The Growth Series — Can Success Harm your Business?
As part of the upcoming Amsterdam Capital House on Sep 23–25, Your Home for Growth, we’ve created these short interview series to learn more about the tips & tricks on getting funding, how to build the best teams of employees and how to successfully grow your company.
Patrick Driessen is founder and managing director of investment company 8P Capital and founder of SHE. Health Group (women’s health). As mentor of nlgroeit he shares his experience as an investor and entrepreneur to help other entrepreneurs in growing their business while minimizing risks.
Hi Patrick, how would you describe yourself in one single word?
As a ‘game-changer’ — to bring new energy, leadership, inspiration, and disruption to an individual or a business. To layout a new path for others, for them to follow and execute.
As a game-changer, what is your biggest drive when mentoring other entrepreneurs? What is it you like to help them with?
For me, it is great to see others grow and succeed while helping them as a mentor. Especially when I can inspire and help them to achieve growth goals that they thought were not possible to achieve.
Entrepreneurs also need to innovate on a personal level and then take those learnings back to their business. I want to inspire them to look at and take better care of themselves, either financially, in health, towards their family…
Continuous learning, personal development, networking, leadership skills development and mentorship are important ingredients for the growing success of most entrepreneurs.
What has been your biggest achievements and learning curve? Any fuck-ups you’d like to share with us?
They are actually closely linked to each other… There have been a lot of fuck-ups in my case, such as filing bankruptcy twice (at the age of 21 and 38), which gave me some of my best lessons in life.
My biggest fuck-up as an investor started when I took a majority stake of 51% in a luxury leather goods market player in Australia. I reorganized and expanded the business to a much higher quality level, boosted its international growth, with selling a lot of products across Asia, Europe, and USA.
However, what I wasn’t aware of at the time, despite all the rapid successful growth, that the people of your business also need to grow in line with the success: both individually as well as on a management level. As a result: the team could not handle the success and workload, so the company imploded and in the end, I had to sell my share for €1, so it could remain to exist.
In this case, I’ve especially learned a lot about ‘people’, that you should constantly give them the inspiration, tools, and opportunity to develop and learn along the way. And I’ve also realized: not every employee is a good fit in a fast-growing company. With accelerated business growth, you might more often have to refresh and expand your human capital.
At Amsterdam Capital House we define capital as financial (money), human (team) and social (network) capital. Which one is the most important?
For me, the most important (and most challenging one) is human capital; the employees you’re hiring. Because great team members are hard to find and hard to retain. As an entrepreneur, you really have to invest in getting and keeping the best people by continuously proving that you are the best employer for them at that point of time in their career. Poor leadership is one of the main reasons why people leave a company, so breeding leadership within your organization is key.
Secondly, social (network) capital is important, which in my opinion can bring you the furthest as an entrepreneur. You never know what challenges or setbacks you’ll be facing, so you will need a broad network with valuable relationships and contacts to fall back on.
And lastly, with a good team, strong leadership and solid offering with enough unique value, you’ll always be in a position to get money (financial capital) to fund your growth.
What has been the most important factor in building your business 8P Capital?
8P Capital is an entrepreneurial hands-on independent investment company, which invests in promising scale-up companies that can have a sustainable impact. We try to help improve the world a bit by investing in private companies that provide innovative and disruptive solutions that can be scaled up globally. Thus maximizing their social impact.
Our main investment focus is health, health tech, food & agri, food tech, and high-tech. However, we also initiate new ventures, such as the SHE. Health Clinics ran by women for women that will be launched in the Netherlands early next year.
When we invest, the combination of all three (financial, human, social) are evenly important. For a startup, it’s human, social and financial capital.
And what does success mean for you?
For me, success first and foremost is to create a social and financial impact — preferably on a global scale — together with other people and have lots of fun and learnings while doing it. Creating company value and financial returns is the objective, yet — in my humble opinion — can only be guaranteed by having fun, team building, continuous learning, managing risks, shifting boundaries, building new friendships and by celebrating shared successes, which all in all creates the most beautiful adventures.
And — as a mentor — what I try to inspire other entrepreneurs to do as well: take a break at times and enjoy what you’ve created and achieved.
Are you looking for any form of capital? And can we welcome you to Amsterdam Capital House on Sep 23–25?
Financial capital has my main interest as I’m always on the look-out for investors and co-investors, for myself as well as for others within my ecosystem. As a business accelerator, I love to introduce entrepreneurs to investors, also internationally.
From a fundraising perspective, I’m currently looking for co-investors for SHE. Health Clinics, as well as for additional co-investors in other ventures I’m part of. And last not but not least; I keep my eyes open for new promising impact entrepreneurs with leadership skills and a unique future-proof proposition. So you’ll definitely see me at Amsterdam Capital House!
Thank you Patrick for your time and sharing your experiences.
He will join the nlgroeit sessions on Sep 24, as part of our partnership with the KVK. Let’s redefine the world of capital together!
Interested in attending the Amsterdam Capital House on Sep 23–25? Join us today: https://www.capitalweek.amsterdam/
