Well, helloooo there. I’m officially occupying pomtidom.com from now on. Ain’t that a blessing?!
What’s new? Met some cool people, got disappointed in some others and will start the initial build of the website for Cradle of Design.
Disappointment, good start for a story, as I’ll always look for improvement, came from my day today at the Dutch Entrepreneur Week opening. You hear a lot about the weird kind of people entrepreneurs are, might be true, might not be, probably depends from who’s side you’re looking at it. But the thing is, especially when you look at young entrepreneurs, is that it’s not too easy to get your funding, administrational guidance, government policy introduction when you are ‘fast paced’ (or have a short-attention span 
).
The thing is; (here comes the disappointment) who do you look for? I’d go for governmental guidance or semi-governmental guidance as a first guess. But.. Except for the Dutch KVK, there’s little to be found. Google gives you shit-loads of companies who will be happy as to help you out, against a price or some kind of other endorsement in the form of (profitable) business. There are some initiatives around the world for young over-energised tornado’s like myself (Sprout Challengerday or TwentyTwenty), but I mean, the fact that 2020 doesn’t even have an explanatory website already shows how much they are connected to the world of experience of the average 20-something year old.
So I wonder, when the director of Enterprise of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (Drs. Kinke Zonneveld) starts talking about guiding young ‘star’ entrepreneurs to foreign organisations (I believe he was talking about the Kauffman Institute), helping them further into the business world, why he thinks they would need the governments’ help in such an undertaking.
His answer was as followed: “I’ve been hearing this today a couple of times today from you young people, and I think I should tell you that if you think you don’t need help, you are not a real entrepreneur. You can find everything you need to know with 3 clicks on Google.” (RESULT OF THAT TEST in Dutch; Starting Entrepreneur HELP, there’s no governmental institution saying, ey come on over here and get your unbiased, non-profit kind of information) He continued his answer but I stopped listening seeing the fact that this was the 5th time I heard governmental officials referring to young entrepreneurs as “young guys, the kid with an idea etc. My point is; Where the fuck do these people think they are contributing to promoting young entrepreneurship with this kind of stigmatising, de-motivational and authoritarian kind of approach?!
There seems to be no, non-what-so-ever link between what these people think and what the future of our country (and thus their pension in this case), want, need or look for to start their own company.
The world’s changing, so should these kind of organisations and the people that work for them.
Funny thing is, I was talking to this guy afterwards (young entrepreneur) who after my little blaze said, “I’d never knock on the government’s door if I’d be in need of help.” Which is exactly the problem the government would like to solve (or so they say). So maybe, just MAYBE, they should open up to suggestions from youth, which is even kind enough of saying, hey, you know, maybe this is an idea, free of charge and all.
I’m happy I’ve got my own little group of people around me. =) (Herbert, Dick, Hans) Thanks for saving me the endless frustration of having to work with government institutions or officials. =)
Let’s go kick some institutional ass.
May you all be in love and peace.
Len
