Museum of My Mistakes

I always wanted to start a business. Still, I went to university first, because that seemed the sensible choice. I studied how government works. Starting a business was not on the timetable.

Looking back, that was quite useful. It is also exactly why I am now sentenced to a life of grant advice. Spend years learning how governments think, and apparently you automatically become the guy who explains how to get their money.

With Bespaar Groen, roughly Save Green, we wanted to bring all the separate tools for making your home more sustainable together in one big tool. Technically, that went quite well. We hooked up a whole series of systems, and it actually worked.

What we did not manage was to win the trust of the people themselves. We underestimated how personal and tense people are about their homes. A house is not a calculation. It is your home.

The best example: people did not trust our calculation if it was finished too quickly. So we showed a slow loading bar, with complicated formulas scrolling past. The result had long been ready, but this way people believed it. Which made our most useful feature a little bar that was faking it.

What I learned: building the best product does not mean it will be used. It has to match how the customer experiences it. I also learned a lot about connecting systems, building software and working with the municipality, residents and installers. I still benefit from that every day.

I am still proud of the time I put into tapp.online. For about a year and a half I was part of it, with the idea that I would become more and more closely involved.

Give me a grant scheme and I will talk for an hour. Give me a cold-calling list and I go very quiet. As an advisor I sell just fine, but at tapp.online we really had to sell a product with software, and in that role I could not pull it off.

Lesson learned: know what you are good at, and be honest about what you are not. It saves everyone time.