Seventeen years ago today, Merijn and I registered a company to sell a piece of laser altimetry software we had written inside a university research group. We had four people, one contract in prospect, and two rooms above a bicycle shop on Binnenwatersloot.
We now have 700 people in eight countries and a ground station going up inside the Arctic Circle. The scale has changed beyond recognition.
What has not changed is the specific thing we are stubborn about, which is that a measurement without an uncertainty is not a measurement. That was an academic reflex in 2007 and it is now a commercial differentiator, which is a slightly absurd sentence to be able to write.
What I did not anticipate: how much of the job would be about people rather than about problems. In 2007 I thought running a company meant deciding things. It mostly means creating conditions in which other people can decide things well, and then not overriding them.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of it, particularly the customers who took a risk on four people and a piece of software in 2008. Several of them are still with us.