You can contact me via email or by reaching out on LinkedIn.

I am the sole proprietor of a business registered under the name friso.lol. A battle tested one-man army for growing and scaling software technology ventures. I combine deep technical skill, business acumen, data savviness, and common sense to help clients successfully execute their go to market strategies. I am a former CTO and co-founder in both product and consulting businesses.

My focus is on high impact roles at starting or scaling software product ventures with appropriate (corporate) backing. I excel in roles where versatility is rewarded. I often find myself working out budgets to get a runway projection, setting up hosting for a new company website, and managing a hiring funnel, while evolving technology vision on the same day.

What Others Are Saying

"Friso's engagement was key to HATCH’s go to market. Combining technical leadership with a business mindset, he helped the team to bring our business to a next level."

-- A-C Polet, SVP of PVH Digital Ventures (HATCH & STITCH)

PVH Digital Ventures is the venture arm of PVH Corporation Europe, the business behind leading apparel brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

"Friso was instrumental in helping us to develop the strategy and processes for building our Machine Learning and Data Science team in the BEAT Amsterdam Hub. Thanks to his unique combination of broad technological and organizational experience. With his assistance, we were able to effectively engage the local Data Science community and start building our engineering brand presence there. We also had a lot of fun during this process!"

-- Thanassis Bantios, VP of Engineering of BEAT

BEAT is a ride hailing scaleup who have just launched an engineering hub in Amsterdam to land their product teams for the machine learning heavy fraud, dispatch, and dynamic pricing domains.

"Friso has helped me tremendously with both technical and business questions. His in-depth knowledge about technical topics and on scaling development teams is very valuable."

-- Jan van der Vegt, CEO of Cubonacci

Cubonacci is an exciting software startup building a Machine Learning Lifecycle Management solution. Cubonacci enables enterprise grade machine learning.

"Often getting CTO input when you don't have a permanent CTO can be more hit and miss than an under 5 football match, however - Friso was excellent. Took time to understand our stack, and provided valuable insights and a number of specific avenues to go away investigate and appraise. Really appreciated Friso's methodological approach and desire not to rip up the playbook but to look at where the biggest and best gains could or should be made."

-- Glyn Blaize, Founder at Northstar Innovation Group

Northstar Innovation Group is bringing technology and a data driven approach to people operations through their two unique products.

"Friso's knowledge and experience in the Dutch data science market has provided some extremely valuable information for our consultancy's scaling efforts. Also the process itself has been highly enjoyable, big up!"

-- Mikko Pajulahti, Director at Fourkind Amsterdam

Fourkind deliver bespoke management consulting for businesses looking to improve through data science and AI.

Recent Engagements

Here is a selection of recent engagements for your review.

Shackle — the greatest hotel app on the planet

Shackle is a hospitality tech business founded by Mark Abraham, and backed by Frontline Ventures.

Shackle improves hotel guests' lives by removing the in-person check-in procedure at the front desk, and providing a mobile room key on a guest's smart phone by leveraging bluetooth enabled door locks common in today's hotels. Shackle helps hotels generate revenue by creating a direct digital channel to the customer, providing opportunity for upsell of goods and services.

At Shackle, I acted as interim Chief Technology Officer and member of the leadership team leading up to preparation for VC backed seed funding. Shortly after a permanent replacement was recruited and hired for the role, a $5.5m funding round led by Frontline Ventures was secured.

I delivered the following activities and outcomes:

• From zero lines of code written to product go live at the launching customer hotel in six months.
• Sunset existing relationship with under-delivering third party development shop.
• Hire and onboard an engineering team of 7 over the course of 8 weeks (freelance and on staff).
• Establish a architecture for quick iteration on Shackle's integration strategy and implementation.
• Prepare for tech due diligence as part of fund raising.
• Work with leadership team to prepare for funding round, ultimately resulting in a $5.5m round led by Frontline Ventures.

HATCH

HATCH is a software venture exclusively owned by PVH Corporation, the business behind popular fashion brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

HATCH was founded as a independent business to drive commercialisation of Tommy Hilfiger's industry leading Digital Showroom concept as a standalone SaaS product.

As HATCH' interim Head of Technology and member of the leadership team, I delivered the following activities and outcomes:

• Establish a culture of aggressively prioritising activities with go-to-market impact over satisfying internal vanity goals.
• Prepare, cook, and host a high quality end of year dinner for 32 employees and partners (I believe versatility is one of the most underrated qualities for startup employees).
• Lay down a technology vision and roadmap balancing short term product viability and near term platform foundation.
• Draft and prototype a protocol for dynamically configured multi-device computing (based on gRPC, implemented in Python, if you were curious).
• Align road map initiatives with go-to-market timeline.
• Guide leadership to establish Objectives and Key Results (OKR) for 2020 to drive the business as well as manage meaningful stakeholder reporting.
• Create deeper understanding among development team of business goals to improve product delivery.
• Guide the leadership team in creating and delivering focused investor updates.
• Bootstrapped the process for detailed budget and business case scenarios to better project runway, revenue, and valuation.
• Day to day technology leadership for development team.

BEAT

BEAT is a ride hailing scaleup who have just set up an engineering hub in Amsterdam to land their product teams for the machine learning heavy fraud, dispatch, and dynamic pricing domains.

For BEAT, I closely collaborated with the Director of Engineering for the Amsterdam Hub to bootstrap the hiring and recruitment for machine learning and data science roles in the Amsterdam market. I delivered the following activities and outcomes:

• Detailed descriptions and criteria for ML roles in BEAT engineering, used for internal alignment on the hiring procedures.
• Production of hiring copy, including job descriptions.
• Exploration of channels for lead generation, including extensive utilisation of my existing network in the data science and machine learning communities.
• Analysis of data acquired through web scraping to identify relevant communities and their activity to optimise lead generation.
• Leading multiple workshops on hiring and assessing for machine learning and data science roles.

Speaking Engagements

Public speaking is not one of my commercial activities, hence there is no charge. When travel and / or lodging are required, it is generally appreciated to be compensated for that though.

I can be approached for any speaking engagement where there is a good match with the audience and I will have fun being there. I arbitrarily decide case by case whether I want to speak at an event.

Free Advice

You have perhaps discovered through my LinkedIn profile that I am available for free advice. This service is mostly available to my connections; feel free to send me message on LinkedIn for inquiries.

Business Details

These are the business and payment details that you will also find on invoices:

friso.lol
KvK number: 75428474
IBAN: NL20 INGB 0008 6998 81
VAT ID: NL001604993B85