Bluebird

As Managing Partner IT at Bluebird Recruitment, I am responsible for building out our IT recruitment team with ex-industry experts and connecting top IT talent with leading companies throughout Europe. 

We focus on various IT areas, from software development, cloud & infrastructure, data science & engineering, product roles and more. 

Determined to transform the recruitment space, my goal is to integrate authentic industry expertise, fundamentally changing the sector. By utilising my technical background and understanding of the industry, I am committed to making an impact.

Managing Partner IT

ASML

At ASML, a leader in the semiconductor industry, I contributed to developing a platform designed to provide insights into machine operations. This platform played a crucial role in monitoring for errors, facilitating timely fixes, and employing artificial intelligence to anticipate potential failures.

Due to the proprietary and sensitive nature of the technology and processes at ASML, much of the detailed information about my role and the project specifics is classified. This experience has honed my skills in handling confidential data and working within strict operational security guidelines, reinforcing the importance of discretion and integrity in high-stakes environments.

𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆: 𝗦𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱: 𝗝𝗮𝘃𝗮, 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿, 𝗔𝗶𝗿𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴.

Senior Fullstack Engineer

Alphabet Nederland

At Alphabet Lease (part of BMW Group), a leasing company, my role involved developing modular components for a complex system and leading several frontend projects. As a Chapter Lead I spearheaded technical innovation within our eco-system. This included conducting Angular upgrades and enhancing the codebase for better performance. The frontend team, comprising 10 members, was responsible for overseeing and managing 20 separate Angular projects, each an individual application.

I also contributed to the refactoring of a key application, transitioning it to a monorepo structure with Nx to improve maintainability and scalability. 

𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆: 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱: 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿, 𝗝𝗮𝘃𝗮, 𝗞𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀

Frontend Chapter Lead

Lyfo

At Lyfo, a provider of advanced mobile coverage solutions critical for ensuring reliable communication, I developed an Angular application made for configuring the backend for their clients, including the Dutch police. The code that was written is quality tested by an external party and was found to be excellent.

𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆: 𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺 (𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲)

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱: 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿, 𝗚𝗼, 𝗞𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀

Lead Frontend Engineer

Datlinq

At DatLinq, a Dutch company known for its data solutions in the foodservice industry, I worked on the SaaS platform (DOX). My responsibilities included the development and enhancement of Data Outlet X and Salesmapp API. This platform gave our clients in the foodservice market data-driven decision making capabilities.

𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆: 𝗦𝗮𝗮𝗦 & 𝗙𝗼𝗼𝗱𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗱: 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝟴+, 𝗝𝗮𝘃𝗮, 𝗚𝗼𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴, 𝗡𝗼𝗱𝗲, 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗤𝗟

Lead Fullstack Engineer

Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport

Increasing mobility of citizens between EU countries results in a growing number of people seeking healthcare outside their own region or country. To facilitate the exchange of patient data among countries, the European Union collaborates with member states on an international infrastructure known as eHealth Digital Services & Infrastructure (eHDSI). The Netherlands is integrating into this system of national contact points with its own national contact point called the National Contact Point for eHealth (NCPeH). Through the NCPeH, healthcare professionals can digitally retrieve patient summaries from patients in EU countries requiring unplanned care in the Netherlands.

𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆: 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱: 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿, 𝗝𝗮𝘃𝗮, 𝗞𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀, 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗡𝗖𝗣.

codecentric Nederland B.V.

Codecentric is a consultancy firm. Since the start I have worked on one project:
Project: MOJO (Read below)

Fullstack Engineer

Mojo Concerts

At MOJO Concerts, a leading promoter of live music and entertainment events, I was tasked with developing an application named UNA. UNA is designed to streamline event access control, scheduling, and workflow management, playing a critical role in enhancing the operational efficiency of live events. This application utilizes a modern tech stack and leverages cloud-based solutions to ensure scalability and reliability.

𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆: 𝗦𝗮𝗮𝗦 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 & 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘀

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱: 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿, 𝗡𝗼𝗱𝗲, 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗤𝗟, 𝗖𝘆𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗚𝗖𝗣, 𝗔𝗪𝗦

Working while being a student

During my studies, to gain practical experience, I wanted to work. I faced the challenge that no company was willing to hire me part-time. Driven by resilience and determination, I didn't let this stop me. Instead, I chose to start my own freelancing 'company' as a way to gain that experience. I've worked on a variety of projects, ranging from small websites for local artists to large-scale applications like a planning system for a major transportation company. This experience has given me a versatile skill set, making me broadly deployable in various IT roles.

The tech stack I've used includes: WordPress, PHP, Laravel, JavaScript, AngularJS, Angular, React, HTML/CSS, and React Native.

As a former developer, I redefine the kind of developer you think you’re looking for and see beyond the resume to ensure you hire the real deal.

If you're a developer or hiring manager, feel free to send me a message on work related things.

If you're a human being you can always send me a message with anything random because I like engaging with you nonetheless 😉

🚀 Dennis van Valderen

Founder @ Drilldown | Custom-designed business dashboards for B2B SaaS that deliver insights in one click, eliminating the need for complex spreadsheets in just 60 days.

We help B2B SaaS teams build an owned data system - so metrics align across the organization and growth decisions are based on evidence.

This might resonate:

As B2B SaaS companies scale, it becomes harder to understand on where growth comes from and what to do next.

Most teams already have dashboards, data integrations, and the technical ability to build new ones. 

Yet they still struggle to agree on what metrics mean, explain drivers of revenue, or produce reliable forecasts.

What you need is one set of accurate, explainable numbers that your team can rely on.

Our work focuses on the data system underneath dashboards: the definitions, structure, and logic that determine whether analytics can support decision-making at scale.

If you’re trying to make decisions based on data but the numbers don’t line up, this explains why: https://thomasvarekamp.substack.com/p/you-have-dashboards-why-are-decisions

Thomas Varekamp

2025 in a nutshell (the good, the neutral and the bad):

The bad:

- marketing & positioning is still a challenge.
- life was very unbalanced → more stress.
- wasted a ton of money (but learned a lot).

The neutral:

- moved to Amsterdam (for a couple of months).
- got a bigger office (which we closed down).
- updated our website (like 20+ times).

The good:

- helped 11 companies with data & analytics.
- revenue grew by +30%.
- hired first full-time employee.
- got clearer on what I want from life.
- grew as a person (I feel more peaceful).

All in all, 2025 was a good year. But my goal is to make 2026 even better.

So this is what we will be doing in 2026:

Change 1: we’re becoming remote-first.

I want to travel more and have more control over my time. Everyone that works for Drilldown can work wherever they want.

Change 2: a new offer.

A recurring theme from clients was how much they valued that their teams could own and maintain the systems after we were done.

Our new offer is much more focused on transferring knowledge, not creating dependency.

Change 3: make things simpler.

From now on we're only going to focus on:

- 1 client profile: B2B SaaS leaders >$1M+ ARR.
- 1 outcome: helping you see what’s driving ARR.

I genuinely feel the right foundations are in place to make 2026 our best year ever, both personally and professionally.

Huge thanks to everyone we worked with in 2025.

Hope to build more together next year!

Best,
Thomas

ps. here’s a photo from my first surfing lesson, a fitting way to wrap up a year of trying new things, failing, and learning :)

Drilldown | Helping B2B SaaS leaders regain control by turning data into direction.

Here's the real story of how I'm doing. 2025 in numbers:

Costs: €237.802  
Revenue: €223.498
Profit: €-14.304

I worked more. I spent more. But I ended the year with less money in the bank.

So I past few months I decided to take a step back.

Looking at the situation from a distance, I realized something...

Our model is completely broken.

The problem: it takes weeks to understand the data context of new clients. This forces us to ask quite some money for our services.

The reality is that data rarely has high-priority. 

To understand the value, someone must have experienced a painful data moment.

So I sat down to think: how can we make this work?

Clients are happy, we have great testimonials, we clearly offer value. 

I started to analyze our best clients. That's when I noticed something...

It was never: "We love the charts." 

It was: "We love that we now finally own a system to leverage data for growth decisions."

I realized the value isn't in us writing the code (clients usually have great engineers). 

It was in designing the system & transferring the knowledge.

I spent the last few months documenting our entire IP: 

→ full customer journey tracking.
→ models to combat churn.
→ accurate ARR reporting.
→ marketing attribution.
→ deep ICP analysis.

Basically all the things a B2B SaaS can do to drive more ARR with data.

So in 2026 I'm making some changes...

Instead of us building the data system and handing it over, we are building it together.

It's a structured program where we set everything up step-by-step in 12 weeks.

Meaning: lower price point + you get the systems & skills.

Already pitched it to some prospects. Feedback has been very positive so far.

Pretty confident that this is the right direction for the business.

Let's see what 2026 brings!

P.S. I’m looking for a few companies to kick this off. If you want to see the full breakdown, shoot me a DM and I’ll send it over.

I spent €20,000 building a data platform. This year, I’m shutting it down.

Most of our clients use Dutch software to run their business.

To build great dashboards, we need to pull this data out of the tools.

The common data extraction tools do not support these sources. 

So I decided to build our own extraction tool called the Drilldown Extraction Hub: 

- fixed price.
- unlimited data.
- custom support.

On paper, it made sense. 

We onboarded a few customers and within a short time it was doing around €400 MRR. But then sucky part started.

Connectors started breaking, APIs changed, edge cases appeared…

Everything required constant custom work.

Problem #1: data extraction is not an easy one-time build. You need permanent maintenance.

Problem #2: Instead of fully focusing on what we are actually good at (analytics for B2B SaaS), I was now splitting attention between client work and engineering work. 

Not good.

By the end of last year, I made the call to stop. 

We still support existing customers, but for new clients we use existing tools.

My big lesson: focus is extremely important. Especially in the stages we’re at (~€220k revenue / year).

Keep building!

I’ve worked on projects my whole life:

At 12, got into music production.
At 16, sold hip-hop beats online.
At 18, made some money from record deals.
At 21, formed a duo, toured, got 20M streams.
At 24, was done with music, found data science.
At 25, developed data apps for fun.
At 26, built algorithmic trading bots.
At 28, I started Drilldown.

Working was never really the issue, I’ve always enjoyed building stuff.

But the thing I didn’t notice for a long time was how easily “working” turned into “always needing to do something.”

Many time I even felt guilty for not working.

Now I know better. 

There’s more to life than work guys.

Enjoy the little moments.

You never know how many you have left 😄

Most people know HeyReach.io as the LinkedIn tool that sprinted to $10M ARR in 29 months. Few know the real story of how they started.

- before the 2,900 monthly trial signups.
- before the 4,000+ paying customers.
- before the 8-figure revenue.

---

The founders actually began their journey in Macedonia, an place they described as "prehistoric" for startups.

Their first venture, Howitzer, burned through $500k as they fell into the "White Knight" trap: trying to hire expensive managers to fix their problems.

It didn't work. 

So they decided to build a product where they owned the growth. 

That was v0 of HeyReach.io.

---

In 2023, with only 3 months of cash left, they negotiated a life-saving AppSumo deal at 2:00 AM in a club.

That cash injection allowed them to answer the question:

“𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘢𝘥𝘴?”

They positioned themselves as the LinkedIn layer of the modern sales stack (Clay + Smartlead + HeyReach). 

They exploded.

Between 2023 and 2025 they saw:

→ 10-15% Month-over-Month growth.
→ A surge to 2,900+ free trials per month.

Then, data visibility became the bottleneck.

Stripe couldn't handle the complexity of their growth and caused internal chaos. 

The CEO would see $20k in "churn" and demand answers, while it was just failed payments that would be recovered the next day. 

As Ilija Stojkovski put it: 

"𝘞𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘴. 𝘕𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩."

---

That's when we crossed paths and helped them at Drilldown to build a custom data infrastructure in just 4 weeks.

We moved them off generic dashboards and built a single source of truth.

In December 2025, HeyReach.io officially crossed $10M ARR.

They’ve proven that world-class tech companies can be built from anywhere.

My 8 unpopular opinions on B2B SaaS analytics in 2026:

1. CAC:LTV is mostly a vanity metric. It tells you where you stand, not what to fix.  Cool for VCs, useless for your team. 

2. Averages are your enemy. Segment your data to find your biggest growth levers.

3. Having 100% accurate numbers is overrated. Knowing trends over time and direction is more important.

4. If you are spending $5k/month on data tools before having product-market fit, you're being robbed.

5. Using "Free" open-source tools is EXPENSIVE. Buying a managed service is almost always cheaper than your hourly rate spent debugging.

6. Founders: if you're spending Saturdays fixing broken pipelines, that is a failure of prioritization. Your time is worth more than a Weld subscription.

7. AI writes great code, but it will never 100% understand your business. Humans must be responsible for insights.

8. Context > code. The hardest part of data is not technical. It's understanding how the business works.

Data analytics can have huge impact on your business, both positive and negative.

Good luck!

Currently digging in some B2B SaaS that used analytics to reach $1B+ valuation. Did you know this about Slack?

Slack began as an internal tool for a failing gaming company. 

When they analyzed the retention data, they found a specific “magic number”: 2,000 messages. 

Teams with fewer than 2,000 messages were likely to churn, but teams that crossed this had a 93% retention rate.

They engineered their entire onboarding and “freemium” limit around this metric. 

The free plan allows users to view 10,000 messages, giving teams enough space to blow past the 2,000-message “hook” before hitting a paywall.

This retention engineering helped Slack become the fastest-growing enterprise app in history, eventually acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion.

Crazy stuff

Last year I helped a €2.8M ARR SaaS fix their "Frankenstein Data Stack."

Before we partnered, they were facing classic data problems:

❌ Developers acting as Data Engineers 
→ maintaining spaghetti pipelines. 

❌ Managers acting as Analysts 
→ wasting 6+ hours/week manually fixing reports. 

❌ Metrics living in multiple tools 
→ zero ownership.

They were spending expensive engineering hours on data maintenance instead of innovation.

So we installed The SaaS Intelligence System.

We stripped the custom code and automated the entire flow using best-in-class tools (Fivetran, BigQuery, Looker Studio).

The result:

→ engineering: freed from data tickets to build features. 
→ trust: accurate data for the whole team.
→ reporting time: 6 hours → 15 minutes. 

Here is what that automated system looks like ↓

The 8 Dashboards Running a €2.878.010 ARR B2B SaaS

After building the same dashboards, data structures, and metrics 10+ times, I stopped rebuilding them from scratch.

I call this the SaaS intelligence system. 

It gives every SaaS company the things they should already have, but often don’t:

1. accurate, real-time ARR waterfalls everyone agrees on.
2. dashboards to go from revenue → accounts → users.
3. metric dictionaries so definitions don’t live in people’s heads.

That alone removes hours of manual work and discussions.

But the real benefit comes from what this foundation enables:

1. data enrichment → reach better users.
2. marketing attribution → acquire more of them.
3. customer health scoring → reduce churn.

It gives leadership and operators a reliable system to make decisions, without needing a big data team for maintenance.

The cool part: everything runs from the data warehouse.

That’s what the SaaS Intelligence System is: the core data setup most B2B SaaS teams end up rebuilding anyway.

I put together a short doc showing the 5 dashboards we recommend for $2M–$10M B2B SaaS teams. 

This is what that foundation looks like in practice.

taplio

The Battle

🚀 Dennis van Valderen

Thomas Varekamp

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The Battle

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Thomas Varekamp

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