´One of the advantages of a fast-growing company is that your role can change quite a bit! Initially, I joined as the Head of Organization and People, where my focus was on building the entire employee journey, nurturing a positive culture and building a strong team. As our team grew, I was involved in raising the funds to support our expansion plans. This resulted in more customers and my transition into the customer onboarding team, where the goal was to help our clients have a fast and great experience from the get-go. More recently, I worked with one of our product teams to (among others) support our transition to the edge. And as of a few weeks ago, I have started to work with our marketing team to ensure we continue to grow with new and existing customers. All-in-all: it has been a thrilling ride so far, and it makes me extremely excited to continue making an impact as we eliminate downtime and energy waste. ´
´It's hard to mention a single thing, but a lot of hard work and effort has gone into developing the next generation of our hardware. Let’s say that I feel a lot more sympathy for those times your Ziggo or KPN model doesn’t work as working in the area of integrated systems (combining hardware and software) is interesting—to say the least. But ultimately I believe we aced it as this next generation will make the installation of our hardware easier, reduce the amount of required space and improve our edge computing capabilities.´
´For me the decision was two-fold. First of all, the vision to truly make a difference in heavy industry, and tackle those areas where a lot of these companies' (and the world’s) challenges are. However, the true differentiator was the team, back then we were with 30 or so people, and this extremely talented and ambitious bunch ultimately convinced me to join. Many of our cultural values show up on a day-to-day basis, which still makes me proud to work here.´
´ “Act instead of react." This is a phrase we use within Samotics, and it builds on a lot of different elements. To me, it is mostly about being pragmatic and getting things done. As we are constantly looking to improve and grow, you barely ever have all the information available. Being able to identify and gather only the required information, quickly connect the dots, formulate a plan and "get things done" (or act) is more important than being 100% right. ´
´I absolutely love the beach and try to be there as much as possible, specifically when it's (really) windy. Some people do meditation or mindfulness practices, I go kitesurfing. It allows me to disconnect from everything else and just focus on the wind, the board and the kite. I just love the thrill of it, the freedom and the adrenaline. To a certain extent, there's a nice parallel with working at Samotics or any other scaleup, where you continuously try to push the boundaries and have an incredible amount of freedom.´
´Be curious. I find it a constant differentiator among everyone I meet, both at work and in my private life. Being curious helps you to build your knowledge, shows a great(er) level of interest in what other people do and just makes things more interesting. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, sometimes the simplest questions can drive very interesting discussions because other people consider it to be set in stone (while oftentimes it isn't). ´
