ING partners with StartupDelta and the Amsterdam Capital Week
24 September 2015
This week, the Amsterdam Capital Week (ACW) is held to promote the city as startup capital of Europe. ACW is an initiative of StartupDelta, started by amongst others Neelie Kroes, former Dutch Minister. ACW organises several events including the Capital Tour XXL where 150 startups hop on a bike to visit potential investors in their offices.
In a fast changing environment with many new technologies, startups and innovative entrepreneurship are crucial to drive economic growth and employment. In the Netherlands there is ample knowledge, innovation power, seed capital and entrepreneurship to develop the population of startups. StartupDelta was founded to realise this. ING is a big believer of innovation by startups and is therefore a proud partner of StartupDelta and the Amsterdam Capital Week.
Bart Schlatmann, Chief Operations Officer, ING The Netherlands was interviewed for Amsterdam Capital Week on why ING is supporting the initiative.
What can ING learn from start-ups?
- Start-ups bring entrepreneurial talent together, are constantly looking for new solutions, reject all constraints and think out-of-the-box. What’s really inspiring is their entrepreneurial passion and drive to succeed.
- They are tech-driven and capable to quickly (short time-to-market) translate new technology into practical working solutions with and for the customer. ING is becoming more dependent on IT and technology for our services and we can learn from start-ups that have technology in their DNA.
- Many start-ups work according to the Agile Manifesto. How they apply this method is particularly interesting for us – because we have also implemented this way of working at ING Netherlands recently to respond more quickly to evermore rapidly changing customer demands.
ING is partner of the Amsterdam Capital Week and StartupDelta. Why?
The Dutch economy as a whole can benefit from Amsterdam positioning itself as the start-up centre. It attracts talent, economic growth and employment, with positive knock-on effects all over the country. There is plenty of knowledge, innovative capability, capital and entrepreneurship in the Netherlands, but all the various parties still struggle to find one another. The launch of StartupDelta, with Neelie Kroes as ambassador, can act as a catalyst. That’s why ING is proud to be a partner of Startup Delta and the Amsterdam Capital Week.
How do you see the startup ecosystem?
Historically, the Netherlands has always been a country of entrepreneurs and new disruptive technologies. The Compact Disk, WiFi and the microscope have their roots in the Netherlands, as do innovative companies like Booking.com and TomTom. If we are able to nurture deeper connections between the stakeholders within the ecosystem, I think we’ll soon see more Dutch start-ups growing into successful companies that can sell their products and services across the globe.
By giving positive impulses through initiatives like StartupDelta, I think we are on the right track to develop the Netherlands and Amsterdam into the place to be for start-ups in Europe. However we must collaborate more closely to achieve the leading position we envisage and to restore the Netherlands to international prominence.
We are obviously delighted with your support, but banks are hardly queueing up to lend money to start-ups. What role do you see for ING in the start-up ecosystem?
ING has always taken the lead in innovation. Don’t wait and see, but respond proactively to change: that’s our approach. By listening carefully to our customers, we are trying to play a meaningful role in the start-up ecosystem. Apart from providing day-to-day banking services, we share our knowledge and expertise and open up our Business Angels network to promising start-ups. Our Commercial Bank gives us access to a vast corporate network that can be of huge added value for start-ups. We make mentors available as sparring partners for start-ups and ING sometimes also acts as a launch customer.
These initiatives stem from the belief that we can offer more than standard products like bank loans and current accounts. Another thing is that we as a bank must also continue to evolve and innovate. We take much of our inspiration for this from start-ups and our collaborations with start-ups. Witness our corporate accelerator programme in the Innovation Studio.
How does the culture of ING match with start-ups?
As noted above, many start-ups operate according to the Agile manifesto. This approach, which is also used within Spotify, Google and Apple, allows companies to respond faster to changing customer demands. That is the reason why we have also implemented this way of working at ING Netherlands. This new way of working gives the teams end-to-end responsibility for a customer functionality. For tech firms and start-ups working agile is common practice. However in the financial sector ING is unique in implementing this.