Born in the Netherlands to two entrepreneurs, I grew up within my parents’ travel start-up. In my teens, I spent the summer peeling tulip bulbs with my friends at the local farm and, having first tried it at age 8, became an avid sailor.

In 2011, sailing (and tulips) were abandoned to study International Business instead. Putting theory into practice, I set up a non-profit NGO together with a friend, which shut down after 2 years due to difficulties in further scaling our operations. Switching gears, I then pursued a degree in Finance and Private Equity in London, where I was recruited out of the classroom.

In 2015, I started working at Columbia Lake Partners, a new venture debt fund. Here, I screened SaaS companies after raising the first institutional money and exercised my love for numbers in financial analyses and tailoring debt structures for new portfolio companies. I was introduced to multiple Notion portfolio companies during these years which led to a co-investment in Brightpearl and deep admiration for the operational expertise of the Notion team.

In 2018, Notion adopted me into their community of hard-working and fun colleagues. Here, my role is to find disruptive tech companies with special focus on the Benelux and DACH region.

Thijs worked as a Management Consultant and software developer before joining Cognigy to help build the future for Conversational AI. At Cognigy, he works as a Technical Consulting Manager and has been involved with multiple projects at some of Europe’s most prominent brands. Thijs loves to come up with new applications in the field of Conversational UX and is especially interested in their impact on future business models.    

Benji acts as an “entrepreneur in residence”, partnering with founders and owners enabling diverse venture scouting. An entrepreneur at heart; founder of  Fintech SureCargo(exit ’19 to Santova BV), EmptyTrips (exit ’19 to Vector Logistics / RCL Foods),  both bootstrapped by Seedpitch. Benji has enjoyed a global and ambitious corporate career with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Singular Group, HSBC Africa, Hollard Insurance, Vodafone and Ziggo across South Africa, Switzerland, UAE and Netherlands.

In addition, to her role as Digital Director and Tribe Lead for both Vodafone and Ziggo, Benji continues to invest in companies that have a positive impact on society, health or the environment as a Venture Partner at Calibre Capital.  She has a Bachelors in finance (BCom), Masters in Maritime (MPhil) from Stellenbosch University, and a Masters (LLM) in Corporate Finance from Goethe University, Germany.

Benji enjoys horses (polo & dressage), wine & travel.

Mattias is driving AI strategy in Nordea. He has 20 years of experience from working with large corporate transformations in the Nordics. He has spent 10 years in management consulting, 5 years as CFO and 5 years driving transformation in Nordea leveraging new technology such as software robotics, virtual agents and machine learning / deep learning. His current focus is about building data driven organisations using AI related solutions.