In this engaging discussion, Maarten Van Kroonenburg discusses his entreprenurial background and how it led him to develop a tried and true process for innovation that companies large and small can adopt. Innovation isn’t driven by an epiphany and it is not an unreachable goal, it is the outcome of following a process, as unintuitive as it may seem. Don’t miss these insights and more in this compelling episode spanning two countries and one innovative topic!
Maarten van Kroonenburg is the dynamic founder and CEO of BW Ventures. Maarten is driven by a bold vision to transform the landscape for small businesses by developing resilient and scalable business models.
From his early days as an entrepreneur in the music industry, Maarten quickly recognized the pitfalls small businesses face when modeled too closely on large corporations, often leading to critical and sometimes fatal mistakes. Armed with years of experience and a deeper understanding, he established BW Ventures, aimed at guiding companies to sidestep common pitfalls and innovate effectively and safely.
Maarten combines strategic insight with practical experience, leading BW Ventures with a focus on structured, customer-centric strategies. His leadership empowers companies to confidently tackle future challenges. Under Maarten’s guidance, BW Ventures exemplifies how innovation, grounded in pragmatism, can propel businesses toward sustained success through smart, informed strategies.
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited.
Adam Chen:
While entrepreneurs are often lauded with creating new businesses and ideas, it is more often the case that change agents working within organizations, or intrapreneurs, are more responsible for innovation and seeing those new ideas through to completion. Welcome to the Innovation Economy Entrepreneurs Series. I’m your host, Adam Chen, a change management consultant and founder of Measured Transformation, a boutique technology, marketing, and operations consultancy focused on driving positive transformation in businesses of all sizes. The Innovation Economy shares stories and insights from leaders within and on the peripheries of organizations that have had the vision, courage, and drive to create new ways of moving business forward. Featured stories and anecdotes from these entrepreneurs relay how they found success and the challenges they faced while innovating within an organization. And now, on to the show. Welcome listeners. I’m very excited today to introduce Martin Van Kroonenberg coming to us from the Netherlands. Martin is the founder of a company called BW Ventures, where he helps folks identify product market fit, as well as basically how to create an innovation process, which we’ll dive into a little bit more in this episode today. Martin, it’s wonderful to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us. We got an opportunity to catch up a few weeks back just to kind of prepare for the show today. And your personal journey, your story really struck a chord with me. So I’m wondering if we could just start off the show today by having you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: For sure. But first of all, thanks for having me. So it’s an honor to be in this podcast and, uh, and in the show and well, who am I? I’m Martin van Konenberg. I’m the owner and founder of BW Ventures. And before I started BW Ventures, I, I started my career actually in the music industry. And that’s where I think we, you know, we had a great chat the first time we met about that. And, uh, At the age of 19, what I basically did is I created electronic music and well, it was quite fun because you actually knew the genre that I was very active in. It was the dubstep and drum and bass genre for the ones that are interested. But what was interesting at that age, I got a contract from a very big publisher in the Netherlands. I was reading that and I was, I really was thinking, why should I sign this contract? Because they basically said, all your intellectual property is going to be ours for the rest of your life. And I thought it was pretty soon to sign a document like that. And naive and stubborn as I was, and I still am to be quite honest, but I’m literally mentioned in that meeting, Hey, I’m going to do this myself. So I walked out of the meeting the next day, I went to the chamber of commerce to actually start my first company. And that’s where I started my first small record label and grew it in a few years into a booking agency, event agency, all that. And as a quick reminder, that was. in a time that Spotify was extremely small in the Netherlands and they were growing at, I think, three to 400% growth rate every year when I was doing this. So that, you know, put a lot of pressure on my own business model and inventiveness to come up with new models.
Adam Chen: Very interesting, very interesting. So I’m really curious, too, about how you see you’re now leading an innovation firm. You started in this very creative field of music production. Do you think that that creativity, I guess, that you fostered through music has benefited you as you’ve moved into the business world?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yes. we discussed this before and I was I was thinking and and it was a really good question actually and my conclusion is that and I start to see that right now not when I started out but in a creative job you like as a music producer or also as a painter or a photographer you start to think in layers because your first initial idea is super simple However, to make it appealing for your target group, you need to add complexity later on. And what I think helped me out is to peel down all the layers of an initial innovation ID as quickly as possible and get back to like the main ID, the simplest main ID. Try to validate that, and from there, add layers of complexity only if needed. And I think the creative journey has really helped me to understand the layering that you’re doing. I mean, look at yourself if you’re in the kitchen. If you want to create a dish that has more layers of complexity, layers of taste in there, you start with something very, very pure and then start layering and layering more. And I think that really helped me in innovation and in business.
Adam Chen: Yeah, I love that. And as a creative myself, that resonates, you know, very well. I can imagine for folks that don’t have a creative background, they think it’s this, you know, to create something, there is no process. It’s just this, you know, epiphany that people have, right? But the reality is, there is a methodology to it. Definitely. And I know that’s something also that you are doing now in the business world. So I’m wondering in BW Ventures, you know, and in that context, what is the process to innovation? You know, it’s this ethereal thing that people want to attain, but the reality, how do you actually get there?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yeah, that’s a perfect question. And let me first get back to like the creative process, because I think it makes sense if I explain it like this. As an artist, it makes sense that you use as few instruments as possible. So first try and learn the piano and master it. Because the moment you start mastering your piano, the more creative you become in what you can play and what you can do with it, right? And within innovation or within business, for me, it’s exactly the same. If you do not master, for example, the very early stage of innovation, it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t make sense to continue with all the rest after that. And a good process to not start from a blank canvas will really help you to kickstart every innovation project that you do. And a process will help you to at least know What is best to do in that stage? So to make this extremely practical, if you want to start an Indian curry restaurant in a very small village, the first thing that you should always consider is do people in that village want to eat Indian curry? Because if they don’t, it doesn’t make sense to open an Indian curry restaurant, right? And there, again, it’s a process of steps that you go through to, in the end, validate if people want to make use of your services. And for me, more importantly, are also willing to pay for that.
Adam Chen: So what you’re talking about a little bit is, is identifying a product market fit. Is that, is that correct? Yes, definitely. Yep. Yeah.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: And what we do a bit differently compared to other people in the industry is. we want to confront our customers and thus ourselves as quickly as possible with the question, do people want to pay for this? Because for me, that is the essence. I can create a lot of value for an end user, but if the end user cannot pay or will not pay for that value, You’re driving a lot of costs and a lot of value without getting a commitment back. And for us, that is the key. So we always bring that confrontation as quickly as possible.
Adam Chen: I really like that. I’ve experienced in my career, a number of people kind of jumping forward to figuring out what pricing models might look like before even realizing that someone’s willing to buy in the first place. So it’s a bunch of wasted effort. You kind of have to go in order there. That makes a ton of sense to me.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yeah, definitely. And what we, what we especially do there is as early as possible, we want to let people also commit in the form of a letter of intent or even a contract that really states if we are able to solve problem one, two or three, and we can do that in the upcoming year, you as a signer of this contract will start paying us amount X, Y, or Z. And if we cannot deliver on that promise, you do not have to pay. But if we do deliver on that promise, you are going to pay. And people underestimate how valuable that is in the very early stages of innovation.
Adam Chen: Yeah, it’s an insurance policy. You’re charting on new ground, new roads, and there’s no guarantees there. I’m curious, to kind of piggyback on that, you’re interfacing with other people, right? You’re helping, you have clients, right? You’re helping these businesses think through things differently, perhaps. You live in innovation. Do you often find your counterpart on the other side of the table? Or are there some hurdles that you have to kind of help them or guide them along the path to show them how innovation actually manifests itself?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yeah, I’m going to make this also a little bit more complex because typically we work with three levels of counterparts. The first level is the project members itself. So these are the people that will run experiments that will try to create like the value in the business case that everyone is looking for from the other part of the company. Then we’ve got the second level, which is the manager of the innovation projects team. So the typical innovation manager or head of innovation. And then the third level typically is the board of directors or a VP of sales or of product or something in that direction. And what I typically see is that the knowledge is all over the place and Most of the times, not at the level that you hope it will be. That means that we have a lot of explanation to do, because we want to reach certain goals in very short amounts of time. And all the concepts that we use, we have to explain in a way. And what we basically did, and that was quite an investment a few years ago, but we we created a lot of videos on all the theoretical parts. So everyone that is going to work with us will watch videos. We always make the joke, you’re not going to stream Netflix or Prime or whatever, but you’re going to listen to a lot of Maarten van Klootenburg in the upcoming week. But that at least give you know, helps them to get to a certain level of knowledge. And that certain base level of knowledge is what we need in order to help them in the best way possible. And that is especially, you know, to validate a business case that is worth investing in. The step after is how to scale up and get the project to market. That’s a whole different game. But especially in the first early stages of innovation, we are really fond of the idea that we first train people to a certain level and not by just doing workshops, but let them watch videos. And we’re going to immediately apply that on the case that they try to validate and the case that they want to find a business model for. And the funny thing is we started to experiment also with that from the head of innovation or the head of a specific business unit. And they actually enjoy watching it because it makes them think a little bit differently. And then of course, for boards, I have to explain it, but you’ve got different, you know, different topics to discuss with them.
Adam Chen: Yeah, I love the emphasis that you’re putting on all of the whether you call it planning, pre work, whatever you call it. But before you actually start to tackle the task at hand, you’ve got to get everyone on the same playing field speaking the same language. I absolutely love that. That’s what sets you up for success or not. I think I’ve danced around that with other guests many times, but to have someone just state it so directly, you can’t move forward to innovation until you get that that kind of under your belt.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: No. And to add to that, I’m a firm believer that innovation is a skill and it is a skill set that needs to be developed and refined over years. So even, you know, everyone can start in innovation, but it takes a long time before you really understand all the little mechanics that are in the innovation process. And that’s why we always advise to, you know, you can, you can let people start in that, but at least let them guide, guide them or the team by people that have done a lot of successful innovation projects. Because sometimes it’s just like, the smallest thing that will make a difference. And with the smallest thing, it’s literally a one word within a value proposition that can make the difference. And it’s extremely hard to explain that to someone that has never done innovation before, but it can literally mean one word in a pitch that makes all of the difference, that literally brings all the sales towards you instead of to someone else. It’s a magical thing, but it also requires experience.
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Adam Chen: So I know you’re pretty prolific as far as writing on your blog and doing some podcasts like this, but I think I watched one presentation where we were talking about enterprises, larger organizations, and this kind of issue of how do you protect your business while at the same time trying to disrupt your business? And that to me, it seems like a huge challenge. But what you’re talking about, too, is, you know, maybe or the way I’m hearing it is you’ve got a lot of business leaders that are probably in that protection mode or that’s kind of what I’m what I’m pulling away from this. So what you’re trying to do is getting to think differently into that more disruptive category. So could you talk a little bit about that dichotomy and kind of how you navigate some of the folks that are protectionists.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yes, definitely. And it’s, it’s funny because a lot of managers try to protect the business. At the moment, they actually need to transform their business. And let me explain that. If your company is growing rapidly and with rapidly, I mean, 20% plus growth rates in top line and in, in earnings, probably. What you need to do is not spin out multiple businesses. What you should do is protect your growth. Meaning every innovation that you’re doing is going to add more value to your core business. Let’s pick an example there. Let’s, let’s have a look at Apple when they first launched and got the main traction of the iPhone. Everyone thought they were driving a transformative innovation strategy, but they weren’t. They were protecting the growth of their iPhone innovation. How did they do that? They introduced the app store. They created more solutions for the iPhone ecosystem. For example, they bought, what were they called? Beats by Dre. with the AirPods, which was an extension of the iPhone ecosystem that they created. The iPad was nothing more than a bigger sized iPhone. That was all to protect the growth of the iPhone. Now you see that they’re stagnating. Their growth isn’t 20, 30, 40% anymore. It’s between, I think the latest number were like seven or 8%, something like that. What they are now doing, now they are diversifying. They are diversifying in a lot of markets. They are creating services, they are in fitness, they are creating basically the latest thing that they introduced is the Apple, I’m going to butcher it, it’s not the Apple Glass, what’s it called? At least they’re creating a lot of new innovations that are completely diversifying from the iPhone. And that is interesting because that is a transformative strategy. What they want to do there is to find a new iPhone and the new lever of growth. What I see a lot of managers do is they think they need to protect their current business model, which is basically ending. And they put a lot of effort into trying to perfectionize their current product and their current proposition because there’s not a lot of profit margin in there anymore. You should actually do the opposite. And there’s a, it’s a completely different, uh, way of allocating your resources and your, your money in your innovation process. And you have to, to, to, to build a completely different innovation portfolio.
Adam Chen: Yeah. Yeah. Do you see that play out differently with companies that the scale of something like Apple versus, you know, maybe smaller companies kind of in that growth phase of growth, or do you think about it the same way?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Well, in my opinion, it’s easier to be a smaller company than to be a bigger company, because the bigger company needs bigger business cases to actually make a difference. And the more money you have in the early stages of innovation, the harder it becomes to get to results, because what we see is that One of the main reasons that projects fail in the first three to four years is an overinvestment in the early stage. And this sounds super counterintuitive, but it basically means if you invest a lot in the early stage, for example, you get a budget of, let’s say $5 million. What typically happens if you do not understand what to promise to a specific customer and what you can get back for it, for that promise, people try to build a very big sales team, or they try to create a great marketing campaign and put a lot of effort and resources to it, but they still do not know what they actually sell or what the actual value is they can deliver to a specific customer group. In the beginning, the results look very shiny and you’ve got maybe a very first great peak. But after that, churn starts to kick in. It’s very hard to find, you know, the early adopters instead of the innovators. And in my opinion, if you get a very lean budget, very lean, you get way more creative and getting to the actual truth of what people want. Then overspending on marketing and sales or whatever. Actually, I don’t think you need any advertisement, any salespeople to get the first 10, 10 customers that really want to solve their problems instead of buying something cool and new.
Adam Chen: Yeah. Yeah. You almost need your cost, your first set of customers to almost self-select into buying into this kind of, you know, breaking the mold innovation kind of philosophy.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yeah, exactly. And, and for that reason, you know, even for small companies, it, this makes a lot of sense to, you know, defend your business. If you’re, if you’re growing really rapidly or transform it, if you see that everything is stagnating or maybe even declining already.
Adam Chen: Yeah. So, so interesting. So we’re, we’re talking a little bit about, you know, we talked about bringing things to market. We’re, we’re talking about here, either protecting what’s already in market or maybe bringing some transformative new solution to market. Um, when you think about that product, where do you lie? Is it, is it MVP or is it MLP?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: I’ve been thinking about this question since the moment that you put it on paper. And honestly, I still can’t pick, pick a stance on this. And let me explain why. Before you start scaling your value proposition, I think you need to close a specific circle. And then by answering this, I will also probably answer your question. First thing you need to do is you need to be able to identify a potential customer that has a problem or a need that is worth solving. Then you have to understand what their existing alternatives are and how you can be radically different, not better, different compared to what they are used to. Because if you understand how to solve their issues differently, you’re never going to be in the better trap because if you’re just creating something that is better, you’re already in a rat race to the bottom because that’s going to be, you know, your, your variables will be in price and in profit margins. You don’t want to be there. So if you understand that to be different. you understand what to promise to them. So what is the value proposition that you create for this specific customer group? So if you promise them something, you can get a commitment in return. What is the business model, right? Now, here’s the answer to your question. You, as a innovator or as an entrepreneur or whoever is responsible for delivering the value that you promised needs to do whatever is in his or her power to deliver on the promise that you made. And if you need to do that with a prototype, with a minimum lovable product, with a minimum viable product, really, I do not care. You need to move mountains to deliver on the promise that you know people are willing to pay for. And in a way that you basically under promise and over deliver a little bit, because if you are able to deliver on the promise that you made, and they want to share that with a potential new customer, because they were so happy with it, you can close a loop. Because that is where you can identify a new potential customer and you understand what to solve for them, what to promise them, what you can get back. What I think in the sort of, you know, there’s 10 years, maybe 12 years right now of lean startup in which everyone starts talking about an MVP. I think 80% of the people completely miss the point of an MVP because it’s not about the product. It is about how to deliver the value that people are willing to pay for. And it should be a mechanism. that, you know, that delivers them the change that they need in their lives. So, like, I still, I don’t still have the answer. Is that an MVP? Is that a minimal lovable product? For me, it really doesn’t make the big difference. We actually call it a first version of your product, but that’s another term, right?
Adam Chen: No, I love that. I guess my thoughts behind asking the question was also, I guess, an assumption that as more of the masses use innovative tech, maybe in that context, their baseline expectations also rising. So when you bring something new to market, consumers’ expectations have risen. Maybe it’s something very novel and different in a particular space, but consumers can still make analogies to other parts of their life. Or if it’s so easy to buy something on Amazon as a consumer, shouldn’t B2B buying be as easy? Or something to that effect, I guess, was the nature of the question. Look, what I heard in your answer that I want to dive in a little bit deeper on was something I’ve observed. I’ve seen product teams preach MVP, build MVP, but these developers are almost developing the product for themselves. And there’s a breakdown in communication to the voice of the customer, which is exactly what you’re talking about, just said another way. So maybe, could you explain a little bit about how you, the people behind the innovation had different roles and how do you kind of bring them together when it comes to putting out this first version of the product?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yeah. In the discovery phase, we actually almost always bring an engineer. Is it a developer, an engineer, someone that is responsible for product? And we also push them to talk to potential customers. And to be quite honest, that is the biggest hurdle in the whole first 12 weeks that we do, because they need to completely change the way they typically work. They’re not too humble about talking to potential customers. I can’t make that more beautiful than that. It is what it is. Um, so that, that’s one of the first things. And we, we actually see that if they start to talk to, to, uh, to potential customers, it’s going to make a huge difference in how they think about the product. However, and I think that is also a sort of aftermath of the whole MVP thing. I see that people started to think that an MVP is going to be cheap. And I don’t think the first version should be cheap because you’re still testing a lot of assumptions. What I think is important with the first versions of your products or product is that you are able to, you know, throw it away very quickly. And yes, Eric Ries talked about that. But in reality, I still see a lot of. developers actually falling in love with their own MVP, which has nothing to do with the, you know, the testing of what are the individual features that we need to differentiate or, or be different or, and, and so, yeah, that’s important. Now, getting back to your question again. I think it is vitally important that people from the product team are still involved also in all the feedback that you get from sales conversations, marketing experiments, and even the early discovery phase of the product. Because if that is not there, you can never have a proper interaction between customer development and product development. And that is, I think, the most important thing. You know, to have a continuous sort of feedback loop from the two. And that also goes the other way around, right? Because if the product development team has the feeling that they need to create something that is impossible to do, you also have a big problem. So the customer development team can have. Perfect ideas. They can, they can, they can get all the feedback that they want of something that a customer wants. But if it’s, you know, if you’re not able to actually build that, that is also a situation where you don’t want to be in there. So, you know, it needs to be a continuous feedback loop from one part of the team to the other part of the team.
Adam Chen: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I love you’ve hit on this a couple of times about, you know, what I hear is you’re bringing all the different stakeholder groups together, right? You’re trying to get them all on the same page. And, you know, I mentioned before, you’re pretty prolific as far as writing and kind of putting yourself out there. I’m curious if you can speak a little bit to your goals and who you’re trying to reach, because what I’m hearing as a theme of everything that you’re saying is, You know, it might be painted in this guise of innovation and consulting, but really you’re educating people. You’re getting to think differently, you’re seeing different worlds. So do you think of yourself as an educator or, you know, what’s your goal, I guess, with your blog and these other various outlets that you have?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: So let me first go back to why we are called BW Ventures. It stands for basically Blue Will Ventures. And eight years ago when we started, everyone wanted to create the next unicorn. And I always thought that was a sort of flaw in that idea because the idea of creating a unicorn is basically you’re going to drive on what the latest investor puts as a value to your company. And in my opinion, then you’re still creating a sort of myth or, or in the worst cases, and this is quite, quite a contrarian view, but in the worst cases, you’re almost creating a sort of pyramid scheme, because it’s investor after investor after investor, right. And also people in the in the enterprise world started to think that about the idea of creating a new unicorn and what i basically wanted to wanted to do is if you really look at that there’s a lot of resources burned on stuff that is never going to fly because there is not an early business model that has been proven. Let’s pick Twitter for an example here. I mean, they’re still struggling to find an actual business model that can pay for all the costs that they’re making. And what I really think if you’re just, you know, look at business, what is the essence of business? You put resources into a system. These resources create value and you should get money out of that system, right? To fuel it back and create more impactful things. And sometimes I had the feeling that people forgot about that, right? To create a sustainable model. That is why we say we don’t create unicorns, we breed blue whales. Why blue whales? Blue whales is, it’s the biggest animal in the world. It’s the fastest growing animal in the world, but it’s not a myth. They’re a dying species, but it’s not a myth. Now, who am I trying to get to? I’m trying to get or write for corporate leaders that understand that they need to create value, but have a hard time understanding the fuzzy process of innovation. And the fuzzy process of innovation for me is the early stage, the growth phase, and even the M&A part. So buying potential companies in the market that you buy for innovation purposes, right? To grow your portfolio. And these are the people that I write for, that I do, you know, that I basically preach the frameworks and the way of thinking that we have. To ultimately, well, on one hand, I’m a firm believer of sharing as much knowledge as I can. And the ones that really want to dive into, you know, they can, they can email us, they can, they can contact us to actually help them in practice. But the main goal is to, you know, to share as much knowledge as we, as we can, because we’re also on a journey to learn more and more and more, right. There’s lots more to learn also for us.
Adam Chen: Absolutely. Our work is never done. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you, uh, you know, maybe a trending topic question here, but, um, how do you think about AI and how does it play into the process or how might it affect the process moving forward?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Yeah. Very good question. I think like everyone, I’m still trying to wrap my head around, uh, around the answer. First things first, I’m always a bit. hesitant if it comes to new technologies. We all know the hype cycle around blockchain, for example, everyone thought it was going to change everything. We’re like three or four years down the line right now. And yes, I still see valuable cases. With the case of AI, I actually really think that it’s going to make a huge impact. And I can already see that in my day-to-day work. I think I’ve got chat GPT open all day long. And it’s kind of interesting because there is one other thing that. I don’t even think a lot of people noticed, but the moment that you could start paying with your iPhone was also a very interesting moment if you look at innovation, because especially in the Netherlands, where I’m from, within two months, I saw almost everyone paying with their mobile phone instead of with a card. And it’s part of everyone’s daily habit right now. And if I look at what AI is doing, While we’re a bit more conscious of this than paying with the actual iPhone, but a lot of people use it in their daily habits already. And I think if you can see that and spot that in the early stages of a technology like that, it’s going to make a huge difference. And how is that going to affect our work? I think it will help us to understand customers quicker. and better. I don’t think it’s gonna change the innovation process itself because we cannot ask for creativity, right? It’s still people that need to be creative. It’s still us that needs to look at things from a different perspective. And what I think the next generation of generative AI, I think we’ll have way more data analysis in that combined with large language models. If we’re there, it’s going to make our job way easier. For example, interviews, you know, let them, let it transcribe it, let it analyze for the first time, then combine it with data sets that we have from, I don’t know, SAP or, or your, your accounting software or whatever. And then, you know, it’s going to be easier to come to insights, but it’s up to you as a head of innovation or as an innovation manager or someone that is trying to create new value propositions to come up with the real value propositions that will make a difference in the lives of your customer. And that I don’t see how AI is going to take over that, at least in the near future. I don’t know how that’s going to be in 15 to 20 years, because it’s still rapidly developing.
Adam Chen: Sure, sure. Once AGI is here, it’s a whole new world again. No, I love that. And I think your example of the payment solution, I think, you know, you’ve hit it on the head when behavior changes that quickly. That’s just, you know, you hit it on, it just makes sense. There is no question there are the value prop. So love that. Well, final question. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I’m sure we could go on for hours here, but unfortunately, we do have to stay within a certain time limit. But the last question I have for you is, let’s say there’s a budding entrepreneur out there or a DJ sitting in his bedroom producing his first beat. What advice would you give him or her on kind of the path forward as this world is constantly innovating, changing at an ever increasing pace? What advice could you give someone just starting out?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: I think the first thing that you should really reflect on is what are you best at? Scott Galloway actually says the same thing, which is kind of interesting. I’m not a very firm believer in chasing The dream that you have, yes, you should chase a dream, but first look at what you’re really good at and cultivate that, cultivate that skill set. And the moment you start cultivating that and you become very good at it, you start to love more and more and more what you do because you’re very good at it. Then the other thing is learn or teach yourself to be disciplined because In this full journey, you’re going to have a lot, a lot of resistance from market, from colleagues, from yourself even, but try to stay disciplined in what you try to do and build small habits because the moment you start to create small habits and continuously come back to these habits, results will come as a result. And the result itself should not be your goal. Almost everyone wants to, you know, have the result as a goal, but the discipline and the small habits to actually get there will, that will make the big difference.
Adam Chen: So reflective of your process focus at BW Ventures as well. Focus on the process, the results will come.
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Exactly. Yeah.
Adam Chen: I love it. I love it. Martin, thank you so much for coming on the show today. For our listeners, if they want to keep in touch with what you’re doing, where can they find you?
Martin Van Kroonenburg: Look for me at LinkedIn. That’s the best channel. I share, I think twice a week, I share some insights and posts. And I will also link all my LinkedIn to all the other blog, et cetera, that I have. So I think that’s the main channel to actually find me. And again, thanks for having me. I love to have this conversation. And as you mentioned, we could go on for hours. So yeah, great. Great to have this chat.