Taking stock of startup innovation in the Netherlands
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
We have some (very) neat start-ups but we're very far still from reaching our potential and compared to countries around us and of course the US we need to make significant moves if NL is to remain a player in the future.
On the plus side: access to capital is getting easier all the time (but there is still a long long way to go before we can begin to claim parity with the real High-Tech Startup Capital, Silicon Valley), on the down side, the big companies are just as effective (if not even more effective) here in recruiting Dutch talent to work for them directly or to emigrate.
Yes, we have a bit of an advantage being small on the language front (just being able to speak Dutch is pretty much un-heard of, at a minimum the Dutch will typically speak passable English and probably either German, French or both).
The 'success story' when it comes to funding is heavily skewed by two very large deals totalling 275 million out of the 500 million.
The majority of the deals here is sub $1M!
So even if all the information out there can be used to paint a rosy picture the fact is that we're definitely not a leader in much of anything and a ton of work remains to be done.
The good news is most people in the start-up scene here are painfully aware of this and working hard at improving it.
So that one day we may be able to do justice by the title.
It's the service industry capital of the world.
Of course, some of the high tech startups/SMB's that do exist here can be pretty damn impressive! The list of Dutch startups on this site gives me hope: http://www.climate-kic.org/start-ups/
(For example, on the website you refer to, there seems to be only one Eindhoven area job and that's for front-end development to boot. Apparently, this website does not give a good representation of start-up jobs in the Netherlands, but focuses on Randstad webdevelopment jobs instead.)
According to me, the dutch startup scene is like any other european startup scene. Theres always few success stories and alot of failures.
I agree with you.
To be honest, the high tech and industrial start ups I know of don't identify with the startup scene much. They're seriously working on solving a problem or pushing some new tech to market; they care about something more tangible than an app and growing big. In contrast, all the startup bootcamps, startup meetings, and other startup hypes seem to focus on apps and starting up as an aim in itself. But, given my background in research, I seem to be biased in my preference for startups with more depth with respect to research and development.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/24/hackerone-bags-25m-as-secur...
What exactly are you looking for? I might be able to give you a nudge in the right direction.
I'd love to get in touch with more of the startups in the second group you talk about. Can you shoot me an email? davedx@gmail.com
Yep. If there is one thing a particular circle is very good at it is slapping themselves on the back and having dinners in expensive restaurants. Fortunately not everybody is like that and most people here have their feet firmly planted in the mud.
I dislike hype like this, it's like talking to companies that exist for three weeks and immediately start branding themselves as 'world leader' in their domain.
Indeed no access to capital. No entrepeneurial mindset. The market is stingy and conservative. The majority of the deals are in the 20k - 300k range. And only if you are almost profitable.
Pro: It's easy to live here for foreign people.
The article is probably just an advertorial for rockstart.
Nevertheless, when Dutch spokespeople say "high tech", they mean machines, robots, chips, etc. Complex machinery that you can touch. More generally, hardware.
There's quite a bunch of impressive stuff happening in this space in the Netherlands, even compared to Silicon Valley. Companies like ASML (builder of the chip machines that produced 80% of the chips in your smartphone) and FEI (electron microscopes that can show individual molecules) are some BigCorp examples that are tremendously successful but remarkably unknown outside the Netherlands. There's a whole bunch of startups and SMEs doing similar stuff at similar levels: PhenomWorld, Solaytec, Mapper, Nemo Healthcare are a small number of pretty successful ones that I know of, and there's a whole bunch more.
In this space, Silicon Valley has Intel and Apple. These are huge and awesome companies, but there's a way smaller slipstream of SMEs to complement them, definitely if you compare it to the total amount of tech businesses there. To my knowledge, the vast, vast majority of Silicon Valley startups do web/mobile stuff these days.
On a personal note though, I find that while these Dutch companies make incredibly impressive products, the way they accomplish this is often very old-fashioned and stubborn. 30 million lines of untested, undocumented, takes-a-night-to-compile C code, anyone? Welcome to ASML.
I've always associated the Netherlands with being a tech saavy nation. They always had a vivid hacking scene for example. Additionally the Dutch tend to be citizens of the world and pretty open minded which is a good mix. I completely agree with the assessment of Amsterdam. Nice city, not overly expensive, pretty great for youngish people -> good competitive edge (Berlin is similar but Amsterdam has more of a startupy general vibe imo).
For the current set of people in their twenties I agree. However, a lot more kids TV these days is dubbed instead of subtitled. I notice that English with 14 year olds these days seems less advanced then ten years ago.
I’m not working on another startup and I’ve gotten some great advice. It’s made me realize that certain sectors are probably easier to raise money for. In this low-interest rate environment, there’s probably a lot more capital seeking investment across the board.
Curious if anyone in Delft or elsewhere in the country has an investors perspective on what the fundraising environment will be like within the next 12 months.
That's why most CS students choose to go towards consultancy job, and never write a line of code in the rest of their careers. (Those who want to do engineering choose hardware, which is much more respected and better paid.)
As a result, most software startups are started by MBA's and rarely by engineers, which perpetuates the circle of undervaluing software engineering skills.
If a company is working with HTML and CSS and perhaps some tools pulled of github, then, imho, that's not high-tech. Or what would we call a company working on nuclear fusion, or on protein synthesis?
I am an American citizen hoping to move to Utrecht in the near future, and would like to ask you a few questions. Contact info is in my profile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT_%28treaty%29
https://ind.nl/EN/individuals/residence-wizard/work/working-...
It allows you to be a freelancer in Holland. No citizenship, but you do get a residency permit that is up for renewal every 2 years, as long as you satisfy the requirements (no social benefits, only freelancing, &c).
Disclousure: I am currently working for Textkernel