'You have to divide in order to multiply'
Selling your company to a Silicon Valley dotcom company and moving to San Francisco to get into management. How a boyhood dream came true for Paul Veugen. But also why he now lives in Amsterdam again.
Restricting yourself for a higher purpose. For Paul Veugen, a native of Limburg, this has never been difficult. During his studies in Tilburg, he was a fanatic in competitive rowing. There were three things I liked: studying, playing sports and drinking beer with friends. I soon learned that I had to choose. All three did not go together. So I chose studying and sports.' It turned out to be a good lesson for a few years later. With his promising Internet company Usabilla, Paul had to make choices again. 'My friends would dive into the pub on the last day of the month until early in the morning. But I went home at ten because I still had to fill out tax papers.' Friends at the time called him 'atmosphere sponge': Paul sucked the atmosphere away like a sponge picks up a puddle of water.
To Amsterdam
I've always been a bit of a workaholic,' says the 38-year-old entrepreneur. I was already designing websites at the age of 13. During my studies Business Administration and Digital Media - which seemed to fit in with my interests but was ultimately more of a literature course than I had expected - I got the idea for Usabilla during the course business communication. At the time, it was difficult to get websites reviewed by users. That was done with time-consuming and expensive surveys. I came up with a tool to let website visitors respond directly to parts of a site. At the Entrepreneurial Centre of Tilburg University I met other entrepreneurial students. That was a great stimulus to continue with Usabilla, to become a real entrepreneur. However, I soon realized that I had to move with my company to Amsterdam: that is the center of the digital industry in the Netherlands. From 2009 to 2013 we built out Usabilla. Then I stepped back to start a new company: Human, an exercise app that helps users move 30 minutes a day.'
To San Francisco
Amsterdam may be the center of the Dutch digital world, but San Francisco is on a global level. 'The market for motion apps was hugely competitive even then,' says Paul. 'To make Human really big, I knew we had to move to Silicon Valley. That's where potential collaboration partners are, that's where the investors are.' And they saw how Human grew at lightning speed and - a potential goldmine - began to have access to millions of valuable personal data of app users. In 2016, Human was incorporated by dotcom company Mapbox. 'Part of the deal was that I would settle in San Francisco for a number of years and join Mapbox's management team,' Paul says. The week Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, he moved into a beautiful apartment not far from the Golden Gate bridge with his wife and one-year-old daughter.
Pressure cooker
He calls the three years on the American west coast (after two years at Mapbox Paul went to work for another dotcommer) enormously instructive. 'Super fast-growing dotcom companies are a pressure cooker. I knew that and that's what I signed up for. But it is a very hard culture. Anyone can be fired tomorrow. There was also a lot of bravado and grandstanding. Everything is always great. I could partly go along with that, but not completely. My Dutch roots made me want to go into depth immediately in conversations. I named problems and said how I wanted to solve them, tried to maintain a mild form of Dutch directness. That was new and sometimes confusing for Americans.' Paul speaks of a great time. I was confirmed in what I had already discovered at Usabilla, namely that enthusiasm in teams is more important than having the right skills. People learn these skills by doing. But if the enthusiasm disappears, then it becomes just another job. Then employees start looking for an employer who pays just a little bit more. He concluded his American period after three years, when Usabilla was sold to a listed company. The idea that was born in the college classrooms in Tilburg turned out to be worth no less than 80 million dollars. For Paul and his family a good time to return to Amsterdam.
Just another job
Paul: "One of the most important entrepreneurial lessons for me is that you have to share in order to multiply. I realize very well that I have always needed others. I don't want you to forget that. When Human was sold, I first made sure that our investors were paid well. Then I made the whole team, which had worked extremely hard for years, happy. Only after that did I think about myself.' Through his time in America, Paul says he has come to realize even more that working is not the most important thing in life. 'I saw how people in the United States are willing to give up almost everything for their jobs. This made me realize that my own identity was also linked to the companies I was building. But in the end, the way you build something is perhaps even more important than the end result. And in the end, family and health still come first. Sports are also important in my life again. In addition, I invest in companies and founded a new start-up: Detail Technologies, a company that develops an almost professional video tool for vloggers and others who make their living with online content.'
CV Paul Veugen
Age: 38.
Education: Business administration and digital media at Tilburg University (2003-2009).
Company: Usabilla (founded 2009), Human (2012) and Detail Technologies (2020).
Opinion: "My main reason for being an entrepreneur is the desire to keep learning new things.