{"id":4384,"date":"2015-04-19T09:03:02","date_gmt":"2015-04-19T07:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e52.nl\/?p=4384"},"modified":"2015-04-19T09:03:02","modified_gmt":"2015-04-19T07:03:02","slug":"startupbootcamp-the-co-founder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/startupbootcamp-the-co-founder\/","title":{"rendered":"Startupbootcamp # The (Co-)Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a series on\u00a0<\/b>Startupbootcamp<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0HighTechXL. Each year ten young, innovative start-ups begin the accelerator programme in Eindhoven. Over three months business plans are thrown out, teams get to know one another again, investors get ready to reach for their wallets and brilliant ideas come to light. Take a sneak peek behind the scenes of the breeding ground of the next big things<\/i>. Part 2: Startupbootcamp Global and Amsterdam co-founder Patrick de Zeeuw<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Patrick<\/a><\/p>\n

The interview with Patrick de Zeeuw takes place over Skype. He’s sitting behind the screen in his office in Amsterdam’s Zuidas district. Two sentences in and he’s off to speak with a colleague who walks past. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s quite a bit going on today,\u201d he says cheerfully as he returns to the screen. Startupbootcamp Amsterdam has just relocated to its new, 800-square-metre location in the former IBM premises<\/span><\/a> in the Zuidas district. This week is the official opening.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once a semi-professional snowboarder, Patrick de Zeeuw decided instead to go and do something with his management and international economics studies on his 25<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> birthday. He moved from Eindhoven to Amsterdam and started a successful career at Endemol, which was sold to the Spanish company Telefonica in 2000. De Zeeuw began investing in innovative companies before setting up his own start-up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2010 he has been the co-founder of Startupbootcamp Global and Startupbootcamp Amsterdam. What are the most important lessons from the world of start-ups? And how does he view the developments in his home town?<\/span><\/p>\n

Contact, office space and cash<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The concept of Startupbootcamp is as follows. Those selected for the programme receive:<\/span><\/p>\n

3 months of intensive guidance + an office space (which can be used for a further three months after the programme)<\/span><\/p>\n

access to a diverse network of around 150 mentors and over 300 investors and partners involved in the Eindhoven programme<\/span><\/p>\n

\u20ac15,000 per team.<\/span><\/p>\n

So far so good. Talking to De Zeeuw it becomes clear that people’s work comes first and foremost. \u201cThe idea sounds great on paper, but it obviously isn’t that much. A lot of start-ups come to find that their plans really don’t work as they’re already trying them out. That doesn’t matter, a lot of successful products do come from a completely different idea. Take YouTube, first designed as an online dating site, now the largest video platform in the world.\u201d But what’s important for Startupbootcamp is that potential teams dare go through the process of change.<\/span><\/p>\n

A pressure cooker situation in Eindhoven<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

De Zeeuw created Startupbootcamp Global with three other partners in 2010. The first edition took place in Copenhagen before the programme was expanded to nine cities worldwide. \u201cEvery year we receive about a hundred requests for new accelerators,\u201d says De Zeeuw. But just as with the potential start-ups, the selection for this is tough. Guus Frericks and Eric van den Eijnden, the founders of the Eindhoven programme, approached Startupbootcamp Global halfway through 2012. They saw the opportunities for a start-up programme geared towards hardware.<\/span><\/p>\n

It took nine months of talks to proceed, but it soon became clear that Eindhoven was in the same league, and the High Tech Campus was the place to temporarily house these start-ups. The Eindhoven programme has since been focused on 8 topics:<\/span><\/p>\n