Building relationships
Through my career I discovered that what I most enjoy is closely working with founders, helping them to create a great outcome. This is all about teamwork and assisting them on the journey, enjoying when a milestone has been achieved but also standing by them when things don’t go according to plan, persisting in trying to find ways to reach the end goal.
Background
I originally trained as a banker back in the Netherlands where I am from, financing companies in the Telecoms & Media space. This brought me to London in 2006, where after a while, I joined Octopus Investments and learned how much fun it is to work for a much smaller company where you can actually make a meaningful contribution to the company you work for, as well as the companies you invest in.
I very much enjoyed the variety of sectors I was involved in investing in, areas such as Renewable Energy, Healthcare and Technology companies. I ultimately ended up working with various boards and decided that is what I wanted to focus on more and hence I joined Mercia as a portfolio director in their ventures' team.
I spend my time across various boards in the Software (Voxpopme, Administrate, Hownow and Forensic Analytics), Life Sciences (Ridge Pharma) and Consumer space (Napo, Oddbox and Currentbody). My proudest achievement within Mercia thus far is the successful exit of our investment in the Climbing Hangar, which we sold to Verlinvest, we helped to build a hugely successful consumer brand and found a new home for it to take it to the next level.
Through my career I discovered that what I most enjoy is closely working with founders helping them to create a great outcome.
- Family
- Investment
- Cycling
