The instinct is the one I learned at sea: a destination only counts if you can hold a course to it, and correct early when the water changes.
The open sea
Third officer
I started my career as a navigating officer on crude-oil tankers, the kind of VLCCs and Aframaxes that spend weeks out of sight of land. As Third Officer, the watch was mine: the passage plan, the cargo, the safety gear, and the position fixed again and again against the instruments.
A ship does not reach port on enthusiasm. It reaches port because someone set the course, checked it honestly, and made small corrections long before a small drift became a large one. That was the whole job, and I have never stopped doing it.
Back to shore
RSM Erasmus
I came ashore to study at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, an MBA ranked for years among the Financial Times global top twenty. I led the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital club while I was there.
The bridge had taught me to run a system under pressure. Rotterdam taught me how companies are actually built, funded and grown, and handed me the language and the models to reason about it.
Learning to back builders
Netherlands
For the next few years I worked in venture capital in the Netherlands, with ICOS Capital and Start Green Venture Capital, backing early-stage and cleantech founders.
I sat on the investor's side of the table: diligence, boards, and the unglamorous question underneath every deal, which is whether a company can find growth it can actually repeat. I learned to tell the businesses that compound from the ones that only spend.
Building the engine
Plash · Alore · J6
Backing builders is what made me want to build. I founded Plash in 2013, then Alore in 2017, a growth operating system for outbound and inbound, and J6 Ventures in 2024.
The thread from the bridge held the whole way. Demand does not arrive predictably on enthusiasm; it arrives because someone built the system, watched the instruments, and corrected early. That is exactly what I now build for other founders.
I build revenue engines a founder can actually see.
Outbound and inbound, tuned to bring qualified demand on repeat. Every stage from first touch to signature mapped into one funnel. An AI layer over all of it, run by a single operator, surfacing every gap in real time.
Bringing a Mustang to India
Go to market
Growth is not only pipelines. In 2015 I was part of the team that launched the Ford Mustang in India.
This is the set of the price reveal video shoot. Same instinct as the rest: find the one moment that makes a whole launch land.
The course, plotted
Third Officer, oil tankers at sea.
RSM Erasmus. Financial Times global top-20.
ICOS Capital and Start Green, Netherlands.
Plash, first company founded.
Alore, the growth operating system.
J6 Ventures, revenue engines for founders.