The Origin Story
The weekend that started everything
Here's the part most “founder stories” don't have: we met as strangers.
Years ago, we each, separately, attended the Millionaire Mind Intensive in The Hague — a three-day, high-energy business seminar. Hundreds of attendees, loud music, a lot of clapping, you know the drill. We ended up standing next to each other near the front of the stage, doing the partner exercises those events are built on. Philip was deep in technology and product. Michiel came from strategy and governance. Different worlds, both with a financial background — and between the exercises and the coffee breaks, we kept landing on the same observation about the room.
Michiel wasn't taking notes on the content. He was taking notes on the people, asking: “How many of these folks are actually going to do any of this?”
Then the trainers answered that question for us. Several times over the weekend, casually, like a weather report, they said:
“Statistically, only about five percent of you will actually continue with what you learn here.”
Five percent. A room full of people who paid money, gave up a full weekend, stood up, clapped, made declarations, wrote down goals — and the people running the event openly told them that ninety-five out of every hundred would go home and, within a few weeks (maybe days), be living exactly the life they came in with.
We couldn't stop thinking about it. Because looking around that room, we didn't see lazy people. We didn't see people who lacked ambition or knowledge. That room was one of the most motivated places either of us had ever stood.
We weren't looking at a motivation problem. We were looking at a structural problem.