My name is Joel in this episode of unplugged I talk to start a boot camp founder Patrick de Zeeuw. Patrick started his first company back in the days when he was traveling the world as a professional snowboarder after working for large media company he became successful serial entrepreneur and in 2011 he co-founded startup bootcamp presently starter boot camp is one of the major global startup accelerators with programs in startup hubs like London New York Singapore Berlin and many other cities

I know pitch fit for quite some years now and now he has some interesting views and entrepreneurship I visited Patrick at his office in Amsterdam we talked about the things you need in order to become successful as an entrepreneur the importance of purpose and culture and last but not least his own personal Drive gut feelings and playing don’t become so I went from small entrepreneur to going into a small company that actually became a really large company being an investor in another company growing that company and

then doing let’s say startup from scratch and I did that until 2009 and then soap my equity in that company and then I started traveling and I during that that those travels I learned for the first time about startup accelerators that were launched in the u.s. just about one and a half two years before around 2007-2008 so I went to the US and and had a look at that basically how how they operated these programs and companies in those days a long time ago now but like Airbnb and Dropbox came out

of these startup accelerator programs I was like wow this you know if I can start a company that can help other companies grow or lounge many companies from within a company that I started myself that that’s like a wet dream for me and why is it what do you like about that idea I think there’s two aspects in the in the in the last days of my my snowboarding years I started training a Dutch team young people that had the ambition to go into competition and and I actually enjoyed those those training

sessions and coaching them I enjoyed that actually more than competing myself it was a different kind of pressure but the proudness from them being successful was even probably more big than me yeah and so there was so I had some I had something there that that I really loved to empower others and make them stronger based on everything that I learned being successes and failures so that was one aspect the other aspect was I love to create something out of nothing and doing that with ten companies a year

and actually we’re doing a two and a fifty year that was for me like if we can create a model where we can actually do that contributes to all those early stage founders first time founders and help them grow I think for me that would be yeah the magical combination of what I want to do in this phase of my life so I’m 49 now this is eight years ago so I was in my early 40s and I thought probably in this phase of my life this would add really a lot to what I want to contribute to I don’t know society or

entrepreneurship or so it was one of my values to give back basically to a next generation of entrepreneurs and at the same time you’re still the entrepreneur yourselves and and and I was I was creating my own startup that was helping other startups basically grow so I think the mix of the two or the three actually that that makes it for me still interesting now after eight years so what do you think is your biggest asset as an entrepreneur why are you successful a lot of the time I think one of the the there’s a few things that I

think you need as an entrepreneur you need to be extremely passionate about what you do and if you’re passionate about what you do then this will infect others being at clients being at new team members being at co-founders being it so I think that’s that’s one really important thing and then combining passion with purpose if you’re not only really passionate about it but also are able to add purpose to it and bring that purpose across to others that also have a certain purpose then suddenly one on

one becomes maybe not even 3 but 11 so I think that’s in the let’s say energy passion purpose that in that domain that’s a really important thing I think the other thing is not trying to overanalyze or overanalyze your decision-making process if my gut feeling says at a certain moment there’s this feels something I need to do then I also just trusted you know when I when I first heard about these accelerator programs I was so excited I knew this was the thing that I was gonna be doing the next year I couldn’t even describe

it why are you know at a hard time sleeping I was so I this needed to happen I couldn’t even explain why and if you if you bring that across then again it affects others but on the other hand if you over a tional eyes things and you think things too much true you start thinking about what the risk maybe is or what the things are that might go wrong and I learned not to think about these things because they will go wrong they’ve but I know by now that you know I can deal with these things that go

wrong if you have the right people around you if you have the right skills if you if you just stay put then you can solve any problem I know by now that almost any problem on a business sense you know if you get ill whatever obviously then you have yeah other people hopefully taking care of you but on the business sighs I know by now I’ve seen all the problems I think with all the startups with all the businesses that have done and I know if you just take a step back and have a look at it maybe with some fun you will

be able to solve any problem that you encounter so no not over analyzing things from the beginning I think that’s really important and another thing which I think as helped me a lot is making sure that you are able to get it around people around you which relates again to first topic which is passion purpose you know building building a company is very much about not only building a business but also building a culture within a company and I’ve learned the hard way myself if you don’t get the culture

within a company right your company will never fly it will fail sooner or later and I’ve I think one of the things that I’m good at also related to passion and purpose is making sure that we get all the right people around our team that are aligned on the culture on the purpose on the on the passion and we all point in the same direction eventually whatever business you’re in it’s it’s created mostly by people and so at least until today you know maybe we’ll have artificial intelligence going forward creating the businesses for us

but you know it’s still people that need to coat that so I think you know those those are the main other elements how do you create a culture it’s my experience that the founders create the culture people that you eventually hire you you try to select them based on your values and the culture that you you want to establish rationally or irrationally but you try to get our people around you that are there for the same purpose and then people start copying basically what you do and that happens very fast if I

give the if I give the let me give you an example we we have at that starter boot camp an ellipse and the telethia should four values one is being entrepreneurial which means that we make decisions really fast we don’t mind if people make mistakes I make mistakes all the time as long as you don’t make the same mistake two or three times because then then it’s not smart it means that we take risks it means that we use facts but also listen to our gut feeling and we give people freedom if I bring that

to my team saying you know if we don’t make mistakes that means that we’re not being intrapreneurial enough so I want you to take risk if I start pushing that to my team or bringing that message then what people will start doing that so culture is not a message on the wall it’s actually my behavior which is eventually being either adopted by the team or not if they don’t adopt it eventually there’s probably not a cultural fit another example is of the value that we have is learning desire so what I every

week I read articles and if it’s a printed article I take it out and I put the name of the person honor that I think should read that article or if it’s a you know it’s a link from a vlog then I block I just send that or if I read a great book that I think that the whole company should read I buy a hundred books and I give that to everybody and then we gave a fight a little bit and so we to make sure that everybody sort of like reads it or understands the knowledge that is in there so we have a competition or people

need to present to each other the content and that works really well but by giving these examples you see that other people also start sharing articles or you know I just we have a great young leader who’s only 23 who leads our design team he started buying books for his team of six designers and I’m not saying it’s because I gave that example but I’m quite sure that when he joined the company four years ago and I gave him the first book that I thought he should read he thought wow that’s pretty

cool that Petric strives to inspire me so I think you know again it’s it’s it’s built by the founders the founders created nourish or the creative culture and and they should also have the responsibility to nourish the culture very intensively that means that you have be very selective on who you bring aboard and who you don’t especially if you already small to you and say you’re maybe 8 to 15 people adding one person to the team that doesn’t fit to the culture will have an immediate effect if you’re foreign people it still has a

potential effect yeah but but the effect this may be a little bit smaller but especially on the leadership team I think if you if you sometimes we I still make the mistake in bringing the wrong leaders on board and you see immediately how the company is responding so then either you have to change somebody in your leadership team or you need to make sure that the other person is coached that he understands the values throughout the years you’ve seen thousands of startups so what do you think is the biggest success factor when

it comes to launching and start up successfully eventually you know it’s it’s the people that create the business and you know a great idea or a great concept of business model where the shitty team is never gonna fly a really shitty business model with or a shitty idea with a great founding team they will pivot and they will find their you know their route along the way so you know you always take that on the founder never on the ideas especially in early stage you know concepts and business models will change before they actually

are able to scale up and you know that that means that there needs to be a balanced team and that doesn’t mean that they have to be all the same you know they should be very different I would say different skills probably even different personalities but should be able to work really well together so I would say the most important elements are team and timing and then timing is you know too early too late in the market spot on on the market it has to is related to product market fit which has to do with timing you know does the

business model fit in you know the pace of where the economy is going into or the needs of customers so I there’s two reasons why startups fail there’s either no product market fit which could be related to the business model all those things or it’s team mismatched team conflicts those are the two reasons that startups and even established companies you know they fail yeah how do you look at Purpose Driven entrepreneurs with real big passion for what they do you have a business bottle you believe

in the concept that end up in ER but then you have to pivot maybe a few times and the concept is maybe because of pragmatic reasons not in not aligned with their purpose anymore now does that happen yeah yes it does happen and then in then it mostly is not it’s not gonna fly it’s gonna be yeah I think if the you know the hurdles that you have to take to build a successful company are quite big you know it’s not a straight line to success there’s many dips and maybe a few spikes and if if you are not totally

aligned on the purpose of or the impact that you want to create then it’s gonna be scientific almost right and it’s it’s as artificial so one of the questions that I always ask to founding founder teams is why are you doing this and not something completely different and if they cannot answer that question why they are doing this then I normally I’m not I’m not interested in learning much more you know you have to be able to explain to me what drives you on what you’re doing what you’re currently doing because

you’re gonna you’re gonna need to put so much effort in this that if you if the purpose is not there or the the passion is not there for that then you’re not going to be able to put enough energy in there and it has to come from the core from the from the gut basically yeah how do you make sure you stay in your own energy or your life is balanced enough to do what you want to do by taking breaks now we were just before the interview start talking a little bit about that what I’ve also learned is

that you need to be able to take a step back sometimes from the business to ease your mind to be able maybe less on the execution side and more on the creative side thinking things a little more true so what I’ve learned and have a clear agreement on with my business partners and co-founders is that I take many holidays and and I’m lucky to be an entrepreneur that I can decide myself when I take breaks and and and it’s not about the length of the breaks but it is you know even if it’s only two days or

three days or a week or five weeks doesn’t matter in when I’m away I’m away I you know I don’t like to be called about business I don’t like to be texts it’s I don’t do any email I’m really away I lock off completely and it takes two three days to get into that state of mind but after two three days you know ten years ago it took me two weeks to lock off so it doesn’t work if you are only away for three days but by now I can do this basically in I wouldn’t say 24 hours but in 48 hours I’m completely how come you you’re

better at it in our days than a few years ago because I have less difficulty in letting loose because I I get a team around me that is way better at certain things than I am and I trust them completely and and if you don’t have the team like that then people will still call you right so I made the agreement with my business partner that we started start a boot camp with in ellipse and the talent institute that from the beginning that if he’s away I take care of all the business if I’m away he takes

care of it but then still you know you can do that when you have five or ten people working for you but if you have four wrong people working for you then that becomes a little bit more difficult but now we’ve got you know quite a few very senior people around us that basically basically they call and I have no problem in letting go so it does take time to get to where you are or where we are today but I’ve realized that not only for myself but also for my family and also for the business it’s important

that I’m not always there so what happens when you’re not there when you look at your business or the insights you’re having why does it help well there’s a few things that are important I think what which I’ve I’m starting to realize more and more now in our business is that the business gross when I’m not there which is great I mean that gives me the best feeling in the world that things just happen without me even knowing that you know they’re supposed to happen so that’s that’s great the second thing is that I do a lot of

reading and it’s hard to read when your mind is not at ease and I’ll be discussed it’s it’s mostly not novels or crimes sometimes it’s a crime book but it’s mostly about business and I love that because it gives me knowledge and I think you know it’s great to learn from others that wrote that down in books so the insights that I get when I have the ease of mind to to read I think are very valuable not only for me but also for the company so what does happen if I come back from a break is that I got a

full list of at least I think great new insights or ideas or which I don’t want to put in motion obviously not all other things on the list have an immediate effect and so my say for maybe three months later or six months later when the momentum is there but I think it’s important to do that take a distance because you look at it from a less with less focus on the execution side and more on the strategic side where do we want to go in you know in the next 12 to 18 months each year me and my business

partners take a week off well it’s not it’s not really work actually very hard but we leave the office for a week seven days and the first day of that that’s a business break we spend on looking backwards what went wrong what would well last year last twelve months and the next six days we look forward what do we need to do next year and who’s going to take the lead on that and we’ve been doing this now for five years and this is this is just great looking at it from a distance sometimes you bring in a facilitator

that challenges us or gives us new insights on how to organize ourselves maybe in a more effective way and you know those weeks are extremely valuable I must say and that’s also taking a step out of the business it’s like working in your business or on your business right you have a big background in the gaming industry if you look at your life a game what is the game you are playing it’s it’s it’s basically Donkey Kong you know trying to go one level up each time and and and having each level a more

difficult challenge so you know I think that that’s one of the games that I play it when you know or I know that was one of the games and we were from the same same time period you know you always needed to go and and beat the monkey the big monkey on top and then it became more difficult the next level I think this is this is this is the game that we’re playing we’re trying to get each two three years level up are you’re challenging yourself all the time that’s what I love I just love to improve myself also all the time

and and hopefully become a little bit smarter based on the mistakes that we made in level 1 or level 2 or level 3 and and sometimes you get the the the barrel on your hat like the the big donkey doesn’t in in Donkey Kong but again that you know from those mistakes you basically learn and you try to take them to the next level but it’s a never ending game so you can always have the thrill of developing yourself and there anymore I don’t think I will you know and although you know you might at a certain moment physically or mentally

not be able to do it anymore but I don’t see myself stopping what I love to do best which is to create something from zero to one it could be that one day it’s in a completely different environment or different business line than it is today I’m not saying that it that it will always be the same but you know I I found my purpose in life which is to create things out of nothing [Music]