I help build and scale businesses - working with middle market, early stage startups and scale up companies looking to enter, or build, or further grow in the US. Pairing capital formation with strategic talent acquisition; when capital is no longer the bottleneck, but talent is! The last 10+ years:

✨I helped build and scale an emerging asset manager in a novel strategy, raising equity capital and fund assets, find boardmembers and the buyer for an exit sale (Eaglewood);
✨I introduced, built and exited a non-US AI/data analytics company (James);
✨Building and scaling an early stage AI/data analytics company (CClear)

Today I focus on matching US talent with (US based) European companies at YER USA, while also being involved in a number of related activities:

✨I am a startup mentor with imec.istart, the #1 university backed accelerator in the world (EU based, focus on deep tech and nano tech)
✨Benelux350 Founder

I have a proven track record of introducing cutting-edge products and services, acquiring and retaining clients, generating revenue streams, and creating value for stakeholders.

💿Without ASML, there is no chip renaissance in America. Full stop.

The Wall Street Journal got a rare inside look at Apple's effort to rebuild the U.S. semiconductor supply chain — from silicon wafers in Texas to TSMC's $165 billion campus in Arizona. It's an extraordinary piece of industrial ambition.

But the unsung hero of the story? A Dutch company based in Veldhoven.

ASML's Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machines — costing up to $400M each — are the only technology on earth capable of printing the transistors that power your iPhone, your AI infrastructure, your defense systems. The WSJ article features ASML's Phoenix training center, where the next generation of U.S.-based chip technicians is being developed right now.

ASML is among the many European companies we've had the privilege of supporting. So are many other European companies driving this supply chain transformation on American soil.

And here's the talent reality no one talks about enough:

Chip manufacturing is highly automated. The U.S. isn't reshoring this industry to employ millions of factory workers. It's reshoring it to secure a strategic asset — and that requires a very specific, very scarce pool of technical and commercial talent.

That's where YER USA comes in. As the European/Benelux specialist, I work every day with European companies scaling their U.S. operations — and the conversation almost always comes back to the same question: where and how do we find the right people?

If your company is part of the semiconductor ecosystem and expanding in the U.S., let's talk.

🔗 WSJ article in the comments.

#ASML #Semiconductors #TSMC #Reindustrialization #TalentAcquisition #YERusa #BENELUX #ChipAct #EUV #Belcham

Yvan Munck

ASML

The Wall Street Journal

Apple

TSMC

YER USA

I connect ​the best European companies with America’s best talent | Executive & Professional Search | International Recruitment | Cross-Cultural Expert | Director European Desk @ YER USA | Benelux350 Ambassador

👍I like counter narratives ... talent acquisition becoming more important & critical than ever. #yerusa #benelux350 (Txs Nat Rubio-Licht at The Deep View)

"While this is good news for the software engineers worrying that their livelihood is on unsteady ground, it may also be another point in favor of the “SaaS-pocalypse” argument. Though executives of companies like Salesforce and Workday are downplaying the impact that AI will have on legacy software firms, AI is enabling enterprises to build their own custom tooling more easily than ever. That means they’re likely to shift their spending from legacy SaaS platforms to in-house developers and the AI tools that facilitate their rapid building.

Senior Reporter at The Deep View

The Deep View

🤖 Software isn't dead. It just stopped needing a salary.
That's the provocative but compelling argument from Boris Bogaert at Pitchdrive, and honestly — it's hard to disagree.

We are moving from SaaS (Software as a Service) to SaaE — Software as an Employee. 💸 That €20k monthly LLM bill from Claude, Gemini, or OpenAI? That's not a hosting cost anymore. That's your new payroll.

The implications are massive. AI agents are now persistent, goal-oriented, and running 24/7. The cost of writing code is collapsing. A solo founder commanding a fleet of AI agents can now outcompete a legacy company with 50 employees. Pitchdrive calls this the "Sovereign Founder" era 👑 — and they're already seeing it across their portfolio, with companies like Antwerp's Conveo.ai cutting research costs by 75% and Ghent's Introw automating entire partner ecosystems.

But here's the nuance that caught my attention: when execution cost drops to near zero, the bottleneck shifts to human judgement. 🧠 Agents can execute. Only humans can inject strategic direction, creativity, and — crucially — accountability.

Which brings me to what this means in practice for European companies expanding to the US. 🌍➡️🇺🇸

The (mostly private equity backed) companies I work with — from Benelux, Germany, France, and other EU countries — are exactly the kind of lean, AI-augmented teams this article describes. They're moving fast, scaling smart, and entering the US market with fewer people than ever before... but with a much higher bar for each hire.

That's actually great news for talent acquisition. 🎯 When every seat counts, you can't afford a mis-hire. You need someone who gets your European DNA, understands the US market, and hits the ground running from day one.
That's precisely what I help you find.

If you're a European tech company entering the US — whether you need one critical commercial hire or a full go-to-market team — let's talk. 🤝

🔗 Full article: https://lnkd.in/eyDPbW7Z
#AgenticAI #SoftwareAsAnEmployee #EuropeanTech #BeneluxTech #USExpansion #TalentAcquisition #YERusa #SovereignFounder #FutureOfWork #benelux350

Founder & investor at Pitchdrive 🚀

Pitchdrive

🤔The $50 Trillion Shift: Why AI is Rewriting the US Expansion Playbook
[h/t NFX & Gigi Levy-Weiss][https://lnkd.in/e_WvMTR3]

🫨The ground beneath us is shifting. We are moving from an era of deploying software to an era of deploying intelligence. SaaS was a $1 trillion market for tools. AI is a $50 trillion market for labor. 

🤖When software becomes autonomous, the "ceiling" for what an agile team can accomplish vanishes—but only if you have the right leadership at the helm. For Benelux based and major European innovators, the stakes are critical:

✅From Operators to Architects: You no longer need teams to "manage" software; you need visionaries to "orchestrate" AI intelligence in the American market.
✅The Talent Premium: As execution becomes a commodity, human judgment, cultural fluency, and strategic vision become your rarest and most valuable assets.
✅The "Day 1" Imperative: Winning the US market today requires leaders who can leverage agentic AI to 10x their impact from day one.

💡At YER USA, we understand that as AI takes over the "labor," the demand for premium, highly specialized Talent Acquisition becomes the ultimate strategic advantage. We bridge the talent gap for Benelux and other EU companies, finding the leaders who don't just use tools—they remake reality.

Check out my latest video to see why the AI revolution is, in fact, a Human Talent revolution. #TalentAcquisition #ExecutiveSearch #AI #YERUSA #Benelux350 #EuropeanExpansion #FutureOfWork #SaaS

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