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.    

Henk Jan Gerzee is a digital leader with over 15 years online experience in the aviation, media and manufacturing industries, having served both B2C and B2B markets. Henk Jan has both directly and indirectly managed complex matrix organizations as well as startups. He has successfully led diverse teams in various countries, developed new business and transformed organizations to better serve customers benefitting from technology. Currently responsible for Digital and Innovation at Schiphol, Henk Jan is a strategic designer of digital ecosystems to meet the fast-changing customer needs and has the proven ability to drive organization-wide change. He has a solid academic background with a Masters degree in Economics obtained from Groningen University and Copenhagen Business School.

Raul Escribano is a Senior Vice President Innovative products consulting at Mastercard. He is in charge of making available to Mastercard partners globally new offerings in areas like AI, open banking and real time payments. Before taking this role Raul focused of business development of Mastercard services in South East Asia and France.