I don’t run companies by controlling execution.
I run them by making direction explicit.

My role is best described as a coach, an on-field striker with a free role, and the skipper of a competitive sailing team, all at once.

I set the course.
I create clarity when things get ambiguous.
I step into the game only when it matters.

At Nlockd, that translates into building a decision intelligence layer for digital commerce. Not another tool. Not another dashboard. But a system that forces choices to become explicit before automation, optimization or scaling even starts.

I surround myself with people who are better than me at their craft, engineering, data, product, operations. My job is not to out-execute them. My job is to make sure they are playing the same game, toward the same objective, with clear boundaries and ownership.

I’m optimistic by default, but not naive.
Opportunistic, but allergic to chaos.
Always solution-oriented, but only after the real problem is understood.

I believe most companies don’t fail because of lack of data or talent.
They fail because decisions stay implicit, political, or endlessly postponed.

That’s the gap I work in.
Making decisions visible, defensible, and durable.

Founder & CEO at Nlockd.
Decision intelligence for digital commerce.


Rob Gent

I started running again this week.

05:30. Six kilometers. Back home by 06:00. Day starts clean.

When you're building a company, the default mode is reactive. Slack. Email. Problems. Someone always needs something before you've had a chance to think.

The run changes that. Thirty minutes where nothing can reach you. No notifications. No decisions. Just movement and whatever's in your head.

I'm not going to tell you morning routines are the secret to success. But I will say: the days I run, I think better. The ideas are clearer. The problems feel smaller.

This week I also had some of my best Claude sessions in the morning after the run. Head clear, ideas sharp, things actually got built.

Find your version of the 05:30 run. Whatever gets you in front of the day instead of behind it.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce #running

Rob van Gent

AI-Operators (agents) will take-over e-commerce, it all starts with insights. Building Nlockd for €2M+ brands that want to lead that shift. | Founder Nlockd | 19+ yrs in e-commerce | Amazon, bol.com & AI-Commerce.

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I've been in e-commerce for almost 20 years. I've seen a lot of shifts.
Nothing compares to what's happening right now.

The last few weeks have felt different. Like things are clicking into place faster than expected. And some of what I'm seeing I almost hesitate to say out loud, because it's going to affect a lot of people.

Here it is anyway: AI agents are going to run e-commerce operations. End to end. Without humans in the loop. Not eventually, but within a few years.

The pushback I get is always the same: "There will always be a need for human judgment." Maybe. But I think a lot of that argument is self-preservation dressed up as wisdom. If I were in an operational e-commerce role today, I'd be doing one of two things: learning AI as fast as possible. Or making a career change. I'm not saying this to scare anyone. I'm saying it because I wish someone had said it to me earlier.

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Most e-commerce teams are still asking if AI is relevant. Amazon already answered that question.

They introduced a formal AI Agent Policy last week. Every automated tool accessing their platform now needs a kill switch, so Amazon can shut it down 
on demand. That's not a technical update. That's a power move.

Amazon is closing the data pipeline for third-party AI tools while quietly rolling out its own. Seller Assistant. Opportunity Explorer. Ads Agent. All agentic. All Amazon-owned.

The AI takeover of e-commerce operations isn't a prediction anymore.
It's policy.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #amazon #agents #commerce

Last week I was on a ski slope in Austria. Family, mountains, and bad coffee at overpriced lodges.

I still had some calls and Slack with the team. That's just how it goes when you're building something. But I was largely off the industry radar. I came back to my inbox on Monday and found: Amazon had formalized a full AI Agent Policy. Visa and DBS completed the first real agentic commerce transactions. AI executing payments. No human in the loop. Google announced checkout directly inside AI search.

One week. The industry moved without me. That used to be fine. Take a break, catch up, carry on. The pace allowed for it. I don't think it does anymore. Not in this part of the industry. 

I'm not saying don't take holidays. I'm saying: if you come back from a week off and nothing meaningful changed in your space, you might be watching the wrong space.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce

I had a call with an agency this week. Good people. Serious clients. Solid revenue.

I asked them how they're using AI in their e-commerce work.

"We have an intern exploring it."

One person. Part-time. No mandate. No budget. No urgency.

I get it. It feels responsible. You don't want to break what's working. But this is exactly the pattern I saw in 2012 when I asked agencies about mobile. "We're looking into it."

The brands and agencies pulling ahead right now are not exploring. They're rebuilding workflows, replacing manual steps, and running operations with a fraction of the headcount they needed two years ago.

An intern experimenting with AI is not a strategy. It's a comfort blanket.

The window to get ahead is open. I keep saying it because it keeps being true.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce

Replicating what works in the US seems like the obvious move when expanding to Europe. It's also where most brands go wrong.

I once helped set up a full PAN-EU marketplace operation for a brand doing 100M+ on Amazon in the US.

The brief was simple: replicate what works at home. And we did. Amazon Vendor. Pan-European FBA. Full focus on scaling across EU countries. What we didn't do: look left or right. Bol.com is the dominant marketplace in the Netherlands, bigger than Amazon there. Allegro owns Poland. Cdiscount is massive in France. These aren't niche players. They're market leaders in their own backyard.

We had zero presence on any of them. It made sense at the time. The brand knew Amazon. Amazon felt safe. But safe isn't the same as smart. If you're expanding to EU marketplaces, Amazon is a great start. Just don't make it the whole story.

#AI #eCommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #OS #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data

I have always wanted a team that builds what is in my head and tells me when, what is in my head, is wrong.

Took a while to find that.

We have a COO who goes deep on everything. Backend, frontend, LLM. Not surface-level deep. Actually deep. She can judge an idea on its technical merits, kill it if it needs killing, and improve it if it deserves improving. That is rare.

We have a marketing and automation team that built a complete sales and marketing machine from scratch. No big budget. No army of people. Just automated flows and agents doing the work that would normally require a full department. They figured it out themselves.

And we have a development team building the actual platform. UI/UX, frontend, backend, lead dev. Experienced, dedicated, fast. The backbone of everything we are shipping.

I started Nlockd because I saw a problem no one was solving properly. I am still here because of the people who decided to solve it with me.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce

Two weeks in a row. 05:30. Every day.
Week 2 of making it a real habit.

I've always been a morning person. But there's a difference between being up early and actually doing something with it. This is the something.

6km before the world starts. No Slack. No calls. No decisions yet. Just movement and a head that's already working by the time I sit down at my desk.

This week I noticed something shift. Not just less tired. Actually sharp. The kind of clarity that used to take until 10am to find.

30km last week. 5 runs. 2-week streak.

The numbers are a byproduct. What I'm after is simple: show up every day in the best possible state to build something.

05:30 is doing that.

Building a company is a long game. So is this.
See you on the (early morning) streets ;-)

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce #running

Bigger revenue doesn't mean smarter decisions. 

Five years ago, I saw large brands running on outdated dashboards and manual reporting. I thought: this is growing pain. It'll get better. Last week I got a déjà vu.

Same scale. Same problem. More data than ever, but still no intelligence. People manually digging through numbers to find what a system should have flagged automatically. It's not a lack of data. It's a lack of insight. And the strange thing is: the bigger the brand, the easier it is to ignore. Revenue keeps coming in. Until it doesn't.

#AI #eCommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #OS #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data

Five numbers your e-commerce team checks every week. Five numbers that no longer mean what you think.

Organic search traffic. It is down. But the demand is not. Consumers are searching on TikTok, asking ChatGPT, browsing inside Amazon. They found your category. They just did not come through Google first. A traffic drop is not a demand drop.

Conversion rate on your webshop. Looks stable. But an increasing share of buyers never visited your webshop at all. They converted on a marketplace, through a social shop, or via an AI-generated recommendation. Your webshop CR is measuring a shrinking slice of total demand.

Amazon BSR. Your rank held steady. But BSR is a relative number inside a category. If the whole category is being displaced by a competitor on bol.com or Zalando, your rank tells you nothing about your actual position.

Return on ad spend. Your ROAS looks fine. But if you are not measuring assisted conversions across channels, you are probably double-counting credit and missing where buyers actually made the decision.

Customer acquisition cost. Going up everywhere. But the brands obsessing over CAC while ignoring retention economics are solving the wrong problem. The cost to keep a customer has never been lower, relatively speaking.

These are not broken metrics. They are incomplete ones. The question is whether you know what they are missing.

AI makes weak decision systems fail faster.

Not because AI is dangerous.
But because it removes friction.

If the rules are unclear, AI will still execute.
If trade offs are unresolved, AI will still optimize.
If ownership is missing, AI will still scale behavior.

Automation does not fix ambiguity.
It institutionalizes it.

Just wrapped up a week in Austria with my family. First proper ski trip of the year. My two sons, a daughter, my wife. A week in the mountains with nowhere to be except on the slopes. 

When you're building something from scratch, there's always a reason to keep going. One more call. One more thing to fix. The to-do list doesn't empty, you just learn to put it down. I won't pretend I've figured out the balance. Some weeks the startup wins. Some weeks the family wins. The goal is to make sure it's not always the same one.

This week, the family won.
Back to it tomorrow.

A stat that reframes everything for me: Consumer behaviour changes that took more than 10 years during the rise of e-commerce are now happening in 12 to 24 months.

Let that land for a second.

We spent a decade watching consumers move from offline to online. Brands had time to adapt, test, fail, and recover. That window is gone.
Last month, Visa and DBS Bank completed the first real agentic commerce transactions. AI executing payments autonomously. No human sign-off. Just done.

Google is building checkout directly into AI search. Amazon formalized its AI agent policy last week. The brands that are "keeping an eye on AI" are making the same mistake retailers made in 2010 when they were "keeping an eye on e-commerce." We know how that story ended....

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce

Elon calls it a supersonic tsunami. He's right. But no one is saying the quiet part out loud for e-commerce.

He talks about desk jobs disappearing. Emails. Spreadsheets. Customer support. Generic. Broad.

Here's what I see: the entire operational layer of e-commerce goes first.

Pricing decisions. Content updates. Ad budget allocation. Inventory signals. Marketplace monitoring. Every single one of those is a digitally-centric task someone at a brand is doing manually right now. Every single one is being automated.

The brands that are "keeping an eye on AI" are making the same mistake as the agency I spoke to this week. They had an intern "experimenting" with AI. One person. Part-time. Exploring.

That's not a strategy. That's a LinkedIn post about transformation with zero change underneath it.

The tsunami doesn't care how slowly you're moving.
https://lnkd.in/e3ehYanG

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce

"AI agent" has become a catch-all term. That is starting to cause real confusion.

A lot of what is being sold as AI agents right now is actually a workflow with LLM access. Automated steps, triggered in sequence, with a language model sitting somewhere in the middle. Not an agent. An automated process with a smart layer on top.

That is not a criticism. It solves the same problem. Faster decisions, less manual work, fewer people needing to be in the loop. The outcome is often identical.

But the terminology matters, because it shapes expectations. An actual agent reasons. It reads a situation, decides what to do, and acts. A workflow executes. It does what it was told.

Right now, most e-commerce teams cannot tell the difference. Vendors are not rushing to clarify it.

Know what you are buying. And know what problem you are actually trying to solve. The label is less important than whether it works.

There is no publisher, no platform, no newsletter that is purely focused on AI in e-commerce in EU.

Think about that.

The biggest operational shift in the history of the industry and there's no dedicated editorial voice for it. A few sections in broader e-commerce media. The occasional AI roundup. That's it.

What does that tell you? The people running brands are not yet asking the question seriously enough to create demand for the answer.

That is going to change. Fast.

When it does, the brands and teams that already moved will have a 12 to 18 month head start on everyone who was waiting for someone to explain it to them.

I keep posting about this not because I enjoy being early. I do it because I genuinely don't see anyone else saying it directly to the people who need to hear it.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce #publisher

Manual work is never neutral.

It is a signal.

It signals that:
A decision was deferred.
A boundary was never set.
A rule was considered too uncomfortable to formalize.

Teams call this flexibility.
Leaders call it pragmatism.

In reality, it is postponed clarity with interest.

My sister was here last week, visiting from Greece.

We had dinner, caught up properly for the first time in a while, and she brought her new book. "Sara komt thuis", the second in her Sara trilogy. A novel.

In a world drowning in AI-generated content, where more is produced every day than anyone can read in a lifetime, she sat down and wrote a book. A real one. Took the time, found the words, told a story.

I find that genuinely impressive.

Irene van Gent, If you like literary fiction in Dutch, worth a look.

Find the essence of your story | Writer | Ghostwriter |

Zo snel al - De eerste reacties op mijn boek komen binnen...

💚 Heb je boek bijna uit, erg indrukwekkend en prettig weer om te lezen💚 

💚 ik heb net Sara komt thuis uitgelezen. Wow!!! Ik vond Ik ben Sara mooi, maar dit vond ik PRACHTIG!!! Ik moest bijna een traantje wegpinken aan het einde. Je hebt echt iets heel bijzonders geschreven, dank je wel hiervoor. 💚 

Ondertussen ben ik al met deel drie bezig en maak ik me klaar voor de laatste drie events van de tour! Je kunt er nog bij zijn! 

Check alle events en reacties op de eerste vrouwencirkels: https://lnkd.in/e-Y38Y-t

If I had to name the single most common mistake brands make on marketplaces, it's this: they treat it like a side project.

Set it up. Sync the catalogue. Copy the content from the webshop. Done.
And then they wonder why it's not performing. Marketplace content isn't just product information. It's your sales rep. Your shelf space. Your first, and often only, impression. 

And every platform has its own rules: different algorithms, different search behaviour, different buyer intent. A title that works on your webshop will get buried on Amazon. Bullet points optimised for Bol.com won't land the same way on Zalando. The brands winning on marketplaces treat it like a full-time job. Because it is.

Not a channel you manage. A channel that manages you, if you're not paying attention.

Most e-commerce teams will prepare for the AI shift the same way most retailers prepared for e-commerce in 2010. Too late and too slow.

If you want to do it differently, start here: Map your operations. Pricing, content, ads, inventory, customer service. For each one, ask: what would it look like if AI ran this? That question alone will tell you where you're exposed.

Fix your data first. AI doesn't fix broken data infrastructure. It amplifies it. If your systems don't talk to each other now, that problem gets bigger, not smaller. Build with it now, imperfectly. The teams pulling ahead aren't waiting for the perfect AI strategy. They're running experiments, failing fast, and learning. That compounds.

The window to get ahead of this is open. It won't stay open forever.

#AI #ecommerce #Nlockd #SaaS #software #marketplaces #channels #entrepreneur #intelligence #data #agents #amazon #commerce

4x Founder - 1 Exit | Business Coach & Technology Executive | Deep in AI & Web 3 | Digital Transformation

I partner with Seed and Series-funded founders to bridge the gap between 'scrappy startup' and 'scalable enterprise.' I am the person you call when the business outgrows its early operating system, growth plateaus, or the team needs to professionalize without losing its speed.My work blends founder experience, corporate scale, and hard-earned judgment from 20+ years operating in high-stakes environments. I move businesses forward with clear thinking and honest conversations—no theatre, no templates.The Track Record• Global Founder: Built 4 companies across HK, Switzerland, Spain, and the UK.• Rapid Scale: Raised $2.2M pre-product, led a hard pivot to AI, and grew to $1M ARR within the first year with backing from the Asian Development Bank ($150B AUM).• Strategic Turnarounds: Led 5 successful turnarounds in the last 12 months, including one from near-collapse to profitability in just 4 months.• Enterprise Experience: Negotiated hundreds of millions in deals, managed 120-person teams, and advised on $200M–$400M infrastructure investments.• Global Coaching: Guided 200+ founders across 25 countries and 15+ industries—from SaaS and Marketplaces to AI and Web3.How I Help FoundersI help you tighten your operating rhythm and navigate the high-pressure moments of the scale-up journey:• GTM Resets &amp; Pivots: Navigating product-market fit shifts and investor pressure.• Operational Scale: Moving from 5 to 30+ people (as seen at Streamr following their $32M raise).• M&amp;A &amp; Fundraising: Preparation for early exit conversations and high-stakes rounds.• Expertise Across: AI, FinTech, HealthTech, ConTech, GovTech, Sustainability, and Infrastructure.Speaking &amp; Thought LeadershipI speak at Google HQ, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum on AI, innovation, and systems change.If you’re scaling something ambitious and want steadier leadership and sharper decisions—let’s talk.

Ben Sheppard

Even Jeff Bezos found the beginning "the hardest thing I’ve ever done." 

In 1994, it took 60 meetings for Bezos to raise seed capital for an unproven online bookstore. Why? Because at the pre-seed stage, you often have conviction but zero proof.

Most founders today are told to just "build a prototype" with no-code tools, but those often result in a "visual shell" that lacks the technical substance investors and customers actually need to see (there are exceptions, I know, but I am speaking more generally).

That’s where the Apex Lab and AWS partnership comes in. They provide up to $25,000 in grant funding to help you move past "sketches" and into a well-architected AI prototype. It’s about turning skepticism into engagement through real engineering.

Stop building in isolation and start proving your execution capability.

What are some of the ways you have overcome being frozen? 

Top Mentor (                                            5.0 / 5.0)

I work directly with founders and startup teams to raise capital, close customers, and make smarter decisions—faster. My practice blends deep operational experience with high-trust coaching and strategic advisory, tailored to the chaos and complexity of early-stage growth.

I’ve supported individuals, early-stage teams, SMEs, and global enterprises—helping them navigate fundraising, growth, and strategic inflection points. Clients span infrastructure, Web3, F&B, gaming, real estate, telco, and sustainability.

Support includes:
	•	1:1 coaching and advisory 
	•	Business planning, pivoting, and go-to-market strategies
	•	Fundraising guidance (equity, debt, token, grants), pitch refinement, investor readiness
	•	Sales strategy, partnerships and GTM execution
	•	Scaling hiring and team design
	•	Conflict resolution, leadership development, and high-trust decision support

I’ve built toolkits and frameworks to help founders navigate growth, raise capital, validate markets, and get investor-ready—used by accelerators, platforms, and top-ranked mentoring networks like MentorCruise.

I write about the highs, lows, and hard calls of startup life—from building companies to backing founders. Read more at bensheppardxyz.substack.com.

Strategic Advisor, Business Coach & Fractional Operator

Chief Product Officer (Fractional)

Silta AI is a vertical AI platform purpose-built for the infrastructure sector. It turns the mountains of documents, data, and complex processes that slow projects down into clear, actionable intelligence — across the entire lifecycle, from early feasibility to financing, construction, operations, and handback.

Unlike generic AI tools, Silta is designed for regulated, high-stakes environments. It applies sector-specific logic, verified frameworks, and precedent benchmarking to produce transparent, audit-ready outputs that decision-makers can trust. Every recommendation is linked to its source, with gaps flagged and compliance standards applied.

Governments, development banks, engineering firms, and investors use Silta to:
	•	Accelerate pre-feasibility and due-diligence reviews from months to days
	•	Streamline tender evaluations with explainable scoring and compliance checks
	•	Monitor construction and operations with real-time insights
	•	Manage project handback through automated gap analysis

Silta never trains on client data, offers white-label and on-premise deployments to meet sovereignty requirements, and integrates seamlessly with existing workflows. By enhancing — not replacing — human expertise, it extends the reach, speed, and rigour of infrastructure teams, unlocking billions in potential value and helping close the global infrastructure gap.

Co-Founder

Providing start-up mentoring to students participating in the GBSB Accelerator

Startup Mentor

Polakdot is a community-driven initiative advancing the adoption of real-world assets (RWA) within the Polkadot ecosystem. We build strategy, content, and partnerships to help the Polkadot community better understand and execute on RWA opportunities.
	•	Leading ecosystem-wide strategy for RWA narrative and use case development
	•	Supporting parachain teams in shaping RWA positioning and outreach
	•	Developing business development materials tailored to enterprises and institutions
	•	Facilitating cross-chain conversations and collaboration around supply chain, carbon, infrastructure, and DePIN use cases
	•	Acting as a bridge between Web3 builders and real-world operators

Business Development Consultant

I founded TX Technology Exploration Oy, the consulting arm of Tomorrow Explored (TX), and transformed it into a global B2B Web3 strategy and software company.

We worked across sectors—banking, NGOs, automotive, pharma, infrastructure, and ocean sustainability—helping enterprises explore the real-world applications of Web3 and tokenization.

Highlights:
	•	Closed major projects with UnionBank of the Philippines, Atos, World Wildlife Fund, and others
	•	Secured two major EU Horizon 2020 grants (Kraken: €450K, Atarca: €850K)
	•	Led high-performing consulting teams across Asia and Europe
	•	Designed token models and digital strategies for startups and global enterprises
	•	Launched a content-driven lead generation engine averaging 2+ inbound leads/week
	•	Created and hosted the TX Tomorrow Explored podcast, which hit the Apple Top 10 in Finland and featured leaders from both Web3 and TradFi sectors

Managing Director

At Streamr, I held multiple leadership roles during a critical period of growth following the company’s €32M raise. As Head of Streamr Labs, I led a small team of developers and designers focused on building innovative applications atop Streamr’s decentralised, tokenised data infrastructure. We explored practical use cases for real-time data exchange, helping shape the early application layer of the platform.

As Director of the Streamr Marketplace, I oversaw both the technical maintenance of the decentralised data marketplace and its commercial growth—onboarding new data providers and developing monetisation strategies to unlock value from real-time data flows.

In parallel, as Head of Partnerships, I led enterprise adoption efforts across sectors including mobility, infrastructure, smart cities, health, and supply chain—building successful relationships with Fortune 500s and multinationals such as OSISoft, HPE, Nokia, and DXC. I also served as a strategic advisor to the leadership team, designing the organisation’s operating model and supporting its transformation from a five-person startup into a 30+ person international company.

Head Of Partnerships, Marketplace Director, Head of Streamr Labs

Founded Bold Native Advisors to deliver technical and management consultancy for infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia, focused on major public-private partnership (PPP) schemes.

The company grew to 8 full-time employees and secured engagements with USAID, World Bank, Maybank, HSBC, MPIC, Rebel Group, and government entities in the Philippines and Malaysia.

Key achievements:
	•	Advised on high-profile PPP projects, including:
	•	Cebu Cordova Bridge ($600M USD project value)
	•	Cavite–Laguna Expressway ($656M USD project value)
	•	Supported transaction advisory and strategic planning for ministries and multilateral donors
	•	Reached $900K in annual turnover with 45% net margin in its strongest year

Due to political instability and shifts in ministerial direction in both the Philippines and Malaysia—our key markets—the business became unsustainable and was formally closed in 2019.

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Co-founded a law and infrastructure advisory startup focused on public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Asia. Built the company from scratch to 16 professionals, including lawyers and technical consultants specializing in infrastructure development.

Key achievements:
	•	Secured high-profile clients including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asian Development Bank
	•	Led and won competitive bids for infrastructure advisory across Southeast Asia
	•	Designed the first-ever fishing port PPP for a Southeast Asian government
	•	Reached $1.2M in turnover in year one with above-industry profit margins
	•	Successfully exited the company just 18 months after launch

Founder, Chief Financial and Operations Officer

Held dual regional leadership roles across Europe and Southeast Asia, managing business development, delivery, and strategy for highway and bridge projects.

Key responsibilities & achievements:
	•	Oversaw a $5M regional P&L and directly managed ~35 staff across multiple countries
	•	Led winning bids for infrastructure consulting contracts worth up to $18M
	•	Managed project teams of up to 120 professionals across Asia and Europe
	•	Delivered major road and bridge projects for clients such as:
	•	UK Highways Agency
	•	Rijkswaterstaat (NL)
	•	World Bank
	•	Macquarie Bank
	•	Asian Development Bank

In the final year, was tasked by CH2M with managing the wind-down and strategic closure of the highway and bridge business unit in Southeast Asia.

Regional Director for South East Asia Highways and Bridges Market / European Market Manager

4x Founder - 1 Exit | Business Coach & Technology Executive | Deep in AI & Web 3 | Digital Transformation 

This is a bonus article in addition to my usual newsletter. At a New York DealBook Summit in 2024, Jeff Bezos offered a stark reminder of how difficul

The Hardest Stage of a Startup Is the One Before You Have Anything

Apex Lab

4x Founder (1 Exit) | 12 yrs Board Director | Fractional Operator & Coach: Seed to Exit | Scaling & Turnarounds | Specializing in AI, SaaS, Fintech & Web3

We often treat progress as a willpower issue. But what if sustainable momentum doesn't come from intensity, but from better design? 

I’ve just published the latest edition of my newsletter, Where Progress Comes From, and it is a deep dive into the systems that actually drive results across startups, enterprise negotiations, and personal performance.

If you're tired of relying on sheer force to move things forward, we cover a lot of ground in this one:

🛑 Enterprise Deals: Why value alone rarely closes a deal, and how to navigate the hidden "micro-agendas" (like career risk and budget control) that actually stall your pilots. 
🧠 Internal Workflows: How to use the discipline of the STAR framework to stop misdiagnosing team problems and start designing solutions based on behavioral reality. 
🚀 The Proof Gap: A practical, funded pathway (via AWS & Apex Lab) for pre-seed founders to move from "vibe coding" a visual shell to building engineered evidence. 
🌊 Environmental Performance: Why the "chained to your desk" culture kills original thought, and how to identify the specific environments that trigger your peak professional state. 
🏃‍♂️ Personal Note: How I stopped my cycle of self-sabotaging injuries in my Hyrox training by dropping the "bull at a gate" mindset and dialing back the pace.

At every stage and under every pressure, the underlying pattern remains the same: stop negotiating personalities and start negotiating incentives.

Let me know in the comments: Where in your own work are you currently relying on intensity when you should be relying on design?

Across startups, scale-ups, negotiations and personal performance, this edition looks at what actually drives sustainable momentum . Not intensity - d

Where Progress Comes From

I entered a paella competition last weekend.
An Englishman vs a Spaniard.

You can probably guess how that ended.
His paella was incredible.
Mine was… respectable.

Let’s just say I won’t be pivoting into Spanish cuisine anytime soon.

But standing outside the pub cooking with friends reminded me of something that applies just as much to startups as it does to paella:
Mastery takes time.
You learn faster when you’re around people who know what they’re doing.

This week’s newsletter shares a few things from the startup world that caught my attention recently:
• Founder insights from the trenches
• A spotlight on Apex Lab  and their AI accelerator
• A startup to watch: FlowLinker  
• Plus a small personal update on Hyrox training and a hiking challenge

If that sounds interesting, you can read it here.

If you can "vibe code" it in an afternoon, so can your competitor. Speed is not a moat. 

We’re seeing a massive influx of "thin" LLM wrappers and rapid prototypes. But speed of creation is not the same as depth of product. True differentiation isn't found in how fast you can prompt a prototype—it’s in the architectural thinking, technical debt management, and scalability that AI can’t "vibe" its way through.

If you spend enough time watching technology cycles, you start to recognize the rhythm. A new capability emerges, it accelerates at breakneck speed, a

Open article: Zoom Out: We’ve Seen This Before by Ben Sheppard • 5 min read

Are you sitting on a strong concept but limited technical resources? This animation shows the transition from "idea" to a fully orchestrated AI system—the exact journey Apex Lab helps founders navigate.

Through their partnership with AWS, you can access:

Funded Execution: Up to $25,000 in grant funding for AI prototypes.
Technical Rigor: Moving beyond simple chatbots to multi-agent orchestration and RAG pipelines.
Speed: A finished, credible build delivered in approximately 4–6 weeks.

Investors don't just invest in ideas; they invest in evidence. Let’s build yours.

Scaling isn't about the armor. It's about the backbone.

Growth is exciting, but it changes the physics of your business. What worked with five people rarely works with twenty-five.

I see many founders (myself included!) reaching for "Robocop" solutions—AI, automation, and high-tech overhauls—to solve the friction of scaling. The temptation is to accelerate before the foundations are ready.

But here’s the reality:
- Growth magnifies everything. If your foundations are clear, it accelerates momentum. If they aren’t, it simply exposes the cracks.

- Automation follows diagnosis. If you automate a fragile, unstructured process, you don't get intelligence. You get "amplified disorder".

- The "Founder Bottleneck" is real. When a company scales, it's rarely the product that breaks first—it's the operating model.

In this month’s newsletter, I dive deep into how to move from "osmosis" to a real operating system. We look at why AI should follow a proper diagnosis of how work actually flows, not just a superficial workshop.

Let's build systems that allow growth to compound rather than destabilize

Growth is exciting. New customers. Expanding teams. Bigger opportunities. More complexity. At its best, scaling is a sign that something is working. B

Scaling the Backbone

The best part of my working day. Waking the coast, being creative and solving problems.

Sometimes enterprise negotiations fail because we negotiate the deal, not the system surrounding the client.

To move a stalled deal, you have to stop guessing and start analyzing. Before I apply any tactics, I perform "open-heart surgery" on the deal to build a factual foundation of every signal, objection, and prior conversation.

Here is the 4-part toolkit I use to turn a reactive exchange into a controlled process:

1. Stakeholder Mapping & Micro-Agendas Go beyond the org chart. Identify who is driving, who is resisting, and who is quietly watching.

The Key: Identify the "Micro-Agendas"—the personal drivers like career risk, budget ownership, or fear of future blame. These explain delays far more reliably than formal objections.

2. Outcome Modelling Don’t just optimize for your preferred result. Explicitly model the full range: Win-Win, Win-Lose, Lose-Win, and Lose-Lose.

The Key: Momentum often only appears once stakeholders understand what failure looks like and who absorbs the cost if the deal collapses.

3. Message Control Under Pressure Enterprise deals stretch over months, and fatigue degrades judgment.

The Key: Use "calibrated language"—neutral tones and questions designed to slow the conversation down rather than escalate it. Use tactical empathy and mirroring to keep communication firm and non-combative.

4. The DealLine™ Map the negotiation along a spectrum between the buyer's ideal outcome and the seller's ideal outcome.

The Key: This prevents "premature compromise". It allows you to anchor the conversation properly and pull extreme positions back toward a Fair Deal.

When negotiations are treated as systems rather than events, outcomes become far more predictable.

If you’re dealing with a stalled enterprise deal or a pilot that won’t convert, let’s pressure-test what’s really happening.

And the tools needed to navigate fragmented power and hidden incentives - This is a bonus article in addition to my usual newsletter- In the one my re

From Pilot to Deal: Why Enterprise Negotiations Break Down

The hardest part of building a company isn't scaling—it's proving you can build in the first place. Apex Lab has developed a structured pathway with AWS to help pre-seed founders do exactly that.


The 5-Step Process: 

Initial Assessment: Evaluate if your idea fits the AWS funding criteria.
Scope Development: Define a detailed, scalable scope of work.
Submission: Proposal is sent to AWS for approval.
Execution: Apex builds your prototype within 4–6 weeks.
Delivery: You receive the code and 100% of the IP.

Real-World Result: Look at CEE Travel AI—a multilingual agentic assistant with production-level traffic support, built through this exact program.

Ready to turn your conversation into a demonstration? DM to set up a chat

Free trials and pilots solve different problems.

A free trial helps a customer answer:
“Is this product useful?”

A pilot helps them answer:
“Does this work for us, in our context?”

Trials are typically short, standardised, and low-touch.
Pilots are scoped, time-bound, higher-touch, and often involve multiple stakeholders.

Personally, I rarely offer free pilots. Discounted pilots, yes — but a pilot should demonstrate reasonable commitment on both sides. Otherwise, you’re effectively spending startup runway while exposing IP, with no clear proof-of-value at the end.

This infographic lays out the differences side by side so teams can choose deliberately instead of defaulting.

📊 Infographic below

"Everyone is busy, but nothing is moving." 📉

Sound familiar? You might be hitting the Invisible Wall.

Startups sometimes fail because of Micro-Agendas—good people, with good intentions, optimizing for completely different goals.

When Marketing is chasing "Reach," Sales is chasing "Deals," and Product is chasing "Vision," you aren’t building a company. You’re running five different plays on the same field.

The Red Flags: 
🚩 Different departments have different definitions of "the customer." 
🚩 Marketing & Sales are both "winning" on paper, but revenue is flat. 
🚩 Product ships features no one asked for, then blames Marketing for the low adoption.

This is where I come in. As a business coach, I act as the "Agenda Whisperer." I help founders look beneath the surface of their org chart to: 
✅ Audit your setup: Identify where departmental silos are creating friction. 
✅ Uncover Micro-Agendas: Surface the hidden motivations slowing your speed to market. 
✅ Implement Systems: Build the cross-functional KPIs and tools that force alignment.

Don’t let "busy-ness" mask a lack of progress. Let’s get your team rowing in the same direction again.

Ready to tear down the invisible wall? DM me and let's talk about your current setup.

Thanks for the review, Omar — and for trusting the process.

This is the work I enjoy most. When a company is under pressure, it needs clarity and decisive action. I step in, identify the core issue quickly, and focus on solving the problem at its root.

In my early 30s, I was regularly deployed to stabilise troubled projects inside major corporations. My former boss used to describe me as an “all-terrain vehicle” — dropped into difficult environments to get things moving again.

As a founder, I’ve also had to fix my own mistakes. Every entrepreneur does. That experience shapes how I approach turnaround work today: practical, direct, and outcome-focused.

If your business has stumbled or feels stuck, reach out. I will assess it honestly and tell you what needs to happen next.

I do not work for free or on success fees. If a company is worth saving, it is worth investing in properly.

mentorcruise.com

Visit Ben Sheppard on MentorCruise

Software consultancies aren't dying; they're becoming architects of leverage. 

The narrative says that "vibe coding" makes dev shops obsolete. The reality? We’re seeing the birth of a new specialist: the expert who can take a prototype beyond the platform’s constraints and into the world of complex, regulated client requirements. We’ve seen this cycle before—from the early web to SaaS. It’s not extinction; it’s market selection.

You've probably noticed it without naming it. You think more clearly in certain rooms. You sleep better in certain places. You leave some meetings drained and others energised - and the agenda wasn't the difference, the room was.

Most high-performers have optimised everything: training, sleep, nutrition, mindset. The one thing that hasn't been touched is the space they do all of it in.

Envoqe changes that. At Envoqe we build a precise, individual picture of how your brain and body respond to your environments — your home, your office, your training space — and we tell you exactly what's working, what's costing you, and what to change.

The output is an Environmental Prescription: a specific plan for the conditions you need to perform and recover at your best.

Interested to learn more? DM me.

People coming from corporate have been trained to protect what they’ve got.

That makes sense in a big company.
It makes sense when you’ve got customers, revenue, and reputation to lose.

But early-stage startups don’t have those things.

What I see go wrong is founders bringing corporate instincts — or corporate people — in too early. Suddenly risk is avoided instead of managed. Decisions slow down. Everything feels “sensible”.

And the startup stops moving.

The founder thinks they’re protecting something.
They’re actually holding it back.

Read my full blog here

https://lnkd.in/d4VXWxRi

We had a 70% cost-saving product. The users were obsessed. The value was undisputed.

And the deal still died.

One of the most frustrating experiences for a founder or sales leader is when a "perfect" enterprise pilot fails to convert. Almost always, it's because we are negotiating the deal directly in front of us: the product, the pricing, and the terms.

We forget that we aren’t just selling to a person—we are selling into a system.

In major enterprises, power is fragmented and incentives are misaligned. Momentum is rarely killed by the product; it’s killed in the "seams" between departments:

IT holds implementation control.
Treasury holds the budget.
Legal is mandated to be risk-averse and sits several steps removed from operations.

Individually, none of these groups are wrong. Collectively, their micro-agendas kill the deal regardless of your product-market fit.

If you only engage with stated positions, you end up reacting to symptoms rather than controlling the negotiation.

The Bottom Line: Stop negotiating personalities. Start negotiating the system.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a video showing exactly how these "Micro-Agendas" create the friction that stalls your deals.

The most underestimated role of a business coach is not strategy.

It is not fundraising advice.
It is not introductions.

It is accountability at the exact moment fear starts quietly dictating behaviour.

Most founders are not short of ideas. They are not short of intelligence. What stalls progress is hesitation at the point of exposure — when the product is ready enough, when pilots are underway, when the next step is to go fully to market.

Because that step carries a different kind of risk.

If you charge properly.
If you put it in front of your own network.
If you test it openly.

You might discover it does not land the way you imagined.

So refinement continues. Preparation continues. Capital gets consumed. Momentum drains. The project does not fail dramatically. It slowly suffocates.

A coach earns their keep in that moment.

Not by endlessly validating feelings.
Not by being performatively aggressive.
But by naming avoidance clearly and calmly. By pointing out that staying hidden is often riskier than being tested.

I’ve summarised this dynamic in the infographic below.

If you are building something and feel yourself “almost ready” for too long, this may resonate.

Enterprise negotiations aren't a straight line—they’re a complex system.

If you’ve ever had a champion "drive" a deal only to have it "watched" by a silent blocker or "resisted" by a department you’ve never met, you’ve experienced the friction of fragmented power.

This video visualizes the invisible walls that stall enterprise deals.

When you stop looking at the contract and start looking at the Micro-Agendas—the personal incentives like career risk, budget ownership, and internal credibility—you finally gain control.

Watch how the "seams" between departments can either make or break your momentum.

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The Battle

Rob Gent

Ben Sheppard

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The Battle

Rob Gent

Ben Sheppard

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Rob Gent's LinkedIn Performance

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Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRob Gent's LinkedIn Performance