Nice to meet you!
I'm a 35 year old Dutch National living in Santa Monica (CA), together with my lovely wife, Meetra. I was 23 when I moved from The Netherlands to the USA, to complete my Masters degree in Innovation Sciences at UC Berkeley.
My passion is to leverage technology to empower people in need, create equal access for all, and to ultimately reduce human suffering. I previously invented a low-cost infant incubator for hospitals in third world countries, and co-founded a tech company (Ava) to empower people with hearing challenges in their every day life. I'm currently working on a project to increase mental health access for all.In my free time I love to play soccer, take my road-bike out for a spin, or hit the local beach-volleyball courts. My favorite trips include camping and hiking in the many beautiful national parks with my friends.
My story
Bsc. Building Engineering, Msc. Innovation Sciences
I grew up loving everything related to nature and engineering. My favorite TV channels were National Geographic and Discovery channel. It wasn't much of a surprise that going to university, I chose to study Building Engineering. During my Bachelors degree I studied Architecture, Building Physics, and ultimately Construction Engineering. I went on to do my Masters in Construction Engineering before switching to a Masters in Innovation Sciences. There I learned about disruptive technologies, innovation patterns, and the influence of political, social, and economical factors.
It was the same Masters program that prompted me to study abroad. After a tedious process, I got into UC Berkeley. Naturally I found myself gravitating towards the Startup community and its associated curriculum. I participated in an intensive Entrepreneurship bootcamp, and hustled my way into the Social Entrepreneurship program. UC Berkeley, Social Entrepreneurship
Through the Social Entrepreneurship program, my team and I (seen in the image on the left) had the opportunity to go to Thailand, to work with local healthcare organizations on the implementation of our low-cost baby incubator, the ‘IncuPack’. However, at the end of my year at Berkeley, I decided to pursue another opportunity.Invented an infant incubator
Co-founded Ava, Forbes 30 Under 30, Raised $16M+ in funding
Ava is a mobile captioning software, designed to empower deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate more easily in their social and professional lives. Coming out of university, I spent 8+ years developing Ava from the very first customer discovery interviews, to reaching millions of people around the world with our different products. As a co-founder and COO, I wore many hats during my time at the company. I left the company after successfully raising our Series A funding with prominent Silicon Valley investors. At the time I was in charge of our sales team. I’m a big believer in using tools to automate ‘repeat tasks’, and increase your overall efficiency. Below are some of the many tools I use to improve my workflow. I always love finding out about great new tools, so if you have any other favorites, I’d love to know about them.
🛠 Tools I love ❤️
Superhuman is especially great when you process emails on your phone too. Smart features and great hotkeys for all essentials.Superhuman
’Super swift email’
One of my most used features is the clipboard history. The workflows and hotkeys are amazing when you spend the necessary time setting them up.Alfred
’Epic efficiency tool’
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most useful ones. I use this tool many times a day without thinking about it.SizeUp
’Easy window resizing’
Finally an app that makes cleaning up your computer fun to do. I also like their nicely designed system monitoring dashboard.
CleanMyMac
’Cleaning in style’
Hands down my favorite piece of software. I feel like Notion deserves its own section since it's such a power tool. Wiki's, Databases, I use it for everything!Notion
’Ultimate everything!’
Loom provides a quick and easy way to make screen recordings share them with your team. I love using it for instructional video's. Loom
’Fast screen captures’
Made me 10x (if not more) faster and more efficient with all I do. GPT seems to outperform other LLM's on most tasks so far.ChatGPT
’Best biggest brain’
I can't remember the days where I had to constantly request a new password because I forgot my previous one. Never again, with 1 password for everything. 1Password
’Simplifying passwords’
Zapier is one of the best tools for backend process automation. Connect surveys, to databases, to emails, to slack, and more!