It was a bright sunny Tuesday morning in July when I was riding my bike on the way to my new job. Only two months back from an epic round-the-world trip and fully loaded with energy to be part of something revolutionary. The Amsterdam office was located in a traditional town house right in the middle of Silicon Canals. When I arrived at the stairs to the entrance I had to make my way through some orange, company branded, VANMOOF bikes that were blocking my way. I walked up the stairs and rang the intercom bell and somebody answered they would unlock the door. I had to push hard to open the heavy wooden door as I entered the impressive hallway with white-marble tiles and ornamental ceiling.

As I walked through the hallway I was greeted by the HR manager: “Welcome to PersonAd! Are you excited to rock the world of online media?” I smiled to her and enthusiastically nodded my head. “I’ll give you a quick tour of the office and will bring you your MacBook later together with some merchandise.”

When we walked through the different departments I was stared at by my new colleagues. After travelling solo for over a year I wasn’t used to getting so much attention and it made me feel special in a way. The desks the people were sitting at were made of glass and they had written on them with whiteboard markers. Out of a corner there was a Sonos device playing techno music and as a whole the space looked kind of messy. A clean desk policy was definitely not in place but that was made up for by the vibrant atmosphere and refrigerators filled with energy drinks and beers. Promptly located in the middle of a room there was standing a mini ping-pong table where two guys were playing on. After the HR manager guided me through the different rooms she asked me if I would like to have a cup of coffee. We went into the kitchen and she got me a double espresso from the coffee machine. Through the windows in the kitchen I could look out over the enormous garden at the back of the town house. I realised that my time of being a backpacker was over and that I should be lucky landing in such an exciting opportunity.

-

PersonAd was definitely one of the most promising and hottest startups in the Netherlands. It just got backed by a million-dollars series A funding and its client portfolio consisted of leading brands. In its first years it was nominated for plenty of awards, and it won several of them. PersonAd was founded by two Dutch men, Louis and Stan, a couple of years before I joined the company. They made money by showing personalized online advertisements for companies. Or, as how I put it to friends: “Those annoying banners you see when you’re checking the headlines at The Telegraph website”. By monitoring consumer internet behaviour with cookies, PersonAd used this data to personalize and display online ads on publisher websites. The way of generating and storage of this personal data was controversial though, especially in a country as the Netherlands where the protection of privacy is seen as a human right and the majority did not have a clue how this worked.

A couple of months before I started at PersonAd the Dutch Anti-Fraud agency (FIOD) accused PersonAd of tax evasion. Based on research this governmental organisation concluded that the way PersonAd was bookkeeping was fraudulent and they send out a press release stating this. The business and especially the image of PersonAd were under fire. As a response a rebranding had taken place and clients were reassured this was only a different viewpoint of the FIOD. PersonAd reacted in a publication that this was not true and that the FIOD made several mistakes in their research. The most loyal clients accepted this explanation although it severely damaged the trustworthiness of the way PersonAd was doing its business.

-

On the afternoon of my first working day I had a meeting scheduled with Matt, the CEO of PersonAd. Matt was an industry veteran and was hired half a year before me to take over the lead from the two co-founders Louis and Stan. He gave up a management position at Google to scale-up PersonAd’s business and was this type of genuine American guy.

Matt was sitting in the spacious room which had an awe-inspiring view on the canal. When I walked up to him he stood up and gave me a high-five. “Welcome to the next unicorn*!”, he shouted. I sat down and he started talking about himself and what great things he did at Google and how he was planning to grow PersonAd to become market-leader in the online advertising industry. He explained the Series A investment was primarily in place to set up international offices in Barcelona, Paris, London and New York. Also the hiring of experienced international sales managers and data scientists was a priority. Eventually, all of this should lead to either an IPO (Initial Public Offering) or multi-million dollar acquisition by a Fortune 500 listed company. Matt was very outspoken and energetic in his language and I can’t recall the times he used to call something “awesome”.

He told me to leave early this first day and be well rested to meet the team the next day.

* Unicorn: a relatively young company that gets valuated at at least 1 billion dollar.

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