Tribute #4 : HOW I MET MARE STRAETMANS

How many people get a third lease of active life?

If you find yourself obsolete or stuck, un-stuck yourself.

In 2017, I spent a lot of time building community with real, personal touch through LIVE events with the spirit of learning and giving back. But I began to question where does all that end up? I have learnt to roll out events within short lead times of 3 weeks. I enjoyed the energy the audience fills the room with. There was so much more I still did not know of the startup world.

If you had read Tribute #3, it was Jochem who introduced me to Caroline from PortXL, the world's 1st maritime accelerator based in Holland. I had not appreciated the full idea of an accelerator. Accelerators have also grown in positioning and value since then. It would have the most remote link to think of starting an accelerator and for a vertical such as maritime, oil & gas, energy and transport.

Caroline introduced me to Mare, after the drinks with Jochem and I because she was convinced I was the one for the job of adapting their accelerator program to Singapore. Singapore is one of the largest ports in the world so there is no wonder that they would like to set foot here. I did not want to work for anyone. I considered myself retired and still do. It would be a frequent joke with Mare later that I did not like him on first encounter because he had assumed I wanted the job and was "interrogating" me as if I needed to prove myself.

Months past and Mare finally re-connected and came to Singapore again. I gave in to the persistence and voila I took up a C-suite gig. It was then that I realised the "McKinsey"s of the world were talking about the C-suite gig economy being on the rise. I refused to be an employee and I wanted to continue to do what I was doing AND start PortXL in Singapore.

Joined PortXL end 2017 but it was really when we garnered the funding support by Enterprise Singapore that I started building the team within one month and kicked off our first accelerator cohort August 2018. The journey of leading the program end-to-end in Singapore and being the only one who had that end-to-end hands on experience in the company globally turned out to be an invaluable contribution to what I do today as the Chief Builder of the world's 1st corporate executive angel syndicate, she1K . It enhanced my appreciation of how the startup eco-system works and what accelerators bring to startups. This stint also exposed me to Enterprise Singapore and the process of soliciting funding from a public entity.

More than that, it was an exciting experience to work remote with headquarters in Holland and with Mare. Trust is so crucial when you work remote and you are starting something in a very different culture and environment. Mare was very empowering to me. He took the decision to fly me into Rotterdam each time there was a major program milestone with the Dutch cohort so I could get to speed so quickly for the Asian execution. We made maritime disruption acceleration rather sexy in a traditional industry.

Once we completed demo day (we call it "shakedown") in April 2019, I knew I wanted to focus all my efforts in she1K and the WomenChangemakers series requiring me to spend time in Hong Kong and New York as well so I did not extend my gig for another year. Mare has moved on from PortXL too.

See Tribute #3

See Tribute #2

See Tribute #1

This is the 4th of my tribute series of 10 individuals who spiced up my journey in the startup world.