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.