It started with a C64 (well, actually a C128D)
I’ve been taking hard- and software apart since I was five, and I’ve run Serious Bits since 2014.C128D at five, applied IT and business engineering at university, and Serious Bits bv since 2014.
Between 1998 and 2001 I ran the in-game volunteer support organisation for Ultima Online in Europe, the Counselors, for Origin Systems at Electronic Arts. We recruited and trained about 130 volunteers from scratch, and the processes and supporting systems we developed were adopted globally. I was a teenager at the time.
These days I work with founders and teams in startups and SMEs of roughly 2 to 50 people. Sometimes that means working hands-on as a founding or first engineer. I build or mature a POC into a first version, help hire and grow the team, and put the early architecture and practices in place so the company can carry the work on. Sometimes the work is in an existing system’s architecture or delivery. And sometimes a team is going through a difficult period and needs help with priorities, responsibilities or how it works together; I can coach the people already there as well as help with the technical work.
In 2006 and 2007 I was president of Ekonomika, the business faculty student union at KU Leuven: a team of 12 coordinating more than 80 volunteers, serving over 3,000 students on a six-figure budget. For the student festival we built our own RFID access control and cashless system.
Education and earlier roles
A professional bachelor in applied IT at KHLeuven (summa cum laude), then two master’s degrees in business engineering at KU Leuven (cum laude), majoring in business research and human resources, with an Erasmus year in Uppsala.
The first years out were consulting and product. From 2009 to 2012 I was a business quality consultant at Electrabel (GDF SUEZ), doing lean, customer experience and assessments. From 2012 to 2014 I was product manager at Itineris on UMAX and at Adoria on Anton, HR software for small companies. Data Protection Officer training followed in 2018 and the CTO Masterclass at Software Captains in 2024.
How I work, by default
I work alongside the people who have to live with the decisions.Alongside the code, I look at who owns what, how changes get reviewed and what holds delivery up.
People first, systems second
Helping people work better is the job, and software is often part of it. I spend time with the people doing the work before proposing changes.
Speak up, kindly
I’ll question a plan and explain the concern. You decide what to do with the advice, including which risks you’re prepared to accept.
Make the work manageable
I help the team agree priorities, reduce unnecessary work, and give the next change a scope we can check.
AI, tested first
I use agents in daily work and put checks around what they produce. The review and maintenance still need someone responsible for them.
How I use AI
I use coding agents every day, including autonomous ones working in the background, connected to the tools I already use. Outside code, I use AI in support, tenders and fleet management.Agentic coding, autonomous background agents and tool chaining. Outside the repo: support triage, tender responses and fleet management. I keep responsibility for review and maintenance explicit when helping a team adopt these workflows.
Languages and where to find me
- Languages
- Dutch (native), English (fluent), French (good), Swedish (some), German (poor)
- Based in
- Mechelen, Belgium. On-site in Belgium or remote.
- Off the clock
- CrossFit, festivals, nature, family
A free 30-minute call to see whether we’re a fit. You don’t need to prepare anything.
Quotes I keep coming back to
I’ve picked these up over the years. Many are other people’s words; I keep them because they resonate with me. They’re grouped here by subject.
Shipping6
The worst plan executed quickly and violently is often better than the best plan not executed at all.
The fastest way for an organization to die is to stop executing.
There is risk in action. There is also risk in not acting.
Don’t let your obsession with perfection become the enemy of being good enough.
When you make a plan, the universe chuckles and rubs its hands with delight, because it has another golden opportunity to screw with you.
In all the history books, you only get the highlights. You don’t ever really understand all the work that was involved in making those highlights.
Systems7
It’s not the upfront capital that kills you, it’s the operations and maintenance on the back end.
Technical debt comes from taking shortcuts, which may make sense in the short term. But like financial debt, the compounding interest costs grow over time.
When you spend all your time firefighting, there’s little time or energy left for planning. When all you do is react, there’s not enough time to do the hard mental work of figuring out whether you can accept new work.
It’s always tempting to just ignore the things that aren’t actually on fire just at the moment, but then you’re also committing to spend your time putting out fires.
Unplanned work is recovery work, which almost always takes you away from your goals. That’s why it’s so important to know where your unplanned work is coming from.
Getting more time is good, but only if we get more out than it takes to get it.
Incentives are superpowers; set them carefully.
Leadership8
Mastering the art of leadership is often about knowing when not to command.
Sometimes leading means herding.
The reason so many turn into micromanagers is that it is the only way they can feel in control.
When everyone is conditioned to believe that no isn’t an acceptable answer, we all just become compliant order takers.
It is neither psychologically plausible nor managerially realistic to expect someone to follow orders 99 per cent of the time and then suddenly act independently on the hundredth instance.
If we were legally prohibited from selling our current products to our current customers, how would we make money next year?
Trust is like a piece of fine china. Once it shatters, it’s never quite the same, no matter how much glue you slather on.
Success is more interesting than feeding your ego.
Truth8
You learn more by studying your defeats than studying your victories.
If you can’t respond to the strongest argument from the other side, there’s a good chance you’re wrong.
A lot of people don’t ask questions because they don’t want to look stupid. So everyone sits around playing along as if they know exactly what is going on.
You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.
The human mind has a tendency to play tricks, leading us to believe that something is true, simply because we wish it to be so. Such inaccuracies can be deadly.
Seeing the big picture has its place, but only seeing the big picture isn’t enough.
Reality always wins when faced with an ideal.
Sometimes the best way to learn is to lose. The key is to ensure your losses don’t carry costs too high to make the knowledge worth it.
Play3
Boredom is unappreciated serenity.
Jimmy Carr When people don’t know anything, they love having meetings to talk about it.
Technical men aren’t actually hard to talk to if you accept that they will unabashedly argue with any premise they disagree with, rather than rolling with it out of conversational politeness.