Rutte's Intro @ Techleap #stateofdutchtech summary

Today I had the privilege to attend the in-person Techleap #stateofdutchtech event in The Hague. As someone who has been building a tech scale-up in the Netherlands for the past three years, I find the Techleap organisation inspiring and a great example of how the Dutch are so excellent at leveraging the community to succeed.? I wrote out my notes on Mark Rutte 's (Netherlands PM) intro to share with y’all in case it’s useful ??

In case you hadn't seen this, here's me having a selfie with him (kinda, but also kinda not at all):

On what he’s most proud of in Dutch Tech

He’s proud of the growth in hard numbers that we’ve seen in the ecosystem. He’s most proud though, of the mindset within the ecosystem. He’s proud of the innovation culture and the confidence to leave “old fashioned” mindsets behind. He’s proud of and sees the potential in the sector to solve real societal issues. The Netherlands has some of the best education and university systems in the world (which from my perspective, it certainly does) and the real gap exists now in translating knowledge into economic activity. I really like the insight here. It’s like he’s saying that there’s a whole lot of potential energy in the system and we just need to prod it off the table to turn it into kinetic energy. Then he said something which I really enjoyed: “We simply need to speed it up”. Later he talks about getting out of the way in order to help speed it up, which I also think is a really mature concept.?

On what the key challenges are for Dutch tech x govt

The three themes for the event were funding (specifically co-investing), diversity and deep tech, but two of the highlights Rutte mentioned were climate change and health care. For me, it’s so inspiring that the government is focused on such advanced challenges. If we had to have this in South Africa the answer would probably be something like “Keeping the lights on all day” and “Stopping corruption”.

On interesting companies helping solve issues in the Netherlands

This bit was a bit shameless/rehearsed for me (I’m probably just jealous that OfferZen wasn’t mentioned), but I think it was cool that he called out winners in the industry. Here they are:

Anniek Schouten from Overstory

Tech that’s addressing deforestation and wildfires. Starting in the US and later focusing on Africa

Annemarie Willems from Prolira - DeltaScan?

Helping rapidly diagnose the over 200k cases of in-hospital delirium and saving both patient suffering and extra health care costs (he added some witty comment about saving taxpayer money which the audience - being Dutch - appreciated)

Homam Karimi (if my notes serve me correctly) from Studytube

He described this as Netflix meets Booking.com of learning in organisations. Interesting description, but it is a cool company nonetheless ??

On how the government is helping/can help Dutch entrepreneurs

He mentioned that there’s been a lot of work on the visa scheme. From my work at OfferZen we see how much of a barrier work permission is to hiring great software developers. Not only does it make things faster and easier for company and candidate, but (in my personal opinion) it also introduces some kind of bias against the candidate beyond the friction that it causes. Oftentimes, if you don’t have this in place, you’re immediately seen as an outsider. To build a stable supply of tech talent in the Netherlands, this is definitely something that deserves continuous innovation.

He mentioned progress on share options arrangements. To be honest I don’t know much about what he was talking about there, and need to do some more research on this

My favourite thing he mentioned was how the number one priority was to “stay out of it”. By this I gather he meant that the mandate was to make it easier and reduce friction to bridge the gap between “people having knowledge” and “people creating value and jobs in the world”. He mentioned how this ultimately amounted to creating an ecosystem conducive to efficiently creating great companies. Talent, capital and support are all mentioned, but I really value the emphasis on speed and reducing friction. In tech, that’s half the battle (especially these days).?

One of the really cool things I learned about today was how they’re working to enable deep tech to innovate faster. Most often “deep tech” involves a transition from academia to business and that causes all kinds of challenges, not least of which is IP transfer. To combat it, they’re launching standardised and transparent IP terms for businesses spun out of academia. I’m yet to find reading on this, but the principal sounds great.?

On what success looks like?

With a classic “Working backwards” move (great book btw), Rutte’s answer was that he’d like to see an article in The Economist of the story of how the Dutch Tech ecosystem became so powerful and such a success. It’s amazing how such a simple answer is so actionable - the moderators were able to fit so many of the things that were talked about later into this concept of “article that describes the success of the ecosystem”. That answer for me was just the sign of a total boss leader.

Another interesting concept which I liked the macro lens on, was that we need to have more companies that are critical in global value chains (like Adyen and ASML ). If you have a critical player in the global value chains, your ecosystem is strengthened and growth will naturally occur in those verticals (my opinion).?

On swag

In a move very dear to my heart (I <3 Swag), Constantijn Van Oranje-Nassau presented Rutte with a hoodie - a symbol that he’s part of the tech community. Apparently he already has some bright orange sneakers which I haven’t seen yet but apparently are instrumental in winning elections.

My takeaway

It’s pivotal that the government, startups, talent companies, investors and the entire ecosystem have a fabric that connects them, and I think Techleap has done a fantastic job (with the help of Jacqueline van den Ende ). Just like the water connects everything here in the Netherlands, we need an organisation to make the links and keep us all connected. Keep up the good work, team.