• The magical methane machine. Longread on Terraform Industries and its polymath Australian founder. I’m repeating myself but Casey Handmer is the spiritual successor to Elon Musk.

• Related: The next great CEOs will be writers. My advice to all startup CEOs is to schedule more time to write. Be like Casey.

• Cosmos Institute. “At Cosmos, we train philosopher-builders: technologists who fuse deep inquiry with technical skill to ensure that AI serves the human good.”

• Yes, robots can build pretty things. The Dutch vertically integrated construction startup Monumental is moving in the right direction: towards aesthetics, away from prefab.

• Ezra Klein on AI, scarcity and employment. Thoughtful as always.

• New S3 episode

• I loved this long read about how the Swiss watchmaking industry rose to the challenge of the cheap Japanese quartz watch. Includes lots of fun watch and timekeeping facts. with the unexpected industrial manufacturing twist of Swatch recapturing the market for mass production of watches. The key genius behind this turnaround is Nicolas Hayek. “Their prototypes took the Delirium’s approach even further, using ultrasonic welding to build the mechanism directly into the watch’s plastic case. The result was a radical simplification. Instead of the usual 91 parts found in quartz watches at the time, the new watch had just 51, each of which could be inserted from above by a machine, perfect for mass production. It was three times cheaper to produce than any other Swiss-made watch, and could be assembled in a matter of seconds. The team called it the Vulgaris. We know it as the Swatch.”

• Related: building Europe’s first traditional architecture school. Building beautiful buildings is something that Europe excels at and is hard to copy.

• Why clinical trials are broken and how to fix them. A reading list by .

• Make animal cruelty unprofitable. This may be the best, most succinct description of why animals are treated so badly. At its core it is a collective action problem that can be solved. “The cruelty collective action problem is not some immovable feature of modern agriculture. It was created by technology, economics, and policy — and it can be unwound by them too. The tools are already in hand: regulations that extend to imports, targeted corporate campaigns, industry-wide agreements, humane technologies, and public subsidies.”

• Creating new government institutions is often easier than reforming existing ones.

• My new personal site: pepijn.xyz

Joining a startup is especially valuable when you don’t have children yet. (I was late to the party and joined Fastned in my early thirties and Farmless in my late thirties.)

When you don’t have a family you can work long hours and, importantly, move to a another country specifically for the startup that you want to work at. You don’t even have to move to Silicon Valley any longer to find worthy startups because there is an increasing number of ambitious hardware startups in Europe.

However, working at a startup does require a mental shift from being in school for two decades. Part of your brain needs to be reprogrammed. That is why I wrote down an incomplete list of things that might help you getting adjusted:

1. Embrace pain and suffering. It is messy at the frontier and things fall apart all the time. There is no or very little onboarding, no one is holding your hand. Work gets heaped on your plate with no end in sight. There are no processes in place and most people are young and not experienced. If you can learn to enjoy all these limitations and - crucially - see all of this as opportunities for growth, you’re good to go.

2. Being fast is universally appreciated. Speed is probably one of the most important assets that a startup has compared to corporates, so the more aligned you are to this the better. Being fast does not mean delivering shitty results. It means that you focus on the most important things, ship those, and then get feedback fast so you can learn. There are exceptions to “being fast” and it is important to recognise these! Most exceptions are related to decisions that are not easily reversed, like HR or fundamental “philosophical” matters. I made many mistakes here.

3. Always question the requirements that are handed to you. This is another exception to the ‘being fast’ rule. This is the first maxim of Musk’s five part algoritm. Requirements are what you are told to do, but you should take these with a grain of salt. Really great startup employees will check if the requirements fit the goal or the mission of the company and push back on them.

4. Delete parts or processes. This is the second maxim of the algoritm. Humans seem to be hardwired to add stuff to solve problems. But the best part is no part - no costs, no maintenance, it cannot break. The question is: what can we remove? How can we make this simpler? What if we stopped doing this? Importantly, this rule requires that things occasionaly DO break down because you’ve removed too many things!

5. Ego is the enemy. I like that startup culture is not about promotions or politics or bonuses. There’s more of a tribal feeling of oneness with the group a) because startups are usually so small that you know everyone personally and b) because you are aligning on the importance of the mission (instead of just making money). The next level move here is when you can publicly say “I made this mistake, this is what I learned” because it shows everyone it is okay to make mistakes and learn from them instead of hiding them to protect your ego.

6. Present information starting with the conclusion. The conclusion is the distillation of all your thinking. You can back up the conclusion with arguments, which in turn are backed up with more supporting arguments or data. I was surprised that this way of sharing information is very rare, it might have something to do as well with the opposite way universities want you to structure your thoughts. It requires a lot of work to organise your thinking in this way, but it a) helps you think better and b) saves people time because they can just read the relevant parts.

7. Agency. You can just do things. You don’t have to wait for someone or ask for approval. If something does not exist, you can make it happen. Agency is not appreciated in many other traditional workplaces, but in a startup it is absolutely mandatory.

8. Celebrate small wins. Culture is an important reason startups can be successfull. When I joined Fasted we would celebrate that TEN cars were fast charging simultaneously! This celebration would have NEVER have happened at Shell, because they celebrated other things such as developing massive oil wells that generate billions of euros. They would have laughed at ten electric vehicles.

   If you’re the boss, celebration is a very powerful tool: you put the spotlight on what YOU consider as a real win (most likely an achievement that unblocks the critical path to success) you can say something about WHY you like this win (because it was fast, because it was creative, because it was done with little resources?) and you show the team that there is actual progress towards the mission.

9. Say the things you think you cannot say. Very often there’s no one in the group that wants to point out something obvious out of fear. Fear to sound stupid, fear of rejection, fear that you may upset someone. You probably feel this as well — but if you learn to be comfortable with it and DO say it, you’ve done a service to the whole team.

10. Be extremely nice to people and lift up their spirits. This sounds obvious but you can cultivate this by complimenting people. This is rare, but why?

• There are now more tech workers going from the US to Europe than the other way around.

  

• Very much related: how to move to Europe.

• The most evil housing crisis in Europe. Exaggerated title, but building out the Dutch Randstad to a high density, well connected metropolis should be the number one priority of any Dutch government, local and national.

• AI was supposed to free my time. It consumed it. This is pretty much how I feel about it. It is a time sink in disguise that makes you feel productive when often it does not. Which of course does not mean it is useless.

• Ultrarobots and long distance running. Building the next generation of robots that operate in the real world is going to be very exciting, with many opportunities for wealth creation.

• Steward Brand interview. Brand has a very Popperian outlook on progress. “We do not need to passively accept our fate as if we have no control over it. “If you like some scenarios better than others, you can be aware of the ones you don’t like and look for signs of them, and also look at signs of the ones you want to have come to pass, and lean differentially toward them. That’s how you negotiate your way into a future you were glad of. It’s done incrementally by, among other things, lots of individuals and some institutions, and that’s how we grapple our way, muddle our way forward.”

• Are screens bad for children? I’ve been spending more time at home with my kids recently and there’s a huge difference between GOOD content and BAD content. There is so much amazing youtube material, you just need to research a bit for yourself and enforce. Better approach than the binary “screens on” and “screens off”.

• True films.

• School is way worse for kids than social media.

• Open source roadmap to slow down aging. “Age is the primary risk factor for the diseases of aging. The median age of a cancer diagnosis is 66; the first heart attack, 65; and a dementia diagnosis, 83. [..] This explains why the value of investing in research on aging biology is high even compared to other excellent investments, since most severe conditions are downstream of biological aging. Eliminating all cancers, for instance, would add between 2 and 3 years to life expectancy. But since the median age of a cancer diagnosis is 66, the same patients would anyway soon be diagnosed with another manifestation of aging — like Parkinson’s, hypertension, severe illness from an otherwise mild infection, or a broken rib.”

• First step towards an underground network of goods delivery tunnels?

• Bryan Johnson on fear.

• Asking 770 people what architecture they prefer. No surprises here.

• Isometric New York City

• Towards a new aesthetics of abundance. It is happening — we’ve reached rock bottom of ugliness in architecture and YIMBYs are starting to realise that beauty is a key ingredient to get things built. People have been partially blocking new housing projects because they (rightly) expected that it was going to make their neighborhood uglier. Beauty in my Backyard!

• Related: Signs of romanticism in Silicon Valley? “⁠Dressing well used to be a negative signal (‘he’s focused on the wrong things’), while today serious people in tech are starting to pay attention to how they dress. Same with caring about beauty in the built environment. Beauty, in general, is increasingly in vogue.”

• India’s electrotech future. Energy leapfrogging, it is happening.

• Sixteen thoughts on Greenland. (I do not endorse number 15.)

• Longevity, AI, and Zeno’s paradox. “My takeaway is that you probably can’t trust your most pessimistic or optimistic intuitions. Don’t let uncertainty about the future make you a doomer, and don’t be a naive techno-optimist who dismisses all precaution. Progress has to happen, but on a closed loop: build or discover the next useful thing, evaluate, course-correct, and repeat.” Very much agree with this Popperian conclusion.

• A prompt library for more self-insight through AI. Obviously works with all AIs, not just ChatGPT. My hypothesis is that AIs will help a lot of people leading the best version of their lives by reminding them of their daily duties. Try it out. Via R.J. Sparreboom.

• Andreas Klinger - the guy behind EU, inc - launched a European fund for early stage startups in robotics, automation and manufacturing. “We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity.” They also have a nice youtube channel which covers exceptional European hardware startups.

• How to attract exceptional talent. “When immigration works, it works for Britain. The Huguenots who fled persecution helped make London a city of commerce and craft. German miners, invited by Tudor monarchs, seeded early industrial expertise. Engineers such as Marc Isambard Brunel built the nation’s infrastructure. Polish and Czech airmen defended British skies, while immigrant scientists drove breakthroughs in radar, codebreaking, and modern physics [..] when voters can clearly see how a person contributes to the country’s security and prosperity, support for welcoming that talent is consistently high.” This was written by specifically for Britain. But the immigration systems of other European countries should also be improved. Europe is still a unique place to work and live and raise a family, full of culture and beauty and stability freedom and prosperity. Working at I witnessed firsthand how young talented & motivated people from all over the world desperately want to move here. Let’s scoop up that talent now that the US is closing its borders. What I’d like to see is a bidding war for talent between European countries, or a European operation Paperclip.

• Very much related: Europe is a power bloc in the making (Dutch). Excellent op-ed by Luuk van Middelaar. “We are a continent of small states with ancient landscapes, cities, languages and cultures that for five centuries have also embraced innovation, science and modernization – thanks to doubt, debate and dissent.” To his point: why isn’t Dutch newspaper NRC publishing its op-eds in English? How else are we going to get a European space for discussion going? Hat tip

• There should be “general managers” for more of the world’s important problems. I like this fresh approach to making philanthropy more ambitious. The key challenge here is to pick exactly the right problem to work on.

• The beauty of concrete. “In the first half of the twentieth century, Western artistic culture was transformed by a complex family of movements that we call modernism, a trend that extends far beyond architecture into the literature of Joyce and Pound, the painting of Picasso and Matisse, and the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Between the 1920s and the 1950s, modernist approaches to architecture were adopted for virtually all public buildings and many private ones. Most architectural modernists mistrusted ornament and largely excluded it from their designs. The immense and sophisticated industries that had served the architectural aspirations of the nineteenth century withered in full flower.” Architects could have designed beautiful buildings with modern materials such as concrete, but chose not to. The good news here is that this trend can be reversed with technology and a cultural vibe shift away from modernism. (I strongly suspect that a successful progress movement must embrace traditional beauty and local traditions in architecture.)

• Jim Dethmer on the four pillars of integrity, improving relationships and living life to its fullest. There’s a high density of wisdom in this two hour podcast. I’m learning so much from this — I’m halfway through listening it for the second time. Hat tip .

• How people dance wrong.

This is quite an uncomfortable move for me that I have probably have postponed for too long! It’s not hard to see why. I love the Netherlands; I love speaking Dutch; I love to write in Dutch, in fact, I maintain a huuuge list of old fashioned, weird Dutch words that I’m trying to revive. I’m a big believer in the future of the Dutch language - it’s the rug that ties our nation together.

BUT.

Writing in English has several obvious advantages: it opens up my writing to many more people, I’ll get higher quality feedback on what I’m writing and I’ll get to interview and interact with more interesting people.

There are more subtle, psychological consequences. It encourages me to become a more ambitious writer. I’ll have to come up with ideas that add value to the vast amount of writing that is already out there. I need to improve my English. (I probably should increase my exposure to native English speakers.)

There is more, though. By choosing English, I’ll get a broader, less parochial outlook. What I’m writing should make sense to someone living in Maastricht as well as Athens and Rome, New York and Mumbai.

Europe, Inc.
The switch to English is also in line with other things I value: 1) a more united Europe and 2) actionable steps in the right direction.

Love it or hate it, but English is the common language of the new generations of Europeans. English removes friction between Europeans, it allows for European debate and it gives young people from all over Europe access to more opportunities.

Here is Andreas Klinger (the guy behind EU Inc.) on the subject:

I don’t care if you think English should be Europe’s default language or not. Growing up generations in this age without being able to properly speak English limits their job opportunities. It’s a disgrace to those generations and limits them, isolates them.

You don’t lose your culture by creating options for your future generations.

And more importantly you enable proper EU-wide media and networks. When you launch in the US your market pull can come from any part of the US. In Europe we are a mess of patchy networks and no significant media reaches across it.

Writing this newsletter—about progress, optimism, and other underrated ideas—in English is a small, concrete step toward a future I believe in.

Lofty proclamations alone will not get us anything; small but concrete steps in the right direction every day do compound over time. I hope this is one of those steps.

Hieronder de beste boeken die ik dit jaar las. Eerdere edities vind je hier: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 en 2024.

Non-fictie
Impro door Keith Johnstone (1979). Heerlijk tegendraads boek over improvtheater, de schaduwkant van onderwijs, statussignalen leren zien om beter te acteren - alles hieraan ademt de jaren zeventig. Het individu is goed, het schoolsysteem verpest het!

Focus door Marc Hijnk. Dit boek gaat over de onwaarschijnlijke ontstaansgeschiedenis van ASML. Vooral de beginjaren vond ik interessant. Zoals wel vaker hangt het succes af van een paar cruciale personen die enorme risico’s durven te nemen. Hoe vergroten we het percentage van dit soort mensen in Nederland? Onze toekomstige welvaart zal er vanaf hangen.

The Nvidia way door Tae Kim. Let op, dit is nogal een Jensen Huang verheerlijkend boek — na een tijdje gaat dat tegenstaan. Wat me wel bijblijft is de cultuur die Jensen Huang heeft geschapen: top 5 emails, ego’s van het managent die worden vermorzeld doordat Huang ze publiek feedback geeft en in alle meetings allejezus veel whiteboards om dingen op te tekenen. Heerlijk.

Abundance door Ezra Klein en Derek Thompson. Dit is DE analyse die we nodig hebben om dingen goedkoper te maken.

Other rivers van Peter Hessler. Hoewel hij Oracle Bones nooit meer zal evenaren, geeft Other Rivers een boeiend inzicht in hoe dramatisch de veranderingen in China zijn geweest sinds de jaren negentig. Ik heb het nog niet uit, ik hoop niet dat dat een slecht teken is.

How to feed the world door Vaclav Smil. Nogal droge materie, zoals altijd bij Smil, maar in grote lijnen wel goed overzicht van hoe het voedselsysteem werkt.

Finding Ultra Verhaal van Rich Roll, die na een alcoholverslaving het roer omgooide en triatleet werd. Het lukte hem om vijf (!) Ironmans in een week te voltooien. Rich heeft ook een interessante podcast.

Fictie
Lotte in Weimar door Thomas Mann. Een boek over roem, over Goethe, over schrijven en genialiteit — en natuurlijk ook over Thomas Mann zelf. Wat een spiegelpaleis, wat een zinnen, wat een fijnzinnige observaties die soms oplossen in volledig onnavolgbare abstracties. Dit is Thomas Mann voor de fijnproevers. Ik zou deze roman niet zo snel aanraden als je zijn oeuvre nog niet kent. Begin dan liever met Buddenbrooks of zijn korte verhalen. Als dat eenmaal bevalt kan je doorstomen naar de avonturen van Felix Krull of de Toverberg. Voor de echte avontuurlijken beveel ik Doktor Faustus aan…

Wandeling door Herman Hesse. Mooi en kort en mystiek.

Zelfverbetering
Inner Excellence door Jim Murphy. Wat leert dit boek me? Dat altijd een markt zal zijn voor het herverpakken (niet negatief bedoeld!) van boeddistische waarheden. Dit boek is niet het beste wat ik ken, ook door de vele herhalingen, maar er zit wel een unieke urgentie in. Ik zou, voordat je dit boek koopt, eerst even de podcast luisteren.

The Craving Mind door Judson Brewer. Dit boek gaat over een arts die meditatietechnieken gebruikt om verslaafden te behandelen. Als je verslaafd bent, word je geregeerd door het gevoel dat je iets NU NODIG HEBT. Maar dat is natuurlijk niet waar en door te mediteren kan je dat sneller gaan inzien. Dit jaar ben ik zelf diep in het mediteren gedoken en het is werkelijk een universeel elixer om je leven te verbeteren.

Tiny Experiments door Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Moet je een heel boek lezen over het simpele idee dat kleine experimenten uitvoeren op je dagelijks leven de moeite waard is? Het ligt er aan! Ik denk dat het meest onderschatte aspect van het lezen van boeken dit is: een langere tijd doorbrengen met een idee. Lezen is een vorm van meditatie.

The Happy Runner door David en Megan Roche. Beste boek over hardlopen dat ik ooit las, ondanks de hyperblije schrijfstijl. Het begint met de basis: je bent goed zoals je bent. Op het einde meer praktische ideeën over een leven lang blijven rennen en je tijden aanscherpen. Luister hier een fascinerende podcast met Roche over zijn gewonnen 100 mijl race.

🥇Boek van het jaar: A brief history of intelligence door Max Bennett.
Door dit boek zul je pas echt het enorme verschil tussen mensen en de huidige generatieve AI begrijpen. Max Bennett maakt een archeologische tour van de menselijke intelligentie door in te zoomen op de vijf ‘intelligentiesprongen’ die we hebben moeten maken om hier aan te belanden. Dit boek heeft een hele hoge dichtheid aan interessante feiten en inzichten, ik ga het vrijwel zeker herlezen in 2026.

• Recensie van The Land Trap.

• Enigszins gerelateerd: Hoe het verlagen van standaarden tot meer woningen leidt. Tip . Overigens ben ik van mening dat Nederland een YIMBY beweging verdient.

• Ik word onredelijk blij van biowebsites die schitteren van uitgesproken meningen en persoonlijkheid zoals deze. Beste Nederlandse voorbeeld dat ik ken is Ruben Timmerman.

• Starcloud (eerste server is al online). In de categorie: “AI en de Kardashev schaal”. Tip Michel Taal.

• Opera en LSD

After almost three years (feels MUCH longer) I have left Farmless. While I love the intensity of working at a startup, it is - at least for me - not a great match with having three young kids at home. And nope, I don’t know yet what I’ll be doing next.

With all this out of the way, let me tell you the Farmless story.

The adventure began with a walk around the Sloterplas lake in Amsterdam with Adnan Oner on a cold overcast afternoon in December 2022. I had just published a longread about the future of agriculture for De Groene Amsterdammer and Adnan’s dad, who spells out every edition, had forwarded it to him. Adnan wrote me a message on Linkedin that he loved the longread, had in fact just started a fermentation company and that he might need some help on the communication side. We also happened to both live next to the Sloterplas.

(One piece of advice I consistently give to people that want to enter a new field is that they should write in public about their quest. This will leave a trail of breadcrumbs around the internet that will almost guarantee that the right people can track you down - eventually.)

During the hour long walk we found out that we agreed on many fundamental things. We are both optimists in the Deutschian sense of the word (the only limitations to human creativity being the laws of physics). Crucially, we agreed that the current agricultural setup with its pesticide sprayed monocultures, industrial scale animal abuse and its reliance on a flawed energy conversion mechanism (photosynthesis) is a bottleneck for humanity.

We also agreed on the enormous opportunity here, because photosynthesis and protein production through animals are so far removed from the limits of physics. Brewing proteins using fermentation is a promising way forward to open up a wild new frontier of agriculture. The holy grail is to build a fermentation stack on top of energy instead of photosynthesis - in other words, the approach that Farmless is taking. Fermentation done well would be on par with history-altering inventions such as the Haber Bosch process (synthetic fertilizer) and the Newcomen atmospheric engine (steam power). If we can create dramatically more food with less land, under perfectly controlled conditions, this will bring about 1) food security and 2) unlock massive tracts of land. Roughly half of the habitable land on the planet is currently used for agriculture — how amazing would it be to use this land for more animal friendly regenerative farming, rewilding and reforesting and more cities and villages? There are much better uses of land than endless hectares of soy monocultures!

(Personally I’ve always cherished a third reason: if we can master energy based fermentation, it increases the likelihood of a self sustaining city on Mars. I strongly believe we should not replicate factory farming on other planets.)

Anyways, what convinced me on the spot during that walk was that Adnan had done his homework. Every question I asked he could answer instantly. Turned out that he had spent several years to read *all* the papers, doing *all* the fundamental math and physics himself and talked to *all* the experts in the field. He understood the first principles of food production so well that I think he had switched to just seeing energy flows instead of sunshine, meadows and cows. It was exactly this hard work that had led him to correctly identify the right microbial culture that Farmless is currently domesticating! (The choice of microbial culture turned out so important in so many ways - from logistics to unit economics to brewery design to taste and texture - it really is the secret sauce of Farmless.)

After the walk we shook hands and I agreed on joining Farmless as head of communications. I did not know yet that telling good stories was going to be a minor part of the actual job.

Many hats
As in most startups, early employees wear many hats. I knew this because I was an early employee in another startup - Fastned - but I had not expected I would be running public affairs, operations, HR and onboarding, searching for and renovating a new headquarters, organising off sites, setting up an employee stock option plan, getting the compensation plan right and addressing basically any other urgent problem that popped up. At our new headquarters I also helped to set the vibe for the Farmless cafe, the Farmless gym and the library.

Lucky break
After just a few months we got out in the open with our wild story about energy based fermentation. De ‘Rudi and Freddie show’, a popular but nerd skewing Dutch podcast, asked Adnan on their show. There was instant nerd bravado chemistry between Adnan, Rutger Bregman and Jesse Frederik. The interview was long winded with lots of facts and scientific ideas but the people who listened to it loved it! I *still* meet people who say they know Farmless via this podcast.

Starting a cult
A startup story cannot be distilled in a formula. But at a minimum I think it should communicate 1) ambition and 2) a positive vision of success 3) a form on first principles thinking — which most often will sound counter-intuitive to most people, which will make them curious. Taken together, these claims should feel close to a religion or a cult with a secret about the world at its core. This helps to forge individuals into a tight group: because of the shared grand mission and the powerful “us against the received wisdom” mindset. A powerful startup story is also a self-fulfilling prophecy: the right people and the right investors will magically find out about you.

American startups usually excel in telling these stories. They do the hard work of writing down and visualising what they want to achieve and how to best communicate that vision. Most European hardware startups - despite their technical chops - don’t do that (yet). I realised this when I helped to create HARDLIST, a website that lists the most ambitious European hardware startups. It is frustrating to see how poorly many startups manage to get their brilliant ideas across. There’s no easy solution to this, as European founders somehow think they shouldn’t be creating cults. But they should think of themselves more as founders of religions.

Building the dream team
What I enjoyed most about my time at Farmless was building out our “dream team”. After a year of publicity Farmless was becoming a somewhat known brand. (This was mostly the result of press attention of the pre-seed and seed rounds. High quality venture capital backing can act as another self-fulfilling prophecy.) This led to a spike in interests in the vacancies we posted online with many garnering over a hundred quality applicants from all over the world. I felt I was a kid in the candy store, picking my future colleagues from this firehose of applicants that was suddenly aimed at us. Adnan and I had long discussion about what kind of person we should optimise for. Big plusses for me are: do I feel energised after talking to this person? Are they asking the right questions? Does it feel like a conversation instead of an interview? What is their level of obsession? We also select people that exhibited some Renaissance (wo)man qualities.

Sometimes we got lucky and accidentally hired people with skills we did not realise we would need later on. A great example is Jordan Radek who moved from the US to Amsterdam to become our fermentation lead. She turned out to be not just an excellent fermentation lead, but a natural teacher and communicator. This has been of tremendous value for Farmless because of our high intern throughput.

At the moment I’m writing this we have fermers from the US (4 of them!), China, India, Brazil, Hungary and Germany. The Dutch are a minority. Hiring people from all over the world is a cheat code because these hires are often hungry for success — you don’t fly across the world just to start slacking in Amsterdam. This high density of hungry talent in turn leads to a critical mass of people, setting off a chain reaction of energy which is magical to witness. The Netherlands - and perhaps Amsterdam in particular - is still very good at attracting talent from all over the world - including Americans! Needless to say, I’m 100% pro immigration of talented hard working people and the ability to attract these rare people is a competitive edge the Netherlands should be CULTIVATING - but this is a topic for another post…

Hiring lessons
It took about two years but hiring people is something we - I must say, mostly Adnan - got really good at. At one point we realised that in order to get certain highly technical people on board we could not rely on them finding us, we needed to find THEM. Adnan started spending hours on end combing through Linkedin until he had a complete picture of *everyone* who would fit the bill and then started calling them. This works surprisingly well because everyone is flattered when the CEO / founder of a startup personally reaches out to them.

Another thing we had to learn from scratch was calibrating the compensation offers. What has worked well was giving people just two good offers (thanks Salar!) One offer has a lower base salary and more equity and the other has a higher salary and less equity. This has reduced the time we’re spending on salary negotiations by something like 10X and in most cases people would choose more equity, which is a motivating start for everyone!

Raising the bar
The first thing I noticed on my first work day with Adnan was the speed he blasted through his windows on his computer screen. I considered myself a nerd, but when I saw the way Adnan was handling his screens like Neo in the Matrix… my self image was shattered. He didn’t touch his mouse, used a ton of shortcuts and had a program called “Alfred” (now replaced by Raycast). I realised that I was WAY behind- what had I being doing these past decades? I vowed on that day that I was going to master this as well. For the next months I was memorising shortcuts. I’m still not as fast as Adnan, but now I’m the one who looks wary when I see other people over-using their mouse. Being in a team with people that have some exceptional skill (sub)consciously led me to up my game.

Apart from Adnan’s speed and impatience Farmless is exceptional in a couple of other areas: frugality (a lot of our brewing equipment is bought from auctions or we got it for free, we bargain over every large purchase, most stuff in our office is bought second hand), openness in discussing ideas (Adnan claims he ‘cannot be insulted’ — turning down the ego volume in a team increases the flow rate of ideas), and first principles thinking (“what does physics have to say about this?” is a recurring theme). One other thing that makes Farmless stand out and is the wholesome practice of DIY lunch preparations. We cook our own, totally awesome plantbased lunches from scratch pretty much every day! I have never seen this before anywhere else. I recently figured out that it actually makes sense in a startup environment because chopping onions and carrots is a meditative moment in the middle of a hectic day.

What is next
Where does Farmless stand now? Well, we’ve come a long way. We vertically integrated the whole damn protein production process. Molecules go in and a milkshake comes out - under a single roof. In other words, it works. Because all the key processes take place in one building, the company acts as a single feedback loop — which ensures maximum learning speed. We have people from all disciplines and trades, with backgrounds varying from The Vegetarian Butcher and Perfect Day to hardcore fermentation experience at DSM and Lanzatech.

The next step for Farmless - the proof of the pudding - will be building its first commercial, large scale brewery. I hope this thing is going to be built in the Netherlands. Fermentation really is the next frontier in agriculture and one that the Netherlands can dominate. The Netherlands is an agricultural powerhouse with world class seed production, greenhouse yields that are off the charts and a long history of land reclamation. Fermentation is simply the next iteration towards more predictable, higher yields, needing less inputs and causing less environmental damage. Fermentation is a game that the Netherlands should play to win.

• Gerelateerd: Alpha Schools lijkt na decennia (!) aan beloftes van onderwijsinnovatie daadwerkelijk de goede richting op te gaan. Het idee is om het leren van kernvaardigheden zoals wiskunde en lezen te comprimeren tot 2-3u per dag en de rest van de dag te besteden aan ‘agency’ ontwikkelen in de echte wereld. Wie o wie brengt een soortgelijk initiatief naar Nederland?

• Jelle Prins over het Nationaal Agentschap voor Baanbrekende Innovatie (NABI). Als het NABI het enige resultaat is van het rapport van Peter Wennink, is het al de moeite waard geweest.

• Gerelateerd: Full stack deep tech. Ik herlas dit stuk om me te herinneren aan het volgende inzicht: zodra je als startup een radicaal betere / simpelere / goedkopere manier vindt om iets te maken zijn er twee paden: ‘full stack’ gaan en het eindproduct zelf verkopen OF je uitvinding als component verkopen/licenseren aan bestaande industrie. Dit stuk legt uit waarom full stack gaan weliswaar meer kapitaal (en ballen) vereist maar uiteindelijk meer autonomie oplevert en je kans op overleven vergroot. Je bent namelijk niet overgeleverd aan de logge en sceptische organisaties die je componenten moeten gaan afnemen — je kan gelijk zaken doen met de avontuurlijke eindconsument. Ik heb eerder dit jaar ter lering en vermaak een overzicht van full stack hardware startups in Europa gemaakt. Voorbeelden van full stack deep tech in Nederland zijn Monumental (technologie = robots maar het product is een bakstenen muur) en Farmless (technologie = fermentatie maar het product is eiwitshakes).

• In de categorie ‘extreme leesstrategieën’.

• Goede smaak.

• Bryan Johnson over saunas. Ik heb voor deze winter een abonnement op Kuuma Saunas (goedkope sessies van ~1,5u) en heb er nog geen spijt van.

• Ik heb een obsessie met gadgets maar ik weet ook dat meer spullen me over het algemeen niet gelukkiger maken. Mijn oplossing is een simpele gadgetlijst bijhouden. Na een paar maanden kijk ik er op en meestal is het verlangen naar de specifieke gadget vervlogen. Laatste toevoeging is dit houten wandrek.

• Gerelateerd: hoe het schoolsysteem passiviteit en schijnwerk cultiveert. Ik heb er bijvoorbeeld spijt van dat ik mijn universitaire opleiding heb afgemaakt. Na een tot twee jaar had ik kunnen inzien dat de universiteit me niet zoveel zou brengen en initiatief kunnen nemen om mijn leven interessanter te maken. In plaats daarvan bleef ik nog drie jaar doorgaan.

• In plaats van nog een jaar op de universiteit blijven hangen (passief) kan je ook Chinees leren in 12 maanden (en als bonus jezelf onderdompelen in een van de beste keukens ter wereld).

• Gefermenteerd eiwit van The Protein Brewery is veilig verklaard door de EFSA. Dit is een stap in de goede richting voor Nederland fermentatieland. Het lijkt er op dat Nederland een unieke aantrekkingskracht heeft op startups die eiwitten en vetten fermenteren.

• Zenboeddisme en het aanvaarden van veranderlijkheid. Dit idee heeft mijn leven positief veranderd dit jaar.

• Works in Progress in nu beschikbaar als blad in Nederland! Ik heb het voor kerstmis op mijn verlanglijstje staan.

• Levendigheid.

How did the world get so ugly? Deze minidocu is een ode aan de publieke esthetiek van Victoriaans Engeland. Interessant van begin tot einde.

Why the West was downzoned. ⁠⁠Een hogere dichtheid van woningen in steden is het panacee van heel veel problemen. Maar hoe komen we daar? ”The Great Downzoning happened during a period in which anti-density views were widespread among planners, officials, and educated people generally. Most people thought that urban density was unhealthy and dysfunctional, and supported government efforts to reduce it.” Maar er zijn ook oplossigen: “The Downzoning was originally extremely desirable to residents, because the neighborhood goods it secured were more valuable than the floorspace it precluded. In places where that is no longer true, we should be cautiously optimistic about the prospects of reform. This is the reasoning behind proposals like street votes, which would allow individual streets or blocks to vote by qualified majority to upzone themselves to higher densities.” Wie richt de Nederlandse YIMBY beweging op?

Gerelateerd: California’s city on a hill. Jan Sramek bouwt een nieuwe stad in Californië. Ik blijf het herhalen, maar vooruitgang in de wereld hangt enkel af van gedreven, obsessieve mensen die zich niet neerleggen bij hoe dingen nu eenmaal zijn: “Sramek told me that he tried to convince himself that his idea to build a new city in Solano County was crazy—or, as he’d say it, “batshit insane.” He wrote down seventy-five reasons why the plan would fail. “Maybe there’s some rare ecosystem there. Maybe there isn’t enough water. Maybe you can’t build enough transportation infrastructure. Maybe the politics doesn’t make sense. Maybe the soil isn’t suitable for building, and it’s really expensive to build there.” But after seven months of testing each objection, Sramek told me “I couldn’t find the fatal flaw.””

How Elon works. De operationele principes.

The white darkness. Ik ben ook gefascineerd door Ernest Shackleton, maar dit is wel een compleet ander niveau. Ultralongread. Tip Marijn Kruk.

• Het Nationaal AI Deltaplan staat online. Meer dan zestig experts schreven er aan mee. Er is werk aan de winkel: “ Europa beschikt momenteel over 5% van de wereldwijde AI‑rekenkracht, tegenover zo’n 75% in de Verenigde Staten. De Nederlandse supercomputer Snellius telt slechts 640 GPU’s en zelfs de aanstaande Groningse AI‑fabriek zou met een budget van €200 miljoen naar verwachting niet meer dan circa 2.500 GPU’s kunnen huisvesten. Ter vergelijking: OpenAI heeft op dit moment toegang tot een totaal van meer dan 1 miljoen GPU’s en bouwt meerdere nieuwe datacenter‑campussen die ieder 500.000 volgende‑generatie GPU’s van NVIDIA zullen bevatten.”

• Boeken over vooruitgang voor kinderen. Ik krijg zin om ze allemaal te bestellen, maar mijn kinderen lezen nog geen Engels. Waarom is er eigenlijk nog geen Nederlandse uitgever die zich hier op concentreert?

• Blake Scholl, de oprichter van de supersonische vliegtuigbouwer Boom, wordt geinterviewd door Tyler Cowen. Dit interview is van begin tot einde interessant. De hele vliegtuigsector is namelijk in een lokaal maximum beland waar ze niet meer uitkomt - van security tot subsonische snelheid waarmee we vliegen tot luchthavenontwerp. Vooruitgang hangt af van mensen als Blake die deze locale maxima simpelweg niet accepteren. “Here’s the idea: You should put the terminals underground. Airside is above ground. Terminals are below ground. Imagine a design with two runways. There’s an arrival runway, departure runway. Traffic flows from arrival runway to departure runway. You don’t need tugs. You can delete a whole bunch of airport infrastructure.” Overigens vind ik de naam BOOM voor eens startup oliedom door de associaties met 1) geluidsoverlast van de geluidsbarriere doorbreken en 2) ontploffingen.

• Interessant interview met de oprichter van Valar Atomics. Isaiah Taylor heeft de interessantste benadering van kernenergie die ik tot nu toe ben tegengekomen: verticale integratie van synthetische brandstofproductie via kernenergie. Twee voordelen: je hoeft niet te concurreren met elektriciteit & je kan dit bouwen op plekken die pro-kernenergie zijn. Overigens is dit ook een technologie die we nodig zullen hebben voor een stad op Mars.

• Nieuwe edities van de Tien Procent Club: 25 november in Den Haag met Céline Kamsteeg en Bram Schaper - 3 december in Leiden over zorg - 29 januari in Amsterdam met Ernst-Jan Pfauth over geven & geluk.

Europese full stack hardware startups!

Europa heeft op het gebied van atomen een verrassend goede uitgangspositie ten opzichte van software:

• Een monopolie vestigen door netwerkeffecten is een stuk lastiger in de wereld van atomen (= minder concurrentie van Silicon Valley)

• Europa heeft een diep reservoir aan ingenieurstalent — denk Duitsland, Frankrijk, Italië — dat vaak gebonden is aan hun Heimat.

• Er zijn dus al HEEL VEEL hardware startups actief in energie, defensie, voedsel, transport, bouw, ruimtevaart, robots en AI.

Maar niemand weet dit dus!

Wat veel beter zou kunnen — en hier scheef ik al eerder over — is dat al dit ontluikend succes in de etalage wordt gezet. Iets waar de Amerikanen heer en meester in zijn.

En omdat ik niet kan filmen, heb ik met een paar andere nerds de definitieve lijst van hardcore hardware startups gemaakt: HARDLIST!

Met KEIHARDE KAPITALEN.

Criteria om er op te komen als hardware startup
🥇 Ambitie: je streeft er NIET naar om een simpele componentenboer te zijn, maar je wil verticaal integreren en dit roep je van de daken vanaf dag 1

🤯 Eerste principes denken: je bouwt iets NIEUWS, op basis van een fundamenteel nieuw inzicht over de wereld dat 10X beter is dan de status quo

💰 Je geeft een genereus optiepakket aan ALLE werknemers: bij uitzonderlijk succes -> volgt grote uitbetaling voor werknemers -> wat dan weer het startkapitaal wordt om een nieuwe generatie startups te beginnen (via angel tickets)

Meta-opmerking op het einde
Ik merk dat bij mij de vraag “wat is de kleinste stap die ik NU kan nemen om niet bij de pakken neer te zitten” vaak goed werkt om me in beweging te brengen.

HARDLIST was daarop deze keer het antwoord.

PS. Met dank aan Bálint Magyar voor het programmeren van HARDLIST en Adnan Oner, Salar al Khafaji, Jelle Prins en Pia Michel voor het cureren van startups en het geven van goede adviezen.

• Nu we toch bezig zijn: interessante eerste poging tot een overzicht van Europese hardware startups. “Browse a curated list of deep-tech and hard-tech European companies solving real-life problem and accelerating humanity.”

• Er komen weer nieuwe Tien Procent Clubs aan in Amsterdam (met o.a. Tom de Bruyne), Rotterdam en Amersfoort. Kaartjes hier verkrijgbaar.

• MAHA and the mythical allure of the lost Golden Age. Dit stuk is werkelijk fantastisch want het laat de principes zien achter het idee van ‘natuurlijkheid’. Ik las vorig jaar overigens het boek Naturalness van dezelfde auteur, maar dat was veel te lang. Lees dit, gaat je veel tijd schelen.

• Norway: Europe’s only petrostate. Lange, interessante blog door Pia Michel, die een ‘grand tour’ door Europa maakt. Als je alles zo onder elkaar ziet staan is Noorwegen een behoorlijk indrukwekkend land met ongelooflijke potentie. Een ijskoud, schatrijk Texas... met een paar miljoen inwoners. Het is zonde dat er niet tien keer zoveel mensen wonen.

• Interview met Thorsten Reil, een van de oprichters van defensiestartup Helsing. Thorsten is waarschijnlijk een van de hoogste kaliber ondernemers die we momenteel hebben in Europa. Het is al langer duidelijk dat AI en drones — “precise mass” — soldaten van het slagveld gaan verdringen maar Helsing bouwt dit daadwerkelijk. ‘New defence’ moet een industrie worden, en snel. Zie ook ‘How the war was won’.

“Zelfs in een ideaal scenario is onze aanwezigheid niet al te gunstig voor de rest van de natuur, dus onze soort willen redden is uiteindelijk alleen maar eigenbelang. Als je aan de aarde of de andere diersoorten denkt, is het eerder heilzaam dat we uitsterven of op z’n minste gedecimeerd worden.”

Ik begrijp het punt dat Esther Gerritsen hier wil maken.

Meer mensen = minder natuur.

Maar wat Esther vergeet te vermelden is dat een wereld zonder mensen betekent dat we dieren tot het einde der tijden laten wegrotten in het WREDE EN TUCHTELOZE BROEINEST VAN ZINLOZE EVOLUTIE.

De evolutie optimaliseert voor totaal andere dingen dan het minimaliseren van pijn en onrecht.

Dieren eten elkaar de hele dag op zonder dat er een haan naar kraait. Het is een en al knevelarij en wapengekletter wat de klok slaat.

En niks geen modern gedoe zoals zelfreflectie of verder kijken dan je neus lang is.

In de natuur zijn er geen herdenkingen, geen feedback, geen #metoo, geen intentingsprogramma’s. Geen ruimtevaartprogramma’s om eens een stukje verder te kijken dan het aardoppervlak alleen. Er is bij mijn weten in de hele natuur, gedurende 3.8 miljard jaar dat ie bestaat op deze aarde, nog nooit een vlammend j’accuse verschenen over barbaarse praktijken die daar aan de orde van de dag zijn (zoals deze gezelligheid).

De natuur is, kortom, geen fijne plek als je er toe veroordeeld bent.

Waarom de mens de beste hoop is voor de natuur
Je voelde ‘m al aankomen, alleen mensen zijn in staat tot morele reflectie en verbetering van leefomstandigheden.

Alleen de mens is in staat om boven zichzelf uit te stijgen, voorbij eigenbelang te gaan, haar morele cirkel uit te breiden, kritiek te gebruiken om immorele praktijken aan te kaarten.

Natuurlijk, de kranten zijn gevuld met voorbeelden van het tegenovergestelde. Maar als we met een lens van duizend jaar naar de wereld kijken, zien we overweldigend bewijs voor een opwaarts bewegende ‘morele curve’. Dit is een totaal niet uitputtende lijst met voorbeelden:

• Dramatische daling van moorden

• Afschaffing van slavernij

• Einde aan openbare executies en martelingen

• Afname van geweld tegen vrouwen

• Afschaffing kinderarbeid

• Opkomst van vreedzame sociale bewegingen

• Vooruitgang in dierenrechten

• En laten we de uitroeiing van de Guineaworm niet vergeten

Als je niet gelooft dat er vooruitgang is, en alles in cirkels beweegt, lees willekeurig welk boek over wat de Romeinen allemaal uitvraten en je zult moeten toegeven dat er sprake is van verbetering.

Als we dus willen dat het nog wat gaat worden met die natuur, dan zal er toch echt een mens aan te pas moeten komen.

Menselijk ingrijpen in de natuur om de wreedheid en nodeloze pijn te verminderen, zal - met uitzondering van opvangen van zeehonden - in den beginne heel controversieel zijn.

Maar uiteindelijk zal het de logische volgende stap zijn dat we ons unieke vermogen tot morele reflectie gaan toepassen om de natuur te verbeteren.

Misschien een leuk onderwerp voor een volgende science fictionroman van Esther Gerritsen.

Ik wens je alvast een optimistisch 2025!