I know Rick & Robbin personally, so this conversation was an opportunity to get to know them better. I really wanted to share their story.

The first time we met was when they launched their first ‘Build Night’.

I remember finding their event on Luma, and their ask was really simple: bring a personal project, work on it, and show it to a room full of strangers.

Frankly, I was quite amazed at how laidback and conversational the event was. Everyone was curious and genuinely enthusiastic.

I never felt any pressure to perform, just excitement to share with others what I’d been working on. So I loved the idea, and I kept coming back.

In hindsight, it’s crazy to have seen first-hand how the community has grown. Back then, we were with only 15 people. Today, 100+ builders sign up to their monthly events from DAY42 at venues like Mollie.

All because they just started.

💌 A conversation with Rick & Robbin

Robbin: For me, I think it got serious during COVID-19, when I was 20 years old. I was really bored and doing some freelance things here and there, so I started at my parents’ house, in my tiny bedroom.

My first big serious client was a solar panel company from the US. They were really happy with me, so I got a lot of projects I did next to my studies.

At some point, I started getting good results with it, which made me want to take it to the next level. So I made it my full-time job, and Future Ready Design was born as an agency.

I’ve always loved creating things. I studied mechanical engineering for two years and then dropped out to start studying digital interactive design. But as a child, I wanted to become an inventor like Willie Wortel.

First, I began with website building, but after some time, I started telling some of my first clients that I also did apps and software. One day, one of them suggested: “I have this school that’s looking for software for a problem they have”.

Turns out, it was actually my old high school.

They wanted to make our school more inclusive, so I created a tool for them. And later they offered: “why don’t you turn this into a company or product? We don’t have any commercial interest and we’d celebrate it if other schools also used it”. So this was my first venture – Crelo.

I started my second venture called Rebell later on – a find & match platform for internship recruitment. It failed, but I learned a lot from it. That was the moment I realized:

“Hey, I really enjoy building my own things”.

I wasn’t enjoying as much client work anymore, so I turned Future Ready from an agency into a venture studio. That’s what I’ve been working on for the past two years, and I’m still doing it because I really enjoy building.

Now, I’m currently building DAY42 & European Builders with Rick on the side, as well as Rivilo – my latest venture from Future Ready.

Rick: When I was at school, I was kind of bored and not challenged by my work at school, so I was learning all the things I could do with YouTube by myself.

Once, I came home from school and told my mom I wanted to make something different. And she said: “Why don’t you just start for yourself?” That’s where the whole ‘just do it’ came from.

I have a long history with creativity. In my first internship, I remember sitting in the car with my boss, and he asked: “So Rick, do you know a little bit about HTML and CSS?”. I honestly didn’t have a clue what he was talking about back when I was 17.

So the next week, I started diving into the world of websites, designing them and building them with Photoshop.

After my MBO, I started looking for other schools, but I thought I didn’t need any theoretical things to learn how to build. So I just went on with my freelance life with my no-code studio, Uncode and started the No-Code Community in the Netherlands (1500+ members).

I’ve always had a little knob for bringing people together, so right after Covid, my friend Hidde brought me to Young Creators – the biggest community for young entrepreneurs in The Netherlands. This was the community I wish I knew while I was studying, basically a classroom full of like-minded people.

I eventually grew into the board, learned how to organize events and rebuilt the community.

That’s how I learned. Just by doing them.

After 4 years of volunteering, I had to quit Young Creators, to fully focus on DAY42 and RunClubs.nl. Besides these adventures and endless new ideas, I still have to pay my rent by doing client work.

Rick: Well, boredom is also the lack of feeling satisfied with what you’re doing. For me – or my ADHD I guess – it’s like: “Okay, I know how to build this now. What’s my next challenge?”.

Robbin: It’s a real challenge. I constantly needed it in school as well, and just got bored. I think it’s why this lifestyle makes us happy.

Rick: Every project that’s easy is not fun for me (or not fun enough), because there’s not a part of it that’s new. At this moment, I feel like there’s nothing I can’t build. And that gives me superpowers. Like being a super builder.

Robbin: Reflecting back on it, I have a lot of friends that started entrepreneurship 5-6 years ago, and they stopped because it didn’t work out and there were some setbacks.

I’ve also had huge setbacks, but the reason why I didn’t go 9-5 is because, for me, it never felt like an option.

Rick: Even if somebody asks you to be a CTO, you have to quit something you’re currently building, and that’s hard when you don’t really want to.

Robbin: Yeah. I think we’ve both had situations where we got a good offer from a company where we could do what we’re doing, but inside a company – and get paid really well for it. But I’m fully convinced that I’ll never do that. It’s not who I am.

Rick: I once spoke with my bookkeeper and she said: “I don’t know how you keep your head above the water, but you’re still smiling like always”. And I was like:

“Yeah, I’m pretty good at just winging it”.

I’ve been living in an old van for 8+ months, and when you’re used to everything breaking down all the time, you get really good at seeing problems coming, and staying calm when shit hits the van haha.

Robbin: I must say, in your late 20s, it does get more difficult. You see more and more people around you having really good benefits and have a lot of certainty.

I recently had to move, but I couldn’t get any place because of the selection criteria as I’m an entrepreneur. I actually had the money to pay the rent, but I just wouldn’t get it.

Then, you get a message from a friend saying “I just bought a house”. Those are the moments where it can get really hard. You actually start doubting.

Rick: You start saying:

But the thing is, our ambition is too strong to fit in a normal life. It’s also hard to explain to people what we want to achieve as well.

We envision that we help a lot of aspiring founders by starting and growing their ideas. Over the years, we want to scale the European ecosystem from the bottom up.

Robbin: Rick and I did this builder program in San Francisco – “Buildspace“ – back in 2024.

At the time, I was already missing something around community building in my work. I like the creative process of building things, but it can also be very lonely. So when I joined the program, it felt like “hey, this could be the moment”.

Rick: Robbin and I were both fans of the program. It had this weird energy, which I’d never felt before. It was the builder energy.

We stayed in touch on Twitter and gave each other feedback during the program But we only connected on the idea later: We both wanted to do something similar in Europe, not just in San Francisco.

Robbin: Just like millions of others in Europe, we really love creating, and therefore building. So I also started telling more people about it, and they were really enthusiastic, but we didn’t have anything yet.

I remember I got connected to an investor who was quite plugged into the tech scene in Amsterdam, and I got very excited and optimistic. I thought: “The idea is amazing, of course he’s going to love it”.

But then, he burned it to the ground, and I started feeling quite demotivated.

Still, I wanted to give it a try. So I texted Rick: “Hey, I have some ideas, come over”. And he got super excited. Almost instantly.

Rick: When Robbin invited me to his office, I was also struggling with the idea in my head. I already had a lot going on working at Young Creators, so I needed to get a feeling on the problem first.

After I saw what he had really worked on, I was like “yeah, I’m convinced – we need this”. I was in tunnel vision. This was before the AI hype – before building became the normal terms today. Now, everyone can be a builder. But back then, I don’t feel the majority was ready for it yet.

Robbin: I’ve had a lot of moments in my life where I had this idea, and I kept working on it, but my environment was not seeing it yet.

This would make me feel sad, but it can also become fuel. That one call I had with the investor, it definitely gave me fuel. I was fired up for 3 weeks.

Rick: Also with RunClubs.nl. People aren’t seeing my vision of the platform yet, but once it goes global, it goes global.

Robbin: Yeah, it’s a nice example of how these sort of demotivating experiences can actually also turn into positive motivation.

Rick: In Europe, things have started moving out more politically, and more people are now trying to see what’s needed and build something that’s European first.

I’ve been a builder for nine years – website builder first –, but I’ve hosted maybe 100 - 150 events. And I’ve NEVER had so much positive feedback on one event I’ve ever organized.

This made me think:

“Okay, we’re on the right track at the moment. How do we keep this momentum? How are we going to make this even bigger without losing our “non-tech bro” soul?”

Robbin: It definitely feels like validation for us. But this happened only in a couple of months. I think what gives me the most validation is just the responses we get from people.

After every ‘Build Night’, everyone is in this positive energy and feels motivated. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we can protect this environment.

Robbin:

Rick: And people underestimate the power of the group: being in the same room with like-minded people is like having a special class for people like you.

We had a 63-year-old going to one of our events, and he was like “I’ve never been so like in my place. I feel lonely a lot of times, but I felt normal again”. It was really nice to see.

Robbin: In Europe, it’s also a cultural problem we have, but we don’t embrace failure as a way to move forward. We don’t have a crazy amount of unicorns compared to the US, and this comes down to being more risk seeking and being able to dream and think bigger.

This is also what we’re trying to shape within our community: creating this culture. It’s super cool to see that people are already motivating each other. They’re sharing: “oh, that’s so cool!”. And when something doesn’t work out: “all right, what’s the next thing you’ll work on?”.

One of our community members, Teije, has tried 5 different things, but he keeps going. And that’s amazing. Most people I meet, they just try one thing and get demotivated.

Rick: Everybody I speak to is doubting about something to do or not to do. My mom used to always tell me “doe het dan”, which means “just do it” in Dutch. So I just do things. This is what we’re trying to give other people: surrounding yourself with people who already have done it.

Robbin: Yeah, we concluded that early on, it’s not necessarily about that your idea becomes successful.

The experience that you get when you’re creating in the end will have a long-term positive effect.

Rick: This is why we don’t just wanna host hackathons. We just want to host build nights that are proactively looking at what you’re up against and what’s holding you back. We’re trying to share our own lessons, and from founders outside the community as well.

If we tell a story we’ve experienced ourselves, it’s way more valuable for a 20-year-old who’s trying to build something than someone who’s 20 years older.

Robbin: I think so too. Oftentimes, you will learn way more from someone who’s just one step ahead than someone who’s 10 or 20.

Robbin: I’ve noticed older generations come from a different time when performance and competitiveness were normalized, so they believe this is the way to get the best performers and performance.

The current generation is looking at things rather differently. They’re seeking an environment in which they feel comfortable and safe, and then, they will thrive in it.

Rick: This is what we’re trying to do: unlocking their potential by feeling in a safe builder space. If you fall down with each other you feel like you’re not falling alone.

Every Build Night is a little sprint where we support you to get to the finish line. We try to push you forward step by step, no matter which kilometer you’re on.

💌 A final note

Rick & Robbin are genuinely enthusiastic people (and true amateurs at heart).

They’re also one of the reasons why I overcame my decision paralysis from writing in public. So this is my way of giving back to them.

Stories like Rick & Robbin’s already exist. We just don’t hear about them enough.

It’s clear to me why they do what they do. It’s why they founded DAY42 & European Builders. In their own words:

💌 About 150 Names

150 Names is a human-first project. It’s a series of conversations with professionals who have built careers pursuing the things that they love.

The mission is to create visibility for these stories of conviction and craftsmanship.

Here, you’ll read interviews with people under 30 who haven’t just created impact in their fields, but who’ve done it as a result of their conviction and choices.

When everything points to cynicism, their collection of experiences can mean the world to someone out there.

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💌 Nº001: Zara Zaman | Keyword: Serendipity | Est. time: 8 min.

You only meet a handful of people who make you feel something: a sense of joy when speaking about their work.

Zara is one of them.

I found her through her JoyTech manifesto on Substack. Her title: “We’ve optimised ourselves into loneliness”.

Four years without social media, I couldn’t agree more.

Deep down the rabbit hole, I read she’d just joined 222 – weeks right after a good friend of mine from the US mentioned the app during his visit.

Unlike social media, their startup brings together strangers in person, and curates experiences for them to create spontaneous and meaningful interactions.

Lo and behold, a month later, we’re sitting together, talking about careers, conviction and passion.

A series of unplanned, fortunate discoveries.

The same serendipity she helps to build in action.

💌 A conversation with Zara

Funnily enough, I actually did this exercise last year. I had to give a talk about myself - which is always difficult - so I asked my closest friends to describe me in one sentence.

I think your friends – the people that you spend the most time with – are most likely the best judge of your character.

A very dear friend of mine said “incredibly interesting and interested”. I loved that one - I’m someone who’s very curious about people and ideas.

A month ago, I joined 222, a Series A social experience startup, building the infrastructure for more IRL human connection. We help people form, deepen, and maintain the relationships that matter most.

When I told my friends, I thought it was a good sign that they all proclaimed this sounds like the perfect fit for me, because the loneliness and disconnection crisis facing the world today is a topic I could talk about for hours.

As a languages major, there was never an obvious career path I thought about and actively targeted. In my final year of university, I co-founded a company called Edventure, which was a pan-European university venture builder.

We wanted to bring more people on campus into the world of startups and entrepreneurship, and teach students and PhDs how to build a business or commercialise their research. To many around me, it didn’t make sense that I was focusing on building this instead of my degree, which honestly felt more like a side project to me at the time. But I’m really glad I did because it opened up so many doors.

When it came to the time where we were all applying for our first job, I found myself choosing between a few startups and one of the Big Three consulting firms. At the time, people thought I was crazy not to take the consulting offer. It was the kind of opportunity people don’t say no to, given the name and network.

Perhaps on paper, it didn’t make sense. But I knew I needed to work on problems that made me feel excited to tackle them every day.

I remember thinking to myself, I would have relatively little say over what project I would be assigned to, and could very well end up working on a project to sell more toilet paper for Unilever.

The vision didn’t quite appeal to me, and I ended up choosing an early-stage venture capital fund investing in the future of learning and work. For me, it was really about trusting this feeling of:

“Will this be something I’m excited to do every day?”

It was.

If I look at my career, none of it was planned.

People tend to look at it and assume I built a venture builder, used it to get into VC, and then moved to a venture-backed startup.

Sounds like a smooth arc, but it really was not.

I’d never heard of venture capital when I was in school and even in university, when I was running the incubator, I always felt that it wasn’t for people from my background.

The way I ended up in a VC - as with most of my best moves in life - was very serendipitous. I was deliberating between joining some edtech startups, and I ended up getting on very well with the person who I was speaking to in one of them.

She told me:

“Hey, before you make a decision, there’s someone you should meet. He’s super smart, asks great questions, happens to be hiring. I know you’re not interested in VC, but just meet him and get his perspective on the companies you’re considering.”

So I went on to meet with him, and in that meeting, he convinced me to join his fund instead.

All the partners were children of immigrants, refugees or working-class parents for whom education had been transformational. They wanted to invest in technologies that made other people’s paths less reliant on luck, and democratise access to opportunities like the ones they’d had. It felt unlike the image I had of VC in my head, and resonated a lot with me personally.

My own parents grew up with very little, worked incredibly hard and got scholarships to study abroad, which changed their life. It meant I had vastly different access to education and opportunity when I grew up.

So I joined them.

In December, I wrote a manifesto on Substack for a category I called JoyTech, calling for more products designed to bring joy back into people’s lives instead of this relentless optimisation for speed and efficiency.

The piece came about from my frustration watching incredibly smart and talented people being sucked into jobs that not only bring them no joy or satisfaction, but also do not contribute meaningfully to the world.

In tech, I was seeing trillions of dollars - not to mention, the best minds - being squandered on questions like optimising grocery delivery times, creating more addictive social media feeds for teenagers or swarms of AI agents to manage your other AI agents.

It felt a real shame that there wasn’t more money and talent being poured into the tools trying to increase our life satisfaction and make people’s lives more joyful and connected. It was while writing the piece and looking for people doing this well that I came across 222. I found their approach incredibly thoughtful and aligned with how I was thinking about the space.

So, though the move came about very serendipitously, it was certainly conviction-led. I asked myself again:

“Will this be something I’m excited to do every day?”

And I’ll let you guess what the answer was.

I think serendipity will play a larger role in the future of work, where we see more non-linear and unconventional paths into and across careers.

Before joining 222, I wrote a manifesto about a problem I really, really cared about. That piece was a demonstration of how I see the world, and it was eventually what opened a door for me.

A lot of jobs in the future - whatever they may look like - will come down to creating something genuine, putting it out there, widening the net for serendipity and letting the right people find you. Or simply sending your work directly to the people that you want to get in front of.

The job market right now is especially challenging and evolving so quickly, which makes these alternative paths even more important. AI is making it incredibly easy to mass apply for jobs, and recruiters are drowning in AI-generated applications that all read the same.

I’ve seen more and more companies hiring on the basis of ‘show me how you think about this problem’ rather than credentials. In the past, certain credentials almost guaranteed you a job. Now, that’s no longer a guarantee - and the people who are willing to assert agency and put their ideas out into the world will have a massive advantage.

That becomes way more valuable than a polished CV.

It’s both; design and discovery simultaneously.

You discover what you care about. It’s not something we can manufacture.

But figuring this out in a way that translates into a viable career takes a lot of work. It’s finding this Ikigai – the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what people will pay you for, and what the world needs.

Most people haven’t done that work. Frankly, I don’t think we give them enough tools or encouragement to do it. There’s also a lot of messaging around careers as something you only do to make money. And if you like what you do, you’re kind of a unicorn.

Someone had to explain to me recently what a ‘Sunday scaries’ meant because I’d never felt that.

I recognise that it’s an immense privilege to get to work on what you love with people you love, and many people need to work simply to pay the bills. But I think it’s very dangerous to tell folks (especially young people) that this is just normal - in fact, it’s all that’s ever possible - and you shouldn’t expect anything more.

When it comes to practical architecture, careers do need some design.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is engineering serendipity. Being deliberate about which rooms you walk into, who you spend time with, which conversations you say yes to, and what you put out there in public.

I’ve never been a fan of these 5 to 10-year career plans. I think life has a really funny way of throwing you curve balls when you make too specific of a plan - and I’ve seen a lot of people be completely de-centred when things did not go accordingly to their plan.

Even if you have a plan, keeping an open mind and letting life surprise you is important.

For me, every significant career change has been a series of writing about what I believe in and doing something I really care about, which led to a conversation I didn’t expect, which ultimately led to an opportunity I could never have planned for.

This is a really important question. But it’s not generational in the sense of Gen Z or millennials. It’s a question that belongs to everyone who is watching technology reshape every dimension of human life right now.

What would it take?

1/ We need more visibility, to show more people who choose work that prioritises what they care about deeply. This is why I think this project is so important.

2/ We need the infrastructure.

It ’s not enough to tell people to think about their passions and interests. You also need the economic and social scaffolding that makes it viable. That could be investors willing to back companies in these spaces and workplaces that value what you create, not just how many hours you’ve logged in.

3/ We should also be more honest about the cost of optimising for the wrong things.

Think of the loneliness epidemic, the burnout crisis, this quiet depression among visibly successful people who sit in these beautiful apartments, have the greatest jobs, and still, they can’t really explain why they aren’t happy.

We’re sending people in the wrong direction. And these aren’t individual failures but systemic design flaws. One of the reasons people don’t end up working on things they love, even when they have the option, is that there’s a real trade-off. It definitely takes a kind of courage that doesn’t get talked about enough to do something different to everyone else.

4/ We don’t teach people enough how to think for themselves, or how to find what brings them joy. Or worse, they don’t think these questions even matter.

Until we do, we’ll keep producing people who are very good at climbing ladders that are leaning against the wrong wall.

💌 A final note

Talking with Zara made me think about how we create opportunities for ourselves.

Serendipity may have brought us about. But to be in the right place at the right time, sometimes all it takes is showing up enough times to accelerate your chances.

Stories like Zara's already exist. We just don't hear about them enough.

It’s clear to me why Zara does what she does. It’s why she joined 222.

In her own words:

💌 About 150 Names

150 Names is a human-first project. It’s a series of conversations with professionals who have built careers pursuing the things that they love.

The mission is to create visibility for these stories of conviction and craftsmanship.

Here, you’ll read interviews with people under 30 who haven’t just created impact in their fields, but who’ve done it as a result of their conviction and choices.

When everything points to cynicism, their collection of experiences can mean the world to someone out there.

It’s a good analogy when it comes to creating because, it’s never been easier to make things that are thin online (i.e. with no transcendence). These applies to content, products, or anything that’s quick and forgettable, but hasn’t been built with care to last.

I’ve been thinking for a while what would be that something ‘heavy’ for me to make. It started with writing a manifesto on a problem I really care about: why the world needs more amateurs – more people doing things for the love of it.

A big reason for making it is because, this year, I’ve met the same people I was writing about.

It’s made a huge difference to be around genuinely enthusiastic and action-oriented people, who also happen to be creating community and working on projects they genuinely care about.

Now, I would like for the same thinking I wrote in the piece to come to life.

That passion project is 150 Names.

A hundred and fifty names

Heavy things take time to build. So when going through the many names for this project, I wanted to make sure the choice felt very intentional.

150 comes from Dunbar’s number.

This number is not to be taken as a hard science, but it points to something we seem to have forgotten: for us to have meaningful relationships, we need to maintain them, and it’s natural for them to be limited in number.

The issue with numbers is, when left alone, they tend to dehumanise us. So, I liked how ‘Names’ gently restored this balance.

Writers like Dale Carnegie poured years of thinking about human relationships into a useful principle:

Our names have always carried identity, heritage and intention. They remind us that our essence is to be relational. Usually, they’re also the first thing we hear from someone before we figure out if we want to give them our trust.

The irony is, Dale wrote this many years before the internet.

Little did he know our names would later become a mail merge field we’d use as growth tactics to boost open rates.

This is one of the many expressions of how we’ve lost our personal touch in the name of scale and efficiency. And in doing so, we’ve also stripped away the story and person behind it.

This calls for a counterbalance.

The current mission

150 Names is my small contribution to give the internet part of its soul back.

I want to give a voice and platform to the same ‘amateurs’ I wrote about, who haven’t just reconnected with the original sense of the word, but also reached a breakthrough in the process.

These are authentic perspectives and experiences that do exist. They’re just obscured or deeply underserved online. So the focus will be on the problem I’ve been obsessed with the most:

At its core, 150 Names will always appeal to lovers of craft.

The current mission is to create visibility for stories of conviction and craftsmanship.

As an ‘amateur’ myself, I’m leaning into my strengths and doing what I love most: have conversations with interesting people, and give them the space to share their own personal origins and mythologies.

So I’ll share a series of curated conversations with professionals under 30, who haven’t just created impact in their fields, but who’ve done it as a result of their conviction and choices.

I had a first conversation last week.

It was with someone who’s solving a problem that’s very relevant now: a tech startup building meaningful connection in real life. I’m already excited to share it next week.

There are people out there who are building careers around things that they love. And I’d love to help more people see this is the case.

If this can make one person feel less alone in their choices, or give one reader permission to take their own path seriously, this project is 100% worth it.