Nerd who fell in love with marketing & growth.

Available for keynotes and short advice calls

Nicholas D'hondt

Big news: I'm officially a (late) co-founder of JobRunr 🚀

A year ago, I joined as Head of Growth. 

The deal with Ronald? 

Date for one year. If the spark is there, we make it official. 💍

We negotiated everything upfront so we could spend the rest of the year focused on one thing only: healthy growth.

End of last year, the verdict was in.

Both of us felt it. 

This is it.

Looking back, it almost feels like a roads led here.

👉 My first startup Plann3r with Ruben Meul? We coded the entire back-end in Java. (JobRunr is a tool built for the Java world.)

Now my Java background helps me understand the product and follow dev conversations.

👉 Then I co-founded GrowForce with David & Amaury, where I led all B2B marketing and learned how to do B2B sales.

My marketing skills let me translate technical stuff into language their managers also get.

My sales experience helps me navigate corporate procurement.

And my entrepreneurial drive lets me co-create JobRunr's strategy and vision.

And if that was not enough, JobRunr's values completely align with my own. 

Everything we do is with the intention to leave the planet better than we found it. 🌍

Thanks Dirk for setting up that first date. 💚

Head Of Growth at JobRunr | Turning creative ideas into measurable results | Public Speaker - Available for keynotes

I thought my content was driving revenue. But I couldn't prove it. 🤦‍♂️

If you market to developers, you know the pain: 
Ad blockers, Privacy extensions, "Do Not Track" headers.

And I totally get why people are using this.

I knew our blog posts were working because sales prospects kept mentioning them. 

But my HubSpot dashboard? It was a ghost town of unassigned attribution. 

Thanks to my background in Growth Marketing, I wanted hard data, not just "gut feeling."

So, I tried to build a manual map.

The Setup:
- Google Sheets: To list every closed deal.
- HubSpot Breeze: To see company-level page visits.
- Scarf: To track open-source package usage.

The Failure: 
It was a mess. HubSpot Breeze didn't talk to the Deal view. Scarf data lived on an island. I spent more time copy-pasting rows than analyzing them.

So I wanted something more efficient. 

I wanted to be able to ask: "Hey, for all deals closed in January, which blog post was visited the most?"

So I just Vibe Coded it this afternoon.

I built a custom MVP that aggregates: 
✅ HubSpot Deal data 
✅ Website traffic (even the anonymous stuff) 
✅ Scarf package downloads

Now, I'm able to ask questions like: "Show me the user journey for Deal X." "What common technical docs do closed-won deals read?"

It’s super basic (for now), but it works. 

I believe this is where marketing ops is going. 

We aren't just using software anymore; we're glueing it together with AI to get to the exact insights we need.

👇 Question for the builders: Has anyone else used Vibe Coding (or cursor/replit) to build their own internal marketing tools?

And if you target devs... how are you solving the attribution black hole? 

Drop a tip below! 💡

Your app is not the future of customer experience.

I was interviewed last week by Claire Charlier who's building ENGIE's future CX vision.

One question stuck with me:

"What's the biggest misconception companies have about customer experience?"

My answer: They're still too obsessed with their own channels.

The best customer interactions happen where your customers already are.

WhatsApp. Messaging apps. Maybe even an AI that calls them 10 seconds after signup.

Not another app they'll forget to open.

Here's the shift I see coming:

Soon, customers won't interact with companies directly.

Their personal AI will.

"Siri, switch me to an energy provider that matches my values." Done.

Sure, some people will just ask for the cheapest option.

But many will want their spending to reflect who they are and what they believe in.

Their AI agent will need to understand which brands align with those values.

That's why your brand story matters more than ever.

Not just for humans, but for the algorithms that will decide on their behalf.

Thanks Claire Charlier, Steven Geerinck and Birger De Rese for the conversation,  it triggered some thinking I hadn't done before.

Excited to see what comes out of this project at ENGIE.

Marketing to Java developers is like playing the game on hard mode 🎮

And yes, I signed up for it willingly. And I would do so again in a heartbeat.

At JobRunr, our main audience is Java developers.

People with world-class BS detectors.
People who skip anything that smells like fluff.
People who want proof, depth, and usefulness. Or they are gone.

Early on, I thought classic B2B marketing would work.

Nice lead magnets.
Clean value props.
Some paid traffic.

Spoiler. It didn’t. 💡

What did work was changing how we think about marketing entirely.

👉 Treating content as documentation, not promotion
👉 Explaining the "why" behind every decision
👉 Showing the how and sharing it all transparently
👉 Brushing off my Java skills to speak the same language as our users

That mindset helped us grow an open-source project into something companies in finance and healthcare trust in production.

And now, I want help scaling that.

We are hiring an All-round Growth Marketer.

Not to "run campaign".

But to own the full journey together with me:

✅ From open-source users to paid customers
✅ From experiments on LinkedIn and Reddit to creative ABM plays
✅ From technical blog posts to simple video edits and clean visuals

This role is not for everyone.

But if you believe marketing only works when it genuinely helps people, it might be for you.

More info:

Open article: Hiring All-round Growth Marketer at JobRunr by jobrunr.io

Hiring All-round Growth Marketer at JobRunr

Y squared

At Y squared, we believe in people. Because under the right conditions, they have the power to move mountains. That’s why we focus first and foremost on creating those very conditions. Empowering our consultants not only to realise but above all to expand their potential. So they can do the same for our clients.

Driving digital transformation across multiple industries, Y squared is the place where clients’ and consultants’ goals don’t just intersect. They raise each other to the power of 2.

Founding Partner & Management Consultant

Cognizant

Part of the Digital Strategy consulting group within Cognizant Digital Business. Our cross vertical, interdisciplinary team of strategists, designers, data scientists and technologists take a human-centered approach to digital transformation. In partnership with our clients, we imagine, design and prototype new experience paradigms across product, service and environmental ecosystems, and subsequently bring these concepts to market with Cognizant’s deep domain and industry expertise, implementation and operational efficiency. Further, we aid clients with their internal operating models with process, innovation and development frameworks for optimal performance in the fast-paced market.

Digital Strategy Consultant

Hedera - a Cognizant Company

Hedera is a community of experienced marketing, sales & services consultants as well as project & program managers, operating internationally.
As a growth-driven management consulting company, we are passionate about assisting our clients with identifying high-value opportunities and realizing substantial and profitable growth. We do so by bringing foresight and knowledge, profound functional expertise, and a practical approach to build capabilities and deliver real impact.

We focus on initiatives and challenges within:
- Growth Strategy
- Innovation Management
- Marketing, Sales & Customer Service
- Customer Experience
- Omnichannel Management
- Change Management
- Digital Transformation 
leveraging our deep industry expertise within various industries, including Banking & Insurance, Utilities, Pharma, Postal, Telecom, Automotive & Transportation, E-commerce, High-tech, FMCG & Retail. 
True to our entrepreneurial spirit, we are taking the opportunity to source from our extensive expertise and in-house knowledge by starting up innovative new business ventures.

Manager

Senior Consultant

Consultant

DXC Technology (formerly known as CSC)

Business Consultant for Financial Services

Business Consultant

BNP Paribas Fortis

Defining the strategic marketing plan, based on market and client insights, and responsible for managing marketing campaigns.

Realisations: online acquisition campaigns (e.g. Choose your gift campaign), members get members actions, partnerships with Tomorrowland, myShopi, etc.

Marketing Hello bank! by BNP Paribas Fortis

Corporate program for high potential young graduates, consisting of different assignments within different business lines, with the goal of acquiring an understanding of the entire organisation

Roles: Digital Project Manager, PMO, Retail Financial Advisor, Credit Analyst 
Trainee AAA+ Committee: President & Team leader Formal Events

International Management Trainee

With Y squared, together with my co-founder Lynn, we are on a mission to create an empowering environment where digital consultants can thrive, because under the right conditions, people have the power to move mountains. 
#powertothrive

More info on 👉 https://ysquared.consulting/ 👈

Experienced Management Consultant in Digital Strategy and Product Management, who creates impactful digital experiences by connecting organisations with people and technology. 
Combining business and product vision with a pragmatic approach in different roles (Product Manager, Product Owner, Project Manager) and across industries (Banking, Retail, etc.). 
Bringing lots of energy, entrepreneurship and a passion for human-centred design.
After spending 2 years in Australia, I co-founded Y squared, a Belgium based management consulting firm.

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