My aim is to make things better. It’s as simple as that. As a young person I enjoyed the experience of moving to and living in different places: Sweden, the Netherlands, California.

One of my most impactful encounters was meeting Paul Saffo in Silicon Valley. Paul is, in my opinion, one of the best technology forecasters out there taking a large-scale, long-term view on change. His 1997 paper, Sensors: The Next Wave of Innovation, changed my view on the future and my ambitions.

Humans are wired to look for the downside, the danger, the bad news, but reality is much brighter. Technology is becoming exponentially more powerful, and sure, that’s dangerous too. But humans intrinsically want to do good and make things better, and we need technology for that.

It’s like magic. If you can wield magic to make things better, of course you should.

I value the ambition of Andy and Sven at LUMO Labs to change things in the world for the better and to share their experiences and that of the team with new ambitious founders.

I love building things, making things better by working together with smart people on hard problems.

I enjoyed leading Xsens, the first company I co-founded, to a strategic exit to a large semiconductor company in Silicon Valley and bringing our technology and intellectual property to completely new and much larger markets. I’m particularly proud that, together with the team, Xsens kept its identity and brand after this major acquisition. And it is still a growing brand and business with its headquarters in the Netherlands.

My style is open and direct. I will always be brutally honest. Within a startup and among co-founders, the line between personal life and professional life is pretty fuzzy – and it should be. I also believe you need a certain level of trust and openness to do something as hard as a startup.

Ideas are cheap. I don’t like “ideas.” It’s too easy to have an idea. So, you have an idea. What are you going to DO about it? That is what is important to me. Even better, what have you already DONE about it?

I’m looking forward to working with technical founders who have a clear vision on the problem they want to solve and why. I think I add a lot of value in giving an honest and deep analysis about the technology and team capability in the earliest stages of company formation. That is more of a one-off, but important to “get started right.”

Once you grow, you will find that you as founder and your team must grow and change. Going through the necessary changes and getting that difficult discussion started is really hard, but I think I can contribute a lot in this area.

Looking forward, I’m curious about how societies and politics will change to keep up with the progress of innovation. I’m excited about the metaverse, robots and space travel becoming everyday things we can all use and how they enable developing nations to leap-frog into the future on a more equitable basis than ever before.

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