Engineering Earth's CO2 Future

Welcome Rob. How are you today? I'm doing very well. Thank you, Leo. Thanks for having me. Great to have you here. Um, you have, uh, a great long career and normally I actually ask a lot of questions about that, but maybe it's, uh, it's too much. So maybe how would you introduce yourself?  Well, I usually say that I'm in the autumn of my career, uh, and indeed it's, uh, it's been a long journey.

Um,  when you look at, uh, my past work life, I think there are two main chapters. Uh, the first one was, uh, local. Uh, where I worked with a few others to establish small IT companies,  um, and exited them, uh, and I worked for larger companies as well, uh, but all very local. And then the second half of my career, I've worked on the global stage, always in technology, always in fast growing markets, always in the ESG domain, combining, uh, purpose and, um, uh, content.

Uh, business objectives. Um, so and that's, you know, that, uh,  that brought me to, uh, come on board, uh, of Skytree two and a half years ago. All right. And can you maybe share some of the highlights of that first stage, the local part? Sure. Uh, uh, I'll start. I remember that, uh, that, uh, with a few colleagues, uh, we went from a company called Koning Hartman at the time, uh, in Delft, uh, to, uh, create our own company.

And, uh, we had no idea what a wonderful company Koning Hartman was. Um, but we found out when we were building our own company where we copied everything we had in, in Koning Hartman.  And quickly we became a segment leader in the Netherlands dealing with all the big companies. And then we thought, then we realized how, what a great company Koning Hartman was.

And what was that kind of company? It was a 600 people company in Delft, uh, founded by Mr. Koning and Mr. Hartman, uh, I think in the sixties or so. And they, you know, it was an importer of technology. At that time you had importers, uh, uh, home supplier to fireworks. Police, army, broadcasting equipment. The first mobile phones of Motorola were brought to the market, and then Koning Hartman was acquired by Getronix. 

And you copied that?  Well, it was, for us, it was natural behavior, uh, so, uh, so that was really, uh, You know, uh, a good experience. Um, and, and it was a successful company we've, we've created. At first it was called Data Box. Uh, later we changed it into, I think, QI Networks. Uh, and it was acquired, it was acquired again.

And now I think it is a part of the cybersecurity, uh,  uh, division of KPM.  And your role there? You were always the founder, CEO, or did you have like a specific role in the partner? I was co founder and I was leading, uh, marketing, sales, and the projects. All right.  And then you moved at some point to EVbox?

Well, there were a couple of steps in between. All right.  So, uh, a switch in my career was, uh, joining BeWise, a company in the south of the Netherlands,  And that was a governance risk and compliance platform, uh, which was sold to enterprises around the globe. I led the international expansion of that company.

Um, and I think,  you know, after being one and a half years in, we were acquired by NASDAQ, um, and became part of the software division of NASDAQ. And I worked there for four and a half years, spent half my time in the U. S. Um, as we had a lot of, uh,  clients in, uh, in the U. S. Uh, we spread around the world, had clients everywhere.

I was traveling a lot, um, and, uh, and after six years, I had joined a comparable company called SAI Global that was delisted from the Sydney Stock Exchange and, uh, required somebody like me with the experience of building global businesses in that space.  We also had an education arm, so we, we, we, um We did compliance training for millions and millions of people around the globe, around topics as modern slavery, anti bribery, code of conducts, uh, um, and then I joined EVBox thereafter.

And EVBox already existed?  Oh yes, yes, yes. When I came on board, it was like 200 people. When I left, that was around the time that, uh, the IPO was announced  through a spec at the time. Uh, that was the moment that I left.  How was that experience? Was that your first real dealing with, uh, climate technology? 

Yes. Yeah? Yes, for sure. And, and hardware as well. Yeah. Uh, which is completely different than software. Hardware is really hard, I can tell you.  Yeah, I mean, EVBox was a great company. It's been recently in the news, uh, that it's sort of, uh, winding down, uh, which, uh, which hurts all the, uh, the great people that, uh, that worked at EVBox.

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