start-up city
The insurance option ‘Peerby Warranty’ is currently being implemented in Amsterdam and will role out across the UK this summer. Key to the success of Peerby so far has been the ‘runway’ that accelerators have allowed. In start-up-speak, ‘runway’ is the time a firm needs to turn a profit. If it begins with €20,000 and costs €2,000 a month to run (the ‘burn rate’), that gives a runway of ten months before the cash runs out and investors need to see a profit or enough progress to reinvest. It is also the point at which many fail. But Weddepohl is convinced that his location gives him a distinct advantage. ‘This is a great place to build a start-up,’ he says. ‘You don’t need as much money to live off, compared to London or New York or San Francisco, which are really expensive. I’d say the quality of life here is better and you spend less on it. So I think that’s a good basis for trying to develop something new, you know; you won’t be in deep trouble if you don’t make a lot of money. There’s a lot of support from organisations like the Amsterdam Economic Board and the government.’
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‘This is a great place to build a start-up… There’s a lot of support from organisations like the Amsterdam Economic Board and the government’ (Daan Weddepohl, founder Peerby)
Peerby, in short Peerby is an app and website that enables people to borrow the things they need from others in their neighbourhood. With Peerby, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on things you only use once or once in a while, and you feel good by helping somebody out. Members post something they want to borrow, and neighbours get an email or push notification to which they can respond with a single click. It allows you to save money, meet people and live green: one eighth of all the CO2 emissions in the world is caused by the production and consumption of consumer goods. Members and transactions are growing exponentially since the launch in September 2012. With more than 100,000 active monthly members, Peerby has mature communities in the Netherlands and Belgium, London and Berlin, and is currently emerging in eight US pilot cities. www.peerby.nl
That support will soon be strengthened even further with the launch of StartupDelta, an ambitious public-private initiative to position the Netherlands as a start-up hotspot. With funding from The Hague, innovation hubs have been set up in ten different locations across the country, including Amsterdam, making StartupDelta the largest start-up ecosystem in Europe (see pages 72-77). BUILDING COMMUNITY Rockstart isn’t alone in providing a city-centre hub where innovation thrives. At its core, Spaces is a simple office rental business. Renters take either a private space with a lockable door and 24-hour access or a membership fee that gives office-hours access to communal work areas. But the Spaces twist is the community it builds, which sees one-person start-ups rubbing shoulders with the Dutch offices of Uber, Guess and Citrix. ‘One of the starting points of the Spaces concept was the architecture,’ says founder Martijn Roordink. ‘We talked to a lot of people about creating a dynamic flow.’ That flow results in large, shared working areas that include a cafeteria, little break-out rooms and the quiet buzz of contented folk going about their work. Beyond the convivial nature of the physical space, Spaces directly tries to bring people together. ‘We communicate a lot both online and offline. We do drinks, we organise events and we have breakfast meetings. We have barbecues four times a year, we give boat tours,’ says Roordink. The newest of four Spaces sites, the Vijzelstraat branch is spread over five floors between the grand canals of Prinsengracht and Keizersgracht. ‘We didn’t know if it the concept would work,’ Roordink says, ‘but my background was real estate for ten years and I knew our research in the demographics. The average company in Amsterdam is about seven people and the company age is five years.’ That eager start-up dynamic and the abundance of entrepreneurs in need of good-quality space has seen Spaces go on to open further branches at Zuidas, Amsterdam’s business district of gleaming office towers, and in The Hague. Of the many companies thriving in Spaces locations, one of the most innovative is online translation management solution Live Word (nl.livewords.com). In the midst of a major funding round, the six-person start-up based in the Spaces Zuidas offices is on the brink of big things. Amsterdam, it seems, is well suited to the Spaces business concept. ‘Everything is within about ten minutes and very social and there is a low entrance for setting up. It’s a dynamic, small city that has everything to attract the human capital to get to the right initial point of being a start-up,’ says Roordink. With ICT innovations including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Ideal online payment system all originating in the Netherlands, it’s clearly a case of watch this space(s). <