What happened after you graduated in 2024?

Like many other students, I immediately enrolled in a master's: Crisis and Security Management at Leiden University in The Hague, in the War and Peace Studies track. That's totally unrelated to what I do now, but it's still a passion, and it will come back someday. I parked it very neatly and stowed it away for later.

Because in September 2024, my best friend Sake came to me. He had studied chemical engineering at TU Delft and had always been a very practical, hands-on guy. On one project, he saw a factory cooling a chemical and dumping the heat into the air, and then burning gas to heat something else. He thought: what on earth are we doing?

So in his student room, he started experimenting with a new pressure principle to make heat pumps more efficient, so that electric industrial heating becomes cheaper than burning gas.

Why did he ask you, and why did you say yes?

After about six months of experimenting, people told Sake he needed a non-technical partner to turn this into a startup. He thought of me, because I'd always done committees and boards at PPLE: at European Horizons) and at AIM, and in my third year as treasurer of TDP and of the student party INTER. When he asked me, I needed some time to think. But I quickly realised it was a unique opportunity to learn, and something I believe in. So I parked my ambitions in security. Becoming an entrepreneur with my best friend is something I've never regretted.

What does a non-engineer do in a deep tech company?

Most startups don't fail on their technology. They fail because there's no market for it. So you need someone who does two things. One, talk to customers, understand what they need and build a strategy around it. Two, raise funds: convince investors and venture capital funds, like ASIF Ventures, which, funnily enough, is backed by the UvA, that you have a great idea and a great team. That's my role.

Sake looked at my interdisciplinary background and saw what we'd need. Someone who knows enough about law to handle contracts and protect our intellectual property. Someone with an economic understanding. Someone who can inspire and lead people, and navigate a big stakeholder environment. He had options, but I was his first choice. That's very flattering.

You talk to clients and investors all the time. What do people get wrong about the energy transition?

What we've had to learn is that the business case comes first. The mission hasn't changed, but clients want to know what's in it for them. Everyone in the industry agrees we need to move away from gas to save the environment, but it has to pay off, or it won't happen. So we lead with the return on investment, not the climate.

But it's absolutely possible. The energy transition is fundamentally about doing more with less: being more efficient, using fewer and more renewable resources. We help companies save money and emissions at the same time, and so many startups manage to do the same. So there is hope.

What did your board and committee years teach you that the classroom didn't?

You're forced to choose. You only have a year, and you can't do everything you'd like with finite time, resources and people. How you decide depends on the people you're doing it with: what they find important and what they're good at. I did that every year with a different team and different goals, and I never served in the same position twice. Frankly, that prepared me more than my studies for the dynamic environment of entrepreneurship.

And what about PPLE itself?

Everyone at PPLE was so smart and talented, but often critical of the programme's connection to the labour market. I think many fell into the trap of thinking they had to be specialists. But PPLE's real strength isn't the knowledge itself. It's that you're constantly shifting your mindset between fields, kinds of knowledge and measures of success. In any job, and especially as an entrepreneur, your tasks are anything but homogeneous. Being trained to switch quickly makes you dynamic and resourceful. And maybe also pretty good at crisis management, having had to shift so often between studying last-minute for that other major’s exam.

It's hard to explain what we learned; it's not clear-cut. So find the common thread yourself. What does PPLE teach you, and what is it moulding you to become? Then apply it in a world full of messy, complex problems. That complexity is only increasing.

And it's not about grades. Speaking as an employer myself now, when we hire talent seeing high grades is all fine and nice, but not essential. We mostly just check whether you have the degree, even for engineers. Number one, as our incubator Yes!Delft taught us, is cultural fit and your soft skills. Can you be dynamic? Can you work independently? Do we think you'll gel with us? That's what we look for.

What advice would you give PPLE students who are curious about starting something themselves?

Whatever your ambitions, the ceiling you feel is exactly that: something you perceive. The challenge is only as big as you make it in your mind. As cheesy as it sounds, think back to the difficult challenges you've overcome, and your attitude towards them before and after. I can practically guarantee that 99% of the time, it did not turn out to be as hard as you thought.

And nobody lands a dream job at entry level. I've seen CVs of people in their fifties with the wildest career paths; it's not linear at all. It'll work out, it'll teach you something, and at the very least it'll tell you never to go near that type of work again.

Students I mentor often ask how I cope with the risk, but there isn't much: if the startup fails, we stop, give the remaining money back to the investors and go home, without any personal debt. Starting a company is far more accessible than people think, and other founders are always eager to help.