Manuel Koelman 🏴‍☠️'s Linkedin Analytics

🏴‍☠️ Serial Entrepreneur, 🖤 PIRATE at heart, 🙏 Leadership Whisperer Topics that I read, debate, and speak about (a lot of buzzwords, I know): 🔥 Leadership, Transformation, Change 🔥 Making Business More Human 🔥 Mindfulness, Self-Reflection, Meditation, Clarity 🔥 NoCode and LowCode 🔥 Sustainability, ESG, CSRD 🔥 Startups, Internet Business, Disruptive Innovation 🔥 Events, Community --- How did I get here? My entrepreneurial journey started in earnest in the summer of 2003. I was a student and had just come back from one year studying in Barcelona. That summer, I started my first business with a friend. We were naive. To put it mildly. We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into and what it meant to run a business. To the outside world, we could show some decent successes. After all, we had some paying clients and earned a fair amount of money. On the inside, we felt lost and overwhelmed. There was the constant feeling that we were way above our heads. The journey of 20 years of entrepreneurship that followed was a constant roller coaster ride. I have hired and fired. I have acquired and exited. I have invested and lost it all. I had to accept failure and had to shut down multiple products or even close companies. Sometimes, when giving up wasn’t an option, I worked tirelessly to avoid bankruptcy. More than once. That’s what factually happened. There is plenty to learn from this. Tactics, methods, how-tos. What to look for before you invest, the tax impact of selling your product unit, the best interview questions, how to structure a deal, how to fire someone, etc. That’s useful information, but it’s not what I get excited about. Exciting are the things happening under the surface. You might call it the human factor of running a business. It’s often overlooked or hard to grasp. It’s certainly hard to manage. What we often forget is that businesses don’t interact with businesses. Instead, humans interact with humans. Running a business intrinsically requires human skills. I have always built my businesses with that perspective in mind. PIRATE.global, my current - and probably last - company, is built as a training ground for aspiring entrepreneurs. Great if people join and then - when they are ready - leave to start something of their own. I share some of my observations, experiences, and learnings in "Making Business More Human" (https://www.arrr.co/) and here on LinkedIn. From my own experience running multiple businesses, but also from working with others that do. I hope you find it useful. 🙏