Erik Seveke truly knows both sides of the business. He’s been one of the founders of product development company GlobalOrange and now is CEO of SimpledCard. A unique combination of business prepaid cards, a Card Management System and an easy to use expense app. SimpledCard helps you to maintain security and control over your business expenses while saving valuable time and energy for your core business. The company recently secured a fresh round of funding and is ready to conquer Europe.
Like his business partner from his first (real) company, Erik studied in Delft. After his studies, he joined ABN AMRO and acquired quite some experience in banking. After that, he started GlobalOrange, together with Yvo Gortemaker. About 10 years later ‘the SimpledCard’ opportunity arose. It was a great opportunity to show how a product company should be run and grown. And also, to get back into finance. Because that’s where his passions lay; the cutting edge of finance and technology.
Making an impact and converging fast
What drives Erik as an entrepreneur is making an impact by creating value for his customers. One of his key takeaways from almost two decades as an entrepreneur is not trying to sell everything to everybody. Try to converge, and do it as quickly as you can. And, know that the things that keep you up at night are the things that teach you the most.
Saasmore is delighted to announce that Expandior is joining the Saasmore group. Expandior brings extensive data science capabilities and joins Amsterdam Standard, YouSir, and GlobalOrange as the fourth label of the Saasmore Group.
Translate data into value and growth
Expandior is based in Amersfoort and helps organizations and professionals to translate data into value and sustainable growth through data driven training, consultancy and teams. This is more important than ever because the speed and complexity of the world we live in is increasing daily. The World Economic Forum has even labeled this as the start of “the fourth industrial revolution”. Driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence, this radical data-driven revolution is accompanied by the fast emergence of disruptive players in every market segment.
Kevin Ouwerkerk, co-founder of Expandior commented:
‘’With Expandior our mission is to fully unlock the value of your (complex) data and provide your professionals with the tools to become a data-driven winner. Therefore, we already provided company-wide training programs and business transformation services. Through the partnership with Saasmore, we’re not only adding extensive SaaS knowledge, but we can also offer our customers the scalability in digital product development that they’ve been looking for so much. Through training, transformation, and data-driven teams, they really can stay ahead of the competition in a world where rapid change is the only certainty.’’
Saasmore provides SaaS-entrepreneurs with full service digital product development services (GlobalOrange), dedicated development teams (Amsterdam Standard), and top-notch UX (You-Sir).
Leopold van Oosten, co-founder of Saasmore:
“Data is the new gold… well, it can be if you know what to do with it. Data is only valuable if you can unlock its full potential. And that is actually where we see that many of our clients (mostly Dutch SaaS start-ups and scale-ups) still struggle. This is mostly caused by the lack of basic capabilities among their product owners and the shortage of data scientists on the market. Expandior can now offer tremendous data-capabilities and an incredible training offering to Saasmore clients. I am very excited to be able to work with Kevin and Kelvin; they bring a great deal of experience and enthusiasm and their unstoppable drive is a great inspiration for us. I am confident that our experience can help them to handle their rapid growth well. With Expandior on board we are one step closer to becoming a truly holistic destination for SaaS-entrepreneurs!”
Add value where it matters most
SaaS development is complex and very demanding. It sometimes feels that you have to pay attention to everything at once; product management, UX, architecture, DevOps, team satisfaction, tools, methodologies, attracting and retaining specialists, code quality, etc.
Also, development can be very challenging. Implementing new features often takes too long, usability sometimes leaves much to be desired and you experience challenges in terms of scalability or even vendor lock-in. You see the causes of these problems in outdated architecture or a shortage of qualified specialists, but is this the case?
Nobody can pay attention to everything at once, and you probably don’t have to.
Effective development starts with a complete picture of the state of your product development, with actually understanding how “mature” the approach is and what you can best do to improve.
SaaS Development Maturity Model.
Our SaaS Development Maturity Model gives you a clear view of the actual causes of the challenges you are struggling with. The model allows you to assess all aspects that are important for digital product development to form a complete picture of your approach to product development. You will gain insight into the current state but also especially into what is needed to grow to the desired maturity. You’ll discover which aspects of development really need your attention and where you’ll create the most value most quickly.
The model is available for download, give it a try! If you prefer, you can schedule a 30-minute call with one of our PMs. We’ll fill it in together and see what areas of product development require your attention.
SaaS Development Maturity Model
The state of your product development
Effective product development starts with a complete picture of the state of your product development. Our SaaS Development Maturity Model gives you a clear view of the actual causes of the challenges you are struggling with. The model allows you to assess all aspects that are important for digital product development to form a complete picture of your approach to product development.
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Well, that was fun…
On the 1st of July, we set the stage for the first edition of our annual Padel Tournament. There was some healthy competition. But, it was more of an afternoon with SaaS people playing some games, having a beer, and getting to know each other. We ended the day with a barbeque and a lot of newTalking connections.
We’re looking forward to the next one, hope to see you there.
Entrepreneurship, some people are just born into it. They’re starters, builders, and jumpstart innovation. Jorrit is one of those people. Entrepreneurship is a part of his DNA. Jorrit Steinz is the Founder of ChanngelEngine.com, a platform that helps stores, brands, and distributors find millions of new customers by connecting them to the most prominent marketplaces on the internet.
Jorrit has been active in e-commerce for almost 20 years. He developed platforms for large and well-known retailers, small and family-owned businesses, and small fry that grew into big fish. After, quite literally, hundreds of webshops the desire rose to connect shops to big e-commerce platforms such as Amazon or Bol. And so, Channelengine came to be. ChannelEnige offers stores, brands, and distributors the possibility to push their products onto prominent marketplaces. It ensures that product information and stock levels are synchronized and up to date across various marketplaces, while orders are pushed back to your systems. With ChannelEngine you turn the internet’s most prominent marketplaces into your webshop.
ChannelEngine: Just plug in into your back-end system and sell anywhere.
ChannelEngine is growing, it’s growing hard. In 2018 the team consisted of 5 people, in 2019 it grew to 20 people. In 2020 ChannelEngine grew to over a hundred people. That number of people requires a new office. Want to guess when they signed the lease? Yep, just before COVID-19 hit the Netherlands. The new office wasn’t the only office Jorrit opened during lockdown, he also opened shop in New York, Dubai, Singapore and Melbourne. A truly global ecommerce network.
Dream big.
If you would take Jorrit’s advice, and we suggest you do, you dream big. And then we mean truly big. Bigger than you can imagine. Your product can grow a lot faster than you imagined. Because that’s the beauty of SaaS, if you build it well it’s a global product right away. So dream big, but never lose your focus. Always keep your original plan in mind.
Go for it.