Welcome to the Netherlands

I received a few questions about what I am doing here in the Netherlands, so  I will try to explain it shortly in blog posts with the facts I find interesting.

Our office in High Tech Campus, Eindhoven, Netherlands

A few months ago we (ULU.io team) received an invitation to the Startupbootcamp accelerator in Eindhoven. Startupbootcamp is one of the largest startup support organisations in the world and runs its programs in many countries. They are looking for cool products & teams and then try to help them build growing businesses within a 3 month program. At the end of the program we will have the opportunity to pitch at Demo Day in front of 400+ investors who are there to invest their money into the companies. 70% of the companies inside the program are funded and the average investment is 500.000 EUR.

Walking to Startupbootcamp HighTechXL office space

It might seem like those kind of investments are unreasonable since a lot of startup companies fail - but those which succeed, succeed tremendously. Investors know that if they only invest into a single company, they will most likely lose their money. However if they invest their money wisely, they are very likely to earn a lot of money. 

In the United States venture capitalists invest into less than 1% of newly build businesses and the total investments account for less than 0,2% of GDP (Gross domestic product).  Even though those numbers are small, venture-backed companies generate annual revenues equivalent to 21% of GDB. Yes, this is a 100x increase of the initial investment. I can hardly think of any better investment and that is probably why the United States support the startup ecosystem as much as possible.

Countries which understands those numbers are willing to do anything to build such a profitable ecosystem inside their borders and the Netherlands is doing a very good job here. I hope that we Slovenians can learn something from them and act faster in the future. We should not be ignorant about one of the most profitable types of business (startups).

We are used to blaming our government for everything, but our government is just the mirror of ourselves.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. - George Bernard Shaw