“Amsterdam is a natural testbed for startups,” says Bas Beekman. “If it works here, it works anywhere.”
Beekman should know. He’s the public lead for StartupAmsterdam, a public-private partnership that supports new businesses in the Dutch capital city. He says Amsterdam might be small, but it punches above its weight class.
What makes it such a great place for starting your own business? Beekman says the population is full of early adaptors, so they are a great market to test new products that companies hope will take off in New York, London, Paris, and beyond.
“In fact, Amsterdam is a launch pad into the world,” he says.
But what really sets it apart are its newly minted companies. Let’s zoom in on a few of its flourishing startups.
Otly!
Otly! was founded by Lior Bornshtain and Vedran Vego, both veterans in the financial technology industry. After Jaron Borensztajn joined the team, they set out to change pocket money as we know it.
Otly!, launched in 2015 by WeWork Weteringschans members, is a digital platform driven by two ideas: financial education for young people and convenience for parents in managing their children’s finances.
“As a parent of three, getting my kids sorted with their allowance was always a mess and ended up irritating both us as parents, as well as our kids,” explains Bornshtain, the company’s CEO. “Using Otly! we all have a clear overview of the money received and spent. And moreover, my kids have learned that mum and dad are not a bottomless pit of cash. They have a much better understanding of the value of money.”
Otly! runs on the IBM Bluemix platform, and it is increasingly integrating IBM Watson technology to provide smart analysis features for users. Financial tools and educational content help parents teach their kids to be smart with money and curious to learn more about it. This e-piggy bank creates a present-time concept of digital banking at an early age.
According to Bornshtain, “Being nominated for the FinTech startup of the year award is a huge achievement for us, but what made me equally proud is when my daughter was in a toy shop buying golden ballet shoes. The shop owner asked her if she had taken the money out of her piggy bank. “‘No,’ my daughter answered. ‘I have Otly!’”
Student-Bike
There are twice as many bicycles as people in Amsterdam, and the Student-Bike team is using this statistic as a smart angle for their business.
Student-Bike provides students with a modern bike, embellished with advertisements. The add enables them to offer the bike to a student for free. Big brands, such as one of Holland’s most prominent newspapers, Het Parool, and fast-growing food delivery service, Deliveroo, are among the few to have attached themselves to this “bikevertisement.”
After an initial hiccup just several days before going live, the WeWork Metropool members are now riding in the fast lane.
Co-founder Thomas de Graaf recalls, “In our two week trial period leading up to our launch, we discovered we were using the wrong tires, resulting in many punctures. We quickly ordered a different kind of tire, took a crash course in tire repairing, and spent the next four days and nights replacing them all. Ever since, we have had no problems, but it was not the smoothest way to lead up to a kick-off.”
Student-Bike will be the first company using a highly innovative lock called Linka. This smart bike lock enables you to lock and unlock a bike from a distance and is equipped with a tamper siren, which sends you an alert when someone tampers with your bike, also prompting a very loud siren.
Now that the bikes are all spread out and gliding throughout town, the Student-Bike team receives nothing but praise.
“We get students expressing their surprise at having such a great bike at no cost, not even when it needs repairing,” says de Graaf.
Holistik
For Evelyn van Hasselt and Karlijn Visser, a holistic way of life is realizing you are part of something bigger, which results in treating the world around you with more respect.
“In this fast-paced world, people can feel intimidated and pressured,” says van Hasselt. “I wanted to define myself by my own standards, do things at my own pace, and for my own reasons. Starting our online magazine Holistik encompasses that.”
Launched in February, the WeWork Weteringschans members created an online glossy to inspire and guide readers who feel the same way. The stylish, fresh look also appeals to young women and men. And with contributors and experts from all corners of society, Holistik is able to cover a variety of topics.
“We feel very fortunate to be working with so many experienced writers and experts, a feng shui master being one of them,” says van Hasselt.
In the few weeks they’ve been live, they’ve had over 20,000 unique clicks. This is a lot considering Holland is such a small country. Add to this an interview in The Wall Street Journal, and it appears their intuitive way is proving they are really part of something much bigger.
Connecterra
Yasir Khokhar founded Connecterra after staring at the cows outside his window in Holland, wondering What are they thinking?
It resulted in a fitbit for cows, which was warmly embraced by the agricultural scene worldwide.
Together with his teammates, Khokhar developed a technology using deep learning, which is a new field of mathematics that uses a form of artificial intelligence to make computers learn and think like humans. In this case, it learns the behavior of cows and provides insights about their health. This lets farmers run their farms more efficiently.
The WeWork Weteringschans members just won the 2015 Startup of the Year award at Web Summit, and they are already looking further ahead.
“We want to help create a better world,” Khokhar says. “For now, that means feeding more people with less cows. But in the future, we plan to broaden our scope by putting a sensor to plants, soil, or even trucks.”
And with orders from Brazil, South Africa, and Japan, others are buying into Connecterra’s better world too.
Catawiki
A passionate comic book collector, Catawiki’s founder René Schoenmakers would waste hours scanning catalogues before finding the one item he wanted. There must be a faster way to get to the good ones, he thought.
Indeed, there was.
In 2011, Schoenmakers saw his first online comic book auction go live and take off widely across Europe.
“We were getting buyers and sellers from France, Italy, and the U.K. right from the start,” says Schoenmakers, “which is just what we were aiming for.”
Now a trusted online auction house, buyers can look forward to diverse products every Friday: watches, art, whiskeys, vintage cars, vinyl records, rare Star Wars props, and more.
With 12 million visitors worldwide each month, Catawiki won the prize for fastest-growing startup in Deloitte’s 2015 Technology Fast 500 Europe, Middle East, and Africa program. As the first Dutch company to win the award, Catawiki is extra honored.
“As this is a completely unbiased award, solely based on numbers, I’m extremely proud to have achieved this,” says Schoenmakers.
Originally based in the eastern part of Holland, Catawiki is now based in Amsterdam’s WeWork Metropool to facilitate a more international environment. After all, expanding worldwide is their main aim.
“It creates new challenges, such as international laws we encounter,” Schoenmakers explains. “But we learn from each aspect of it and find a way to tackle it, one item at a time.”
Photos: Brigette Kroone