Let me take you back.
From founder to founder. This is personal.
For more than 25 years, I've been building.
From hospitality to recruitment, from New York to Amsterdam, from bootstrapped companies to scaled exits.
I started First Degree to give founders what I always needed most —
Access. Speed. Real support.
Not advice from the sidelines, but people who've been in the trenches.
This is my story.
The journey begins.
Left traditional education behind to embrace the school of life, setting the foundation for a non-traditional path to success.
Started learning everything about building teams in one of the world's most competitive markets.
Returned to Amsterdam where I learned everything about recruiting the best people for the best teams.
Founded Ambitious People Group, building it up over 7 years before successfully exiting in 2014.
Founded RocketX during the lockdown, leading to a successful exit in December 2023.
Launched First Degree with a clear mission: to back founders who are changing the way we work, providing access to talent, networks, and market-defining opportunities.
Everything crystallized at Visionaries Unplugged in Paris. In a room with influential minds like Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, and Demis Hassabis, we gained clarity on Europe's position in tech.
With a sense of urgency, we created 99problems as part of First Degree in the first week of March, working with Lovable to build a platform leveraging our network of 25,000+ first-degree connections to help founders solve their challenges.
Expanding our platforms to provide more comprehensive support for founders, connecting them with the right experts at the right time to accelerate their growth trajectories.
Visionaries Unplugged in Paris — Where the future of AI and European tech was discussed
Everything crystallized at Visionaries Unplugged in Paris. I found myself in a room with some of the most influential minds in tech - Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, Harry Stebbings, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis.
"Europe is the referee. The US and China are playing for the world championship. The referee never wins. No one likes the referee. Europe needs to understand the speed of the game."
With a sense of urgency, we created 99problems as part of First Degree—a platform that leverages our network of 25,000+ first-degree connections to connect founders with experts who've been there, done that, and are willing to share their knowledge.
"There's urgency this year, so we gotta move."