Dennis Goedegebuure

What’s Next? Which PEAK to Climb?

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The next step in my journey, what we call career, is that back in February this year, I’ve joined Peak Capital as an entrepreneur in residence, where I will be working with the portfolio companies of Peak on growth marketing.

Two years ago, I met with Johan van Mil in a Starbucks next to the Fanatics office. While catching up over coffee, we discussed our long term plan to move back to Europe, eventually. Little did we know due to Covid-19, the Goedegebuure family accelerated this plan in 2020. Johan and I go way back, from my time in The Netherlands working for eBay. Back then, I was a customer of his email marketing agency. The relationships you built over the course of your career can be invaluable for future steps.

The first month with Peak has been filled with learning the VC investment work. There is a two way street of sharing, where my expertise and skills are welcomed by the teams, while I learn what questions are asked to potential startups to invest in.

The companies I’ve met so far, are really interesting from a growth perspective and filled with super smart people. Not the scale I’ve worked on in my past, but with a higher growth rate than a PayPal for instance. For me it’s interesting to get a peak in the kitchen how the teams in companies like Studocu, Precisely, Hello Customer, Storychief, Mibo, Trengo or Creative Fabrica are working on the future.

While I’m working on my own next step, the two days working with the Peak Capital team, and the portfolio companies, allows me to build new relationships and refresh my Dutch online network. Many thanks to both Johan, Stefan and the rest of the Peak Capital team for the warm welcome.

Life is a Journey, Not a Destination

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It’s been quite the adventure, and on this wild ride we call life, our next journey has started; we have made a family decision to move back to The Netherlands. Fifteen years, four kids, five jobs, and six different houses, never a dull moment in our lives!

A year working from home, a year home schooling, a year shelter in place, a year of 24/7/365 being within the same family. Even as we all love each other so much, it has taken its toll.  We desperately want to get out of the house, see other people, be around family & friends. It has made us painfully aware we literally live at the other side of the world from our family and friends. Due to Covid-19, the kids couldn’t travel back over the summer to see their grandparents, something we have done almost every year we lived in California.

It’s been 15 years since we entered the US. Back in 2006, I was working for eBay, transferring from a job in Amsterdam to a job in San Jose California. Since then, I had jobs at Geeknet, Airbnb, Fanatics and recently at PayPal. At the end of last year, I finished with my job at PayPal. We have taken the time to manage this difficult move. Any cross-continental move is difficult, let alone in the middle of a global pandemic, with 4 kids homeschooling and a dog, while interviewing for a new opportunity back in Europe.

Since we made this decision to move back last year in July, we made a lot of stressful and sometimes painful  decisions. But these decisions keep life interesting, and most important; allow us to understand how blessed we are. We are lucky because we have the option in life to move countries and continents. We have been very careful to make sure we keep our health, which we did so far.

We are leaving many friends behind in the US, but fortunately, thanks to the online connectivity and our experience of a full year of video calls for work and pleasure, I’m confident we will keep in touch with all the people I so much have missed over the last 12 months.

I will be looking forward to welcome my US friends at our Netherlands address as soon as Covid-19 allows travel corridors to open up again, and we have managed through this whole process.

Purpose-Led Marketing

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It’s been 4 years now that I’ve worked on one of my best work in my career. This was a campaign for Airbnb around the 25th year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. The Wall and Chain campaign ended up winning multiple marketing & graphic design awards. 

Why I call this some of the best work in my career is not because of the won awards. The story which was featured in the campaign was so powerful showcasing the way people can overcome adversary with so called enemies of the past. 

For the Wall and Chain campaign I worked closely with a brilliant team at Airbnb. Yesterday, two friends launched a new brand marketing agency focussed on bringing purpose-led marketing to growth companies.

Twenty First Century Brand already signed some major brands like Pinterest, WeWork & Peloton. I’m going to pay very close attention to the brand marketing coming out of these companies. So much to learn from the 21CB team. 

Snooze Social Engagement for 7 day

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With the mid-terms elections coming tomorrow, there is an avalanche of tweets, Facebook updates or Instagram pictures shared about voting. 

Starting Wednesday, you can bet the wildest conspiracy theories will hit the social chatter to de-legitimize the outcome of these elections by either party. 

For my own sanity, I’m going to ignore all of it for the span of 7 days. That means for the next 7 days the new goal, next to my exercise goals in November, I’m committed to snooze all social engagements on political posts for a week to avoid getting sucked in.

So no retweets, no likes and certainly no political sharing by myself.

How are you staying sane in this political climate? What strategies should I adopt to avoid the obvious fake news? 

USA States Geography

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Growing up in The Netherlands, we hardly learned about the US states, with all the geography ins- & outs. I don’t even know what are the capitals from all US states, let alone where every state is on the map. 

By helping my kids to study for their geography bee, I learn a great deal more. 

Sometimes I just would like to take a week off and bite my teeth into very basic stuff to learn. That way I would be able to help my kids even more. My interest would be primarily focussed on those black holes in my knowledge around the history & geography of the US states. 

Furthermore, I have a big interest in learning the political system of the states and the federal government in the US. Not only the history of the laws but also how the actual system works. How do the house, the senate and the presidency work together making laws in the country. 

I guess I could start with the study materials which are available to become a US citizen. This would be the basics. 

As adults, we rarely stop and pause to learn new skills or knowledge. What are some of the things you would like to learn more about? 

No Alcohol No Problems

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For the last 1.5 years, I’ve scaled back any alcohol consumption to an almost dry spell.

After a quick trip to Las Vegas in October, I’ve been 15 days dry again.

But sometimes water is just really boring, so I’ve found these non-alcoholic beers for my Sunday afternoons.

What is your drink of choice when you don’t drink any alcohol?