Seedling coffee talks: Recent Episodes
Raymond Hannes
Digitising a paper based supply chain moving high value items by bringing competitors together on a blockchain platform? Not a mission impossible, but a mission accomplished by Dutch venture Vinturas, ably led to its product launch by today's interview guest, Jon Kuiper.
Building on top of the hyperledger stack, Vinturas greatly optimised the efficiency and transparency of the car industry's supply chain. I was very interested in Jon’s story because he succeeded to digitise (on the blockchain no less) a couple of very conservative stakeholders, who had to work together while being competitors to make this happen. Not an easy feat. The end-to-end transparency that Vinturas creates saves emissions, lowers fraud risk and creates a more accessible market for small transportation firms who previously depended on freight forwarders.
We cover the intricacies of starting a new tech venture from a corporate mothership that is not quite used to all this innovation, the challenges of getting competitors to collaborate and the opportunity for supply chain visibility initiatives. Also, Jon and I delve into venture coaching!
Do you know another inspiring entrepreneur we should definitely interview? Let us know in the comments!
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Matt Hallmann's amazing rap sheet includes Springest, SnappCar, SafeSize and heartbeat. In this wide-ranging one hour interview we examine what makes a venture coach, how Matt got started and what we see as major challenges for new ventures today, including the role of funding, how fast to grow and the involvement of external consultants and coaches like ourselves. We also discuss the Holacracy framework for organisations and where it can be a good fit.
You can find the video version on YouTube. This convenient audio-only podcast is exclusively for Seedling Growth Zone subscribers, so you can enjoy this content on the go.
Timestamps to find the parts you like best (let us know in the comments):
00:00 Introduction
02:55 Rolling into the Startup World
05:35 Pandemic + passion = tea?!
06:30 Diversification and/or focus
06:55 Parental expectations
08:35 Queen Elsa's leadership
10:30 Hard things about Startup life
12:05 Finding purpose in startup coaching
15:13 First thing in the morning
18:06 Social media
20:04 Impact of the pandemic
23:00 Who is the customer?
24:14 Would you go back?
25:58 Mission to accomplish
28:26 Can we all get along?
30:18 Would you upload?
31:18 Corporate digital twins
34:35 The #1 thing founders need
38:26 Running on consultants
41:19 Be careful with funding
45:08 Slow growth strategy
46:15 Holacracy
56:34 Bonus question
58:33 Outro: don't feed steak to a baby!
Be sure to like and share this episode with your entrepreneurial friends!
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You can also buy some delicious, organic handmade tea at https://houseofoolong.nl, the webshop of our interview guest Matt Hallmann. note: this is purely fan service, not paid product placement.
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Building a business on CO2 reduction, creating jet fuel out of thin air and leading purpose-first in this interview with serial entrepreneur Robert Rosa. Robert recently guided CO2 capture tech startup Antecy through it's acquisition by Climeworks. This podcast is also available as a YouTube movie for the general public, but only as a podcast to Seedling subscribers, so you get to pick your format! Enjoy!
Climeworks’ Orca pilot project in Iceland is removing CO2 from the air as you listen to this, entirely powered by geothermal energy and other renewable sources. Robert shares his journey as entrepreneur and his attitude towards making a difference in this informative and inspiring interview. It's a pleasure to interview him and I look forward to doing so again!
Disclosure: Robert and I went to primary school together growing up on Curaçao in the 80's and 90's and attended the same university in The Netherlands, which explains some of our references during the interview.
Find out more about the developments of Climeworks and the Orca project through https://www.climeworks.com.
Don't forget to like this podcast and leave us a comment! It's a lot of fun building a digital business around venture coaching, investing and content creation, and we can't do it without all of you.
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In this 12m episode we briefly digress into coffee (it’s a Coffee Talk after all) before going into today’s topic: managing energy and ‘flow’ and the relation to time management. We also discuss how we and our environment influence each other’s scheduling. Enjoy the podcast, and do leave us a comment!
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