A scale-up here is a startup there

And now that you have been working with entrepreneurs for quite some years here, or especially at Upstream, of course, that's all about entrepreneurship.

What's your general take about entrepreneurship in Rotterdam and the city?

I think entrepreneurship is not dependent on the city.

And I think what I hear from founders especially is that they ask us to stop promoting entrepreneurship as this very cool nice thing that you do because it is actually a lot of work so even though Rotterdam I still believe is a great place to build a company but even though there are so many different support organizations so many different partners ready to lend a hand it's still really tough work to build a company that lasts, to bring the people together.

So it's a great place to do it.

But just because you are in the nice place doesn't mean that it becomes much, much easier.

Because you do hear that a lot online, right? You have a lot of this like hustler culture, right? And people saying, oh, yeah, you know, I can be an entrepreneur.

I can work from everywhere.

I can do whatever I want.

But then what people don't talk about is that some people have to work you know, like 60 or 80 hours instead of 40 to then earn the same amount or even less than you can earn like in a normal nine to five job, right?

No, exactly.

And that's, of course, being your own boss gives so many different benefits.

But at the same time, it is very hard work.

As your team scales or just grows, other people are becoming dependent on you.

So it is a lot of work.

Probably the hours don't really...

You can't even count them because all of the thoughts that you have probably in the middle of the night.

I hope people are managing... to still keep the work-life balance.

But I also know a lot of people that unfortunately in the first years of building a company definitely have quite challenges on that end.