“Amsterdam is a world metropolis—with a inhabitants of lower than 1 million,” says Ferdinand Goetzen, CEO of Amsterdam-based digital customer-insight enterprise, Reveall. That, in a nutshell, is how Amsterdam has turn into a tech powerhouse, boasting unicorns equivalent to Reserving.com and Adyen, and a powerful crop of sustainability-focused startups. The town has the advantages of being medium sized—environment friendly public providers, bikeability, and a tight-knit enterprise group—however in the identical breath, is instinctively outward-looking, dynamic, and business-friendly.
Amsterdam’s residents converse flawless English, its Schiphol Airport is the third-busiest within the EU, and, beginning in 2020, town gained a direct Eurostar hyperlink to London. As a part of a enterprise cluster referred to as the Randstad—which additionally contains Utrecht, the Hague, and Rotterdam, and is Europe’s third area by productiveness—it’s unsurprising that Amsterdam’s startup scene is prospering; it’s tech firms are price a complete worth of $230 billion as of July 2022, in keeping with Dealroom. That a few of European tech’s most important rainmakers—chief amongst them conference-cum-coworking-space model The Subsequent Internet—name town dwelling, additionally doesn’t harm. Let’s get to know Amsterdam’s movers and shakers.
Jorn Eiting van Liempt and Joost Kamermans, cofounders of recycling platform Seenons.Courtesy of Seenons
TestGorilla
TestGorilla thinks that CVs are lifeless, or at the least they need to be. Based in 2019 by former Bain & Firm consultants Wouter Durville and Otto Verhage, the corporate runs a platform offering companies with skill-based assessments designed to streamline hiring by surfacing the cream of job candidates. “Now we have a full test-development crew in-house, and we additionally depend on subject material specialists,” explains TestGorilla’s head of worldwide growth Claudia Baijens. “However we predict you don’t must solely have a look at job-specific expertise, but in addition take a look at cognitive skills—like logics and math. The result of that mixture of assessments is the very best prediction of whether or not somebody goes to achieve success within the job.” The corporate has a headcount of 70 (100 extra hires are within the pipeline—all of them to be employed by TestGorilla’s personal assessments, says Baijens), and it caters to five,000 prospects in 120 nations. Traders have additionally proven curiosity; in June, TestGorilla raised $70 million in a Collection A spherical led by Atomico and Balderton Capital, which, in keeping with Crunchbase, introduced its complete funding to $81.2 million. testgorilla.com
Seenons
Based in 2019 by Joost Kamermans and Jorn Eiting van Liempt, Seenons is a platform that matches companies who need to do away with waste supplies with individuals who could make use of them—aka, the round financial system—which, in these instances of commerce disruptions and local weather disaster, is a lot better than landfills or incinerators. “Corporations open our app and inform us, ‘I’ve this kind of waste,’” Kamermans explains. “Relying on location, quantity, and sort of waste, we choose the very best resolution for transport. Then we match them with whoever can use their waste as an enter for his or her manufacturing course of.” Customers pay Seenons a subscription charge, however for sure supplies they will earn a reimbursement from patrons. Seenons’s 50-strong crew is consistently on the lookout for firms which have a use for area of interest junk—orange peels are used to make liquors, and avocado pits can dye materials. The most important unsolved problem? Hospitals’ human waste. “So we lower off your leg, proper? At the moment, that leg will get burned,” says Kamermans. “However there should be higher issues to do with it.” seenons.com
Overstory
Funded in late 2018 by Indra den Bakker and Anniek Schouten, Overstory retains a watchful eye on timber, mixing satellite tv for pc imagery and machine studying to observe deforestation, forestall wildfires, and forestall harm from falling timber to infrastructures and energy grids. To show its AI to acknowledge and assess a myriad of kinds of timber at numerous levels of progress and well being circumstances, Overstory initially relied by itself prospects’ knowledge. “The forest business has numerous knowledge on timber that they have been accumulating for years, even centuries. And we bought it from them to coach our algorithms,” says den Bakker. “Over time, we additionally began to gather our personal knowledge. Now we’ve our personal arborists doing discipline work, we even have prospects doing discipline work.” Overstory’s crew has grown to 34 workers members scattered all through Europe and North America, and the corporate has thus far raised $5.9 million in funding. overstory.com
The Fabricant
Launched in 2018 by Kerry Murphy, Amber Slooten, and Adriana Hoppenbrouwer-Pereira, The Fabricant was early to the metaverse social gathering. The corporate kinds itself as a vogue home designing “digital-only garments” to be worn by avatars on-line. In 2021, the corporate made its meta-pivot clear with the launch of The Fabricant Studio, a platform the place customers can customise digital clothes and mint them as NFTs on the gaming blockchain Movement. The objective is to assist individuals construct their “wardrobe for the metaverse.” The corporate has thus far raised $14 million in funding, most of it in a Collection A spherical in April 2022 led by actor-turned-VC Ashton Kutcher. thefabricant.com
Terraform
Based in 2021 by Salar al Khafaji and Sebastiaan Visser, each coming from stints at Palantir after it acquired their earlier startup, Silk, Terraform goals to disrupt development by robotics and software program. The concept is to create good machines capable of absolutely automate on-site development, thus bringing down prices. This could usher in an period of reasonably priced housing with out compromising on aesthetics (robots would produce intricate designs at no extra expense), whereas enhancing on effectivity, security (there can be no human employees getting harm), and sustainability. Amid a flood of remote-first startups, Terraform makes a degree of getting its workers work from its central Amsterdam workplace full-time. terraform.ai
TestGorilla’s Otto Verhage and Wouter Durville.Courtesy of TestGorilla
Fiberplane
Fiberplane founder Micha Hernandez van Leuffen has a profitable monitor document within the tech business, having offered his earlier startup to Oracle in 2017. Three years later, he launched a brand new firm centered on creating distant, collaborative work instruments geared to IT professionals fixing technical incidents, equivalent to on-line outages or utility bugs. As of late 2021, the corporate had 13 workers working from its Amsterdam workplace in addition to from the UK, Germany, Denmark, and the US. In September 2021, Fiberplane raised an $8.8 million seed spherical co-led by Crane Enterprise Companions and Notion Capital. fiberplane.dev
SingularityNET
A notable survivor of the 2017 preliminary coin providing (ICO) craze, SingularityNET desires to make use of crypto’s decentralized construction to democratize synthetic intelligence and ensure that the AI singularity occurs on a people-owned community, not in a tech large’s lab. Created by AI developer and thinker Ben Goertzel and robotics entrepreneur David Hanson, the corporate has created an “AI market” the place builders can construct AI apps that leverage decentralized blockchain expertise. Moreover the funds raised in its ICO—$36 million within the ether cryptocurrency—SingularityNET and its sister group SingularityDAO additionally secured $25 million from different funding agency LDA Capital in Could 2022. singularitynet.io
Hadrian
Launched in 2021 by a quartet of cybersecurity specialists—Roger Fischer, Olivier Beg, Tijl Van Vliet, and Maurice Clin—Hadrian is a safety firm that has adopted a “hacker’s eye” strategy when serving to prospects spot and handle vulnerabilities of their IT methods. Relatively than specializing in what a consumer firm thinks are its weak spots, Hadrian’s six-strong hacking crew begins scouring for entry factors from the surface in, as an precise attacker would do. The corporate raised a $2.6 million pre-seed spherical from early-stage enterprise capital outfit Village World in 2021, and a $10 million seed spherical from Germany’s HV Capital in June 2022. hadrian.io
Dott
Probably the most profitable European micro-mobility firms, Dott was based in 2018 by French-born entrepreneurs Maxim Romain and Henri Moissinac, each beforehand of Chinese language bike-sharing large Ofo. In the present day, Dott runs a fleet of 40,000 scooters and 10,000 electrical bikes in 17 cities throughout Europe, and it has places of work in 12 nations. The corporate prides itself on each sustainability (it powers all its autos with renewable power) and its means to win over regulators, having secured hard-to-get licenses to function in London and Paris. It has additionally raised $210.8 million in funding thus far. ridedott.com
Crisp
An internet grocery retailer centered on high-quality, seasonal recent produce, Crisp was launched in 2018 by Eric Klaassen, Michiel Roodenburg, and Tom Peeters. Obtainable within the Netherlands and Belgium, the corporate’s enterprise mannequin relies on a wedding of high quality and comfort underpinned by partnerships with native meals producers (over 600 simply within the Netherlands—however hanging offers throughout Europe is the bigger plan). Crisp can be dedicated to sustainability, aiming for zero meals waste and utilizing an electrical fleet for its deliveries. Up to now, the corporate has raised $46 million in 4 funding rounds. crisp.nl