Joining Ryde Ventures as partner and CPO — Building Products [Mischa Sigtermans](https://mischa.sigtermans.me) [ Thoughts ](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) [ Books ](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/books) [ About ](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about) [← Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) December 1, 2025 · Career Startup Joining Ryde Ventures as partner and chief product officer ========================================================== After a decade of building agencies, SaaS products, and learning from failures, I'm joining Ryde Ventures as Partner and CPO. The relationship behind the decision goes back to 2014. Some decisions feel inevitable in hindsight. This one certainly does. I've been building things on my own for the better part of a decade. A [web agency](/thought/why-i-decided-to-sell-my-web-agency). A [booking platform](/thought/how-i-secured-funding-for-my-startup). A [booking agency and label that outgrew my capacity to run them on the side](/thought/why-i-built-and-sold-true-identity). A [joint venture that taught me what I needed from a partnership and what I couldn't build alone](/thought/what-i-learned-when-our-joint-venture-fell-apart). Each one taught me something. The accumulation of those lessons is the reason this move feels less like a leap and more like arriving somewhere I'd been walking toward for a long time. As of December 1, 2025, I'm a Partner and Chief Product Officer at [Ryde Ventures](https://ryde.ventures), an AI venture studio in Amsterdam. The relationship behind the title --------------------------------- The backstory matters more than the title. In 2014, I pitched my first tech concept to a person named Lennert. I was nineteen. I was inexperienced. The idea probably wasn't very good. But Lennert didn't just nod and move on. He ran a hosting company at the time, and he gave me real infrastructure to make the idea tangible. He let me work inside his organization, and what I learned there, about user psychology, about why products fail, about how teams function and dysfunction, shaped everything I've built since. That first project didn't become a massive success. Neither did the second. But the relationship kept compounding. Lennert became the person I called when something worked and the person I called when something didn't. He [wrote the first check for Stagent](/thought/how-i-secured-funding-for-my-startup) without asking for a term sheet. He watched me sell Pixelstart, build True Identity, enter and leave a joint venture, and learn from each of those in turn. Marta, now also a Ryde partner, was alongside me during those early years inside Lennert's organization. Our working history predates the venture studio by a decade. When the three of us decided to formalize what we'd been doing informally for years, it didn't feel like starting something new. It felt like naming something that already existed. What Ryde is ------------ Ryde Ventures is an AI venture studio. It builds AI-first products with deep domain expertise. The venture studio model, done right, means you test concepts quickly, expand the ones that demonstrate genuine potential, and kill the ones that don't. No performative innovation. No months of planning before the first line of code. Just execution. That philosophy matches how I've always worked. Ship something. Learn from it. Improve it. Repeat. In my role as Partner and CPO, I oversee product direction across the portfolio. Testing concepts, moving through development cycles without getting stuck in planning paralysis, and making the product decisions that determine whether a venture earns its next month of investment or gets wound down. I'm working remotely from Hong Kong. Ryde operates asynchronously across time zones, which is the only way a small team with deep context can move fast without burning out. What moves with me ------------------ [Stagent](https://stagent.com) is now a portfolio product at Ryde. The product continues. The team is bigger. The roadmap is sharper. I'm running it differently from how I ran it alone, and for the first time in a while the structure around it matches what the product needs. The first new product to come out of Ryde is [Onoma](https://askonoma.com), an AI memory layer that works across multiple AI providers. We [shipped the alpha on Christmas Eve](/thought/launching-onoma-alpha). More products are in the pipeline. What changed ------------ The biggest shift isn't the title or the studio or the portfolio. It's the structure. I spent years learning, the hard way, that I'm a builder who needs a specific kind of environment to do my best work. Not another solopreneur to share a ship with. Not a corporate hierarchy. A small team with complementary roles, a clear operating rhythm, and the patience to let products find their shape. The [joint venture with Artwin](/thought/what-i-learned-when-our-joint-venture-fell-apart) taught me that. Ryde is the answer I found afterward. I needed to try the other thing first to know the difference. I'm still learning. I'll still make mistakes. But I'm doing it alongside people I've known and trusted for over a decade, building products in a space that's moving faster than anything I've worked in before. That combination of long relationships and fast-moving work is the thing I was missing when I was building alone. *thanks for reading* Hi, I'm [Mischa](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about). I've been *shipping products* and *building ventures* for over a decade. First exit at 25, second at 30. Now Partner & CPO at [Ryde Ventures](https://ryde.ventures), an AI venture studio in Amsterdam. Currently shipping [Stagent](https://stagent.com) and [Onoma](https://askonoma.com). Based in Hong Kong. I [write](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) about what I learn along the way. [More about me](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about). Keep reading: [How working out 5 times a week changed my life](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thought/how-working-out-5-times-a-week-has-changed-my-life). [← Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) Connect ------- [X](https://x.com/mischamartijn) [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/mischasigtermans) [GitHub](https://github.com/mischasigtermans) © 2026 · [RSS](feed:https://mischa.sigtermans.me/feed)