“Amsterdam is a global city — with a population of less than 1 million,” said Ferdinand Goetzen, CEO of Amsterdam-based digital customer-intensive business, Reveall. In short, that’s how Amsterdam became a tech powerhouse, boasting unicorns like Booking.com and Adyen, and an impressive season of startups focused on sustainability. The city has the benefits of being mid-sized — efficient public services, bio-commutability, and a tight-knit business community — but one breath, instinctive, extroverted, dynamic and business-friendly.
The residents of Amsterdam speak perfect English, its Schiphol Airport is the third busiest airport in the EU, and starting in 2020, the city has acquired a direct Eurostar link to London. As part of a business cluster known as Randstad – which includes Utrecht, The Hague and Rotterdam, and is Europe’s third region by productivity – it’s no surprise that Amsterdam’s startup scene is thriving. ; According to Dealroom, its tech companies have a combined value of $230 billion as of July 2022. Some of the main European tech rainmakers – chief among them are space brands. The Next Web – calling the city home, doesn’t matter. Let’s explore Amsterdam’s movers and shakers.
Jorn Eiting van Liempt and Joost Kamermans, co-founders of recycling platform Seenons.Courtesy of Seenons
TestGorilla
TestGorilla assumes CVs are dead, or at least they should be. Founded in 2019 by former Bain & Company advisors Wouter Durville and Otto Verhage, the company operates a platform that provides businesses with skill-based tests designed to streamline recruitment by finding job applicants. “We have a full in-house test development team and we also rely on subject matter experts,” explains Claudia Baijens, TestGorilla’s head of international development. “But we think you don’t just need to look at job-specific skills, but also test cognitive abilities — like logic and math. The result of that combination of tests is the best predictor of whether someone will succeed at work.” The company has 70 employees (more than 100 are being employed — all hired through TestGorilla’s own tests, Baijens said) and it serves 5,000 customers in 120 countries. Investors have also shown interest; in June, TestGorilla raised $70 million in a Series A round led by Atomico and Balderton Capital, which, according to Crunchbase, brought its total funding to $81.2 million. testgorilla.com
Seenons
Founded in 2019 by Joost Kamermans and Jorn Eiting van Liempt, Seenons is a platform that matches businesses looking to get rid of waste materials with people who can leverage them — aka the circular economy. round — in this time of trade disruption and the climate crisis, much better than a landfill or an incinerator. “Companies open up our apps and tell us, ‘I have this kind of waste,’” explains Kamermans. “Depending on the location, volume and type of waste, we choose the best transportation solution. We then match them up with anyone who can use their waste as an input into their production process.” Users pay Seenons a subscription fee, but for certain materials they can earn money back from the buyer. Seenons’ 50-person research team is constantly looking for companies with a proper waste function — orange peels used to make wine and avocado pits that can dye fabrics. Biggest unresolved challenge? Hospital human waste. “So we cut off your leg, right? Right now, that leg is burned,” Kamermans said. “But there must be better things to do with it.” seenons.com
Overstory
Funded in late 2018 by Indra den Bakker and Anniek Schouten, Overstory tracks trees, combining satellite imagery and machine learning to track deforestation, prevent wildfires, and prevent tree damage to with infrastructure and power grids. To teach its AI to recognize and evaluate a multitude of plants at different stages of growth and health, Overstory initially relied on its own customers’ data. “The forestry industry has a lot of data about trees that they have collected over the years, even centuries. And we take it from them to train our algorithms,” said den Bakker. “Over time, we also started collecting our own data. Now that we have our own growers doing field work, we even have clients doing field work.” Overstory’s team has grown to 34 employees scattered across Europe and North America, and the company has raised $5.9 million in funding to date. overstory.com
Inventor
Launched in 2018 by Kerry Murphy, Amber Slooten and Adriana Hoppenbrouwer-Pereira, The Fabricant soon joined the metaverse. The company envisions itself as a fashion house that designs “digital-only clothing” for its online avatar. In 2021, the company made its supermarket pivot clear with the launch of The Fabricant Studio, a platform where users can customize virtual garments and mold them as NFTs on the Gaming Blockchain Stream. . The goal is to help people build their “metaverse wardrobe”. To date, the company has raised $14 million in funding, most of which was in a Series A round in April 2022 led by actor and VC Ashton Kutcher. thefnaiant.com
Terraform
Founded in 2021 by Salar al Khafaji and Sebastiaan Visser, both from Palantir following the acquisition of previous startup, Silk, Terraform aims to disrupt construction through robotics and software. The idea is to create intelligent machines that can fully automate on-site construction, thus reducing costs. This will usher in an era of affordable housing without compromising on aesthetics (robots will create complex designs at no additional cost), while improving efficiency, safety (and so on). no workers will be injured) and sustainability. Amid a flurry of remote-first startups, Terraform decided to let its employees work full-time in its central Amsterdam office. terraform.ai
TestGorilla’s Otto Verhage and Wouter Durville.Courtesy of TestGorilla
Fiberplane
Fiberplane founder Micha Hernandez van Leuffen has a successful track record in the tech industry, having sold his previous startup to Oracle in 2017. Three years later, he founded a new company focused on building creates collaborative, teleworking tools geared towards IT professionals to solve technical problems, such as online problems or application failures. As of the end of 2021, the company has 13 employees working in offices in Amsterdam as well as from the UK, Germany, Denmark and the United States. In September 2021, Fiberplane raised an $8.8 million seed round co-led by Crane Venture Partners and Notion Capital. fiberplane.dev
SingularityNET
A notable survivor of the initial coin offering (ICO) craze of 2017, SingularityNET wants to use the decentralized structure of cryptocurrencies to democratize artificial intelligence and ensure that the exotic of AI happens on a human-owned network, not in a tech giant’s lab. Created by AI developer and thinker Ben Goertzel and robotics entrepreneur David Hanson, the company has created an “AI marketplace” where developers can build AI applications that leverage technology. decentralized blockchain technology. In addition to the money raised in the ICO—$36 million in ether—SingularityNET and its sister organization SingularityDAO also received $25 million from alternative investment firm LDA Capital in May. year 2022. singularitynet.io
Hadrian
Launched in 2021 by a quartet of cybersecurity experts — Roger Fischer, Olivier Beg, Tijl Van Vliet, and Maurice Clin — Hadrian is a security company that has taken a “hacker’s eye” approach when it comes to helping customers customers detect and resolve vulnerabilities in their IT systems. Instead of focusing on what a client company considers their weakness, Hadrian’s powerful six-man hacking team started looking for external entry points, as a real attacker would do. . The company raised $2.6 million in a prequalification round from early-stage venture capital organization Village Global in 2021 and a $10 million seed round from Germany’s HV Capital in June 2022. hadrian.io
Dott
One of the most successful micro-mobility companies in Europe, Dott was founded in 2018 by French-born entrepreneurs Maxim Romain and Henri Moissanac, both of the bike-sharing giant Ofo’s group. China. Today, Dott operates a fleet of 40,000 scooters and 10,000 e-bikes in 17 cities across Europe and has offices in 12 countries. The company prides itself on both its sustainability (it powers all of its vehicles with renewable energy) and its ability to win over regulators, thanks to its hard-won licenses to operate in London. and Paris. It has also raised $210.8 million in funding to date. ridedott.com
High solution
An online grocery store focused on fresh, high-quality, seasonal produce, Crisp was launched in 2018 by Eric Klaassen, Michiel Roodenburg and Tom Peeters. Available in the Netherlands and Belgium, the business model of the company is predicted based on a combination of quality and convenience underpinned by partnerships with local food producers (more than 600 in the Netherlands only – but outstanding deals on across Europe is the bigger plan). Crisp is also committed to sustainability, aiming for zero food waste and using a fleet of electric vehicles for delivery. To date, the company has raised $46 million in four funding rounds. sharp.nl
