happen. People were very friendly with us and we got to tour the space and learn more about it. They are building great things over there and are heavy in research as they work with a lot of PhD candidates from the university. One of the coolest things when we visit school incubators is that entrepreneurs there really focus on achieving their vision. They work incredibly hard to build life-changing products, while finishing their studies. Only when they have their diplomas will they start worrying about viable business models. Not ideal for building great companies, but SO cool for building amazing things!
We headed back to the centre of Amsterdam to try to meet with Rockstart before the big meeting at TQ with The Next Web. Too bad we didn’t find anyone to talk to at Rockstart because there was a big event going on… But, we weren’t giving up yet.
So, then we made it to TQ. TQ is a new co-working space in Amsterdam. We learned that they are part of the Google campus thingy thing. Things just got better. We thought we would be meeting with The Next Web, which was already a big deal (at least to us), but then we got the whole package. Awesome.
We met with Wout of TQ. He is in charge of the community, so he is the one making the connection between, TQ, The Next Web, and the Google programmes. We share the same vision about start-ups and the ecosystem in Europe. TQ was in the midst of renovation and what they are building is really cool. We just can’t wait to go back and see what it looks like when it’s over.
Before we deserved some time off in Amsterdam we went to meet with Janneke, one of the most successful woman entrepreneurs in the Netherland, and maybe Europe. It’s always great to hear the story of such great people. As a bonus she introduced us to 2 of the start-ups she mentors. We met with Diane who’s building a more reliable Internet for kids, and got introduced to Cristian, whom we’ll meet in the morning.
Once again it was a great day. Time for a break!
Traveling in a world of opportunity
It’s already Wednesday and our last day of meeting in Amsterdam. Helene is heading to Barcelona tonight, and I am heading to Paris tomorrow morning.
We met with Cristian in the morning and he told us more about how he is helping teachers who don’t know anything about code, teaching code to kids in every school. That’s a very cool tool, and I wish teachers in my schools had this when I was a kid.
When you listen to people and go with the flow, good things usually happen to you. On day 1, when we were talking with Tienko we talked about “Hackers & Founders” and said we’d have like to meet them but that they didn’t have a space. He told us they had but that it was hard to find. Well, our meeting with Cristian happened to be in the space of “Hackers & Founders”. Bonus #2: we told him about our unlucky visit at Rockstart the day before, and he happened to be a Rockstart alumnus. One intro later and we were meeting with Rockstart in the afternoon.
Before that we had a meeting with Minouche of the Startup in Residence program. It’s another government initiative to support start-ups. This country is definitely pushing its startups to the top.
We had few spare hours before going on to our afternoon meetings so we decided to pay a visit to Growth Tribe. It’s the first growth hacking school in Europe and they happen to have been created by 2 French guys. We didn’t get to see much but as a growth hacker myself it was interesting to meet with them.
So we finally got to meet with Rockstart. Their program is really cool, and they are expanding fast. Plus we got a very warm welcome from Mariska, their Investors Relation director, and she even gave us recommendations for the cool places to go to in Amsterdam.
Before Helene took her flight to Barcelona we went back to B-Amsterdam. This time we got to meet with their event and community manager. They have so much going on and they are even about to open 2 new facilities, one across the street from where they are, and the 2nd one at the Brooklyn navy yard in New York. We’d love to organize an event at theirs.
We had one last meeting at B to conclude Amsterdam. And it wasn’t your usual meeting. We met with Startup Delta. Their objective is to connect the different start-up ecosystems in the Netherlands, so it actually looks like what we do at the European level. Startup Delta isn’t just another initiative; one of the prince of the Netherlands started it. So their impact is quite powerful.
That’s it for Amsterdam. We really fell in love with this city. Everything went so well. They have a blooming start-up ecosystem, the city is very nice, and people were really cool.
Helene took her flight; and I discovered the local city nightlife thanks to a French entrepreneur student at the Team Academy, whom we met on our first day.
See ya’ll in Munich Sunday for the Bitz & Pretzels conference.
Hop on the train of the most exciting start-up trip ever made, and travel with us! It shall be fun.
Follow the action live on Instagram @oneragtime, and keep up with our Facebook and Medium.
