Innosuisse trainer Rutger Verhoef: ‘Seeing the team drive the business forward and enjoy what they do is extremely rewarding’

19.04.2022 16:30, Isabelle Mitchell

The Innosuisse Start-up Training in Business Growth and Business Creation equips entrepreneurs with the tools to build world-class start-ups. Around 30 times a year, the Innosuisse trainers—more than 160 entrepreneurs, investors, and experts—share their expertise and provide hands-on experience in tailor-made workshops for ICT, advanced engineering, medtech, and biotech start-ups. One of these trainers is Rutger Verhoef, the co-founder and CEO of GOWAGO, Switzerland’s biggest online shop for leasing cars. Learn more about Rutger’s training sessions, his expectations of the participants, and his entrepreneurial experience.

The Innosuisse Start-up Training comprises accomplished entrepreneurs, investors, and experts who help young companies accomplish their missions. Many Innosuisse coaches have built start-ups themselves, and all know the challenges and opportunities entrepreneurs face. To learn more about the experts who support the Swiss innovation ecosystem, we ask them to complete a short profile and choose at least eight questions from a questionnaire about their training session and their personal and professional life.

 

About Rutger

Name: Rutger Verhoef 
Location: Zurich 
Born in: 1990 in Odijk, The Netherlands 
Graduated from: HEC Lausanne with an MSc. in Management in 2015 
Your job title: CEO and co-founder GOWAGO 
Number of employees: 16 
First touchpoint with Venturelab: 2017, startup training 
 
“GOWAGO is an e-commerce platform that allows customers to shop and get a car online for a monthly payment with everything included.”

About Rutger’s Innosuisse training 

How are you involved in the Innosuisse Start-up Training?
I am involved in the Day 5 workshops, which are about funding. My experience mainly lies in corporate investments, as my company received financing from Tamedia, Baloise Group, and Migros Bank. I try to bring that process and my learnings to the participants as much as possible. 
 
What is your motivation to join the workshops as a trainer?
My main driver is sharing my excitement about building something, and hopefully, this excites people to push through the challenges. Especially regarding corporate funding, the process can be long, but it’s far from impossible, so I try to bring that to the participants.
 
What is the best advice you can give to startup founders?
As my training is about funding, my usual advice is to think big—investors want to change the world as well, and they want to make money ;). But what does that mean? I try to break it down into three parts: 
1) How many resources do you need for your solution to work for most of your target audience?
2) How realistic is it that you can get these resources? 
3) Why would a particular investor give YOU those resources?
 
What makes for a great workshop?
Teaching based on one’s own experiences: I believe entrepreneurs often prefer tangible, real-life examples and dislike textbook-style teaching.
 
What do you like to see from participants?
Questions, engagement, and proactivity in reflecting my story on their own startup. It’s great to see when they understand what I am saying, think about how it can help their own business, and ask how I would approach their challenge. 
 
What do you hope to accomplish with the participants?
Getting the enthusiasm and learning across that starting a company and raising money is not only about intelligence and a great product but also about persistence and enthusiasm. Investors, in my view, want to work with enthusiastic and passionate people. 
 
What are your hopes for the participants? 
That they keep the drive to continue.
 
What do you think founders need most from a training course?
A combination of real-world examples and know-how on how to start, build, and grow a company.

 

About Rutger’s professional life 

 
How and where do you clear your mind?
Having a good balance between work and doing something that gives you pleasure; for example, having a hobby is very important. For me, going skiing for a day or a week or mountain biking in the summer helps me clear my mind, and it makes me excited that I can work on building something that I love while still pursuing my hobbies. 
 
What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder?
Seeing the team drive the business forward and enjoy what they do is extremely rewarding. Getting people excited about solving the challenges the company is facing is very energizing, and it gives a lot of confidence that the company is on the right track.  
 
What are your three favorite apps?
Microsoft To-Do (even though I’m an Apple guy); Hubspot, which has an amazing CRM that can grow with your business; and LinkedIn because most of our investors and sales have been coming through there.