Joining Ryde Ventures as partner and chief product officer

Some decisions feel inevitable in hindsight. This is one of them.

For anyone who's followed my journey, joining Ryde might seem like a sudden shift. But the roots of this partnership go back over a decade.

A relationship built over ten years

In 2014, I pitched my first tech concept to Lennert. I was young, inexperienced, and probably naive about what it would take to build something real. Lennert ran a hosting company at the time. He didn't just give advice. He gave me actual infrastructure to make the idea tangible.

That project didn't become a massive success. But it taught me how to build, how to fail, and how to keep going.

I ended up working within his organization, learning things I couldn't have learned anywhere else: user psychology, why products fail, how teams function (and dysfunction), and how strategic choices compound over time. Marta, now also a Ryde partner, was alongside me during this period. Our shared history spans well before anyone was talking about venture studios or AI startups.

From hosting to agency to SaaS

Eventually I left the hosting company to start my own thing. That became Pixelstart, a web agency focused on building websites for creators and artists. It grew quickly, but after five years I realized I was building a job, not a business. I sold it.

With the agency behind me, I went back to Lennert with another pitch. This time it was Stagent, a booking and artist management platform born from my earlier experience running a booking agency. He offered me €10k to make it real. That initial investment, and his continued backing, turned a pitch into an actual product.

Building Stagent forced me to confront my perfectionism. I learned to ship imperfect products, trust beta testers, and iterate based on real feedback rather than imagined ideals. Lennert's early investment grew into a proper seed round, and Stagent became what it is today.

Why Ryde, why now

This year brought an invitation to become a Ryde Ventures partner. The studio focuses on building AI products. No performative innovation. Just execution.

That philosophy matches how I've always worked. Ship something. Learn from it. Improve it. Repeat.

In my role as Partner & CPO, I'll oversee product direction across the portfolio. Testing concepts quickly. Moving through development cycles without getting stuck in planning paralysis. Expanding ventures that demonstrate genuine potential.

I'm working remotely from Hong Kong, which suits the pace Ryde operates at.

What this means

This appointment represents the natural evolution of a decade-long professional relationship. Lennert backed me when I was figuring things out. Now we're building together.

Stagent isn't going anywhere. I'm still running it. But now I'm also applying what I've learned there to a broader portfolio of products at Ryde.

I'm still learning. I'll still make mistakes. But I'm doing it alongside people I've known and trusted for years, building products in a space that's genuinely exciting.

For anyone following along: expect more writing about product building, venture studios, and what I'm learning along the way.