Thijl Klerkx
Founder, Thijl.nl
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Thijl Klerkx is a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. At the age of 12 Thijl started a webhosting company which he sold at the age of 13. After this first entrepreneurial adventure Thijl started working on his current company which he started at 15. With help from an investor, Thijl started doing deliveries of organic groceries by cargo bike. Now, 5 years later, he is working on fine-tuning his business model and scale his delivery company. In addition to that, Thijl advises corporates like Randstad on the use of technology and the internet.
What was the biggest mistake you’ve done as an entrepreneur? What did you learn from it?
You do not want to know how many incidents come to mind. However, the biggest mistake was probably that after running my business for about a year I thought I knew exactly what needed to happen to make it grow faster and I spent a year fixing that issue. Only then I realized other underlying issues were the actual issue. So I basically spent a year on fixing an issue that did not need any fixing… So from now on I try to spend a little more time analyzing the situation.
What is the most critical phase in a startup’s lifecycle? How did you navigate the tides of this cycle with your own startup?
To me this would be the phase after launching but before scaling where you get the chance to use the feedback from your first customers to really improve your product and get it ready to scale. Many successful startups change their entire proposition in this phase. Efficiently using the feedback of your first customers is absolutely necessary to get your startup ready for successful scaling.
What does it take to build a great product and scale it across the world?
I have no real experience scaling startups across the world yet. However, I am personally a big believer in the fact that in most cases you should first take time to make your startup successful in your region, before scaling very big very fast. A good business model, hard work and a couple of good people are not enough to really scale across the world. You will have to create a fluid machine that launches your product in a very structured, efficient and uniform way.
