Team Mycroft’s stop in Amsterdam was as productive and fun as our stop in Reykjavik. We spent our time there working at the fantastic StartDock co-working space at 420 Herengracht in the heart of the city.
StartDock
The StartDock co-working space is a fantastic place to work. It is near dozens of restaurants and cafes and is full of friendly Dutch entrepreneurs who are eager to help one another succeed. The place is in a classic Dutch building on a broad canal where boats of all kinds float by during the day. It has comfortable chairs, meeting rooms for privacy and a kitchen where you can eat healthy. We were able to meet with their team and learn a little about their goals. They were very helpful in hosting the events so we recommend you check them out if you’re looking to cowork in Amsterdam.
Mycroft Events in Amsterdam
We held two events at StartDock while we were in town, one surrounding bringing Dutch language support to Mycroft and another surrounding early stage fundraising. Both events were well attended and we were happy to share our excitement and insight with this great group of people. It was great to see how interested Dutch entrepreneurs are in building great companies and we had a lot of great questions from the crowd.
One of the stand-out members of the crowd was Nick Yap from Volareo. Nick’s company is working on a smart speaker concept that is both novel and intriguing. We’re looking forward to seeing what his team does with Mycroft’s open software stack. We hope they can also benefit from our Mark II hardware schematics which will be opened under a public license once we’ve completed both testing and our first production run.
I can’t say enough nice things about Amsterdam. The startup community is active, the city is a magnet for international travel and it is an extremely pleasant place. We’re looking forward to integrating support for Dutch into Mycroft and working with the community to bring the Netherlands our privacy centered and open approach to voice.
We’re coming to a city near you to kick off efforts to translate Mycroft into your language! Keep up to date here and let us know where we should visit here.
Mycroft’s First Officer, a serial entrepreneur and Air Force Officer, Joshua brings more than 15 years of leadership experience to the Mycroft team. He is a strong supporter of the open ethos, net neutrality and consumer privacy. Joshua lives in Holualoa, Hawaii with his wife and co-founder Kris Adair.