Being born in Switzerland and as a dual Dutch-Austrian citizen, I have always had a strong desire to look across borders and have been fortunate to work in a global context for most of my career. I personally believe that smaller European countries, including the Netherlands, offer an ideal starting point for new ventures who considers themselves as international from the outset. I am personally motivated to contribute to a thriving, orange-colored, European startup ecosystem.

As Venture Advisor at LUMO Labs, I provide a sounding board to founders regarding their international growth strategy. How do you build a repeatable commercial engine? What makes a good partner strategy? Which pricing is relevant for which ideal customer audience and which markets to focus on? How do you structure and develop a growth team in marketing, client success and sales across borders?

I have always operated at the intersection of product and commerce. When working with founders at LUMO Labs, I’ll draw on my own experience as founder, investor and startup coach as well as my broad network of entrepreneurs and subject matter experts.

LUMO Labs enables its portfolio companies to build entirely new product categories within thriving ecosystems. Throughout my career I have always believed in the power of networks since together we can generate so much more impact. Startups, for example, can learn from peers to avoid painful, sometimes lethal mistakes. Or when growing your business, quite often partners can provide a critical source of scale. Being part of a network also helps you focus on your core capability since you have others in your ecosystem who complement your skillset.

I was fortunate to have the experience of building a SaaS business from the ground up and managing the entire scale-up lifecycle. We created a culture and matching organizational set-up where high levels of responsibility and intrinsic motivation offset a traditional need to overly structure. That in turn resulted in a team collective that was so much more effective than I had experienced in other organizations prior. The experience to design a truly unique organization gives me a strong kinship with startup founders, and I would like to bring a bit of that magic to startups in the LUMO Labs portfolio.

Building a successful company should equal building one with positive impact on people and planet. I believe impact in business will become mainstream quickly. Impact businesses will have better access to talent, can command a premium for their products and will have strong public support. I’m excited about a world where everyone is a changemaker and we are building a better world for generations to come.