About
My name is Arjen Strijker – I’m a Dutchman living in Switzerland. I enjoy creating new businesses, meeting passionate/talented/impatient people, and making connections between them. I speak English, German, Spanish, and Dutch and see Europe as my back garden. Today, I mainly focus my time on Somesso.com (the corporate social media platform, which was just upgraded to a digital marketplace for corporate decision makers to hire social media solutions providers based on their work – making it easy for all, because ROI is still hard to measure in the social sphere), and Capital On Stage (invitation-only conference about Funding where Venture Capitalists pitch to Startups instead of the reverse. The first conference in Amsterdam with 300 seats was sold out). Read more about my projects.
I believe that Time and Mobility are the new currencies today, while Innovation (or “changing the existing”) is the key to a happier life. Because excitement is the more practical term for happiness, something can only be innovative when it causes excitement.
What I do best is spotting and making connections. I’ve connected hundreds of people with each other – creating new business opportunities between them. The people I connect(ed) range from entrepreneurs, investors, c-level executives, social media opinion leaders, bankers, and founders of public listed companies, to friends and their partners.
My belief is that people are intrinsically good.
My mission is to improve the ways how people communicate and do business today through innovation and letting companies become more social (read my three part article on the social organisation here). Inside todays’ organisations very few people seem to really be happy with their job. One of the biggest problems I see is that taking risk -continuously exploring the unknown- is never nurtured. Actually it’s the complete opposite: if you took a risk and failed, you have good changes of getting fired instead of getting promoted for showing you’re willingness to improve the current way of doing business! As nature shows us; only the hunters live and nearly everyone else gets eaten (or at least are scared of being eaten, hide, and therefore live a minimal existence 
).
Without guidelines only one rule guarantees success: Giving young(er) people the tools and surroundings to express themselves, provide ideas and innovative solutions to challenge, disrupt, and improve the existing ways of life. The most important goal is to unleash excitement (= happiness)! When the level of happiness goes up, frustration, stress, and corporate politics decrease. We can only do this together, in new settings such as NomadWorking.
The Internet is disrupting everything! You will find that all my initiatives form a bridge between the old and the new world of work.
Rules of Thumb I live by:
- Life is fun and short – don’t take anything too seriously, including yourself
- Take a stand, take things personally – and don’t give others the chance to stop you
- Surround yourself with people you respect and find interesting. Learn from them
- The intent of taking initiative matters, regardless the outcome
- What you give is what you get (back)
Drop me a line if you’d like to connect with me.
