Back in the early 2010s, Thierry Schellenbach was attending an open coffee event when he overheard three guys talking about starting something with payments. That tiny team turned into Adyen, one of the Netherlands’ largest success stories. Almost a decade later, Thierry still fondly reminisces this memory – “It’s inspiring to see other founders start small and grow into huge companies.”
A memory that in some way or the other shaped his own entrepreneurial journey, which began right after he graduated from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He started a company together with three other guys. It went through a couple of pivots; one of them was a social network that grew to millions of members and the company was called Fashiolista – a Pinterest-like social network dedicated to fashion. Fashiolista was acquired by Venture Builders and a private equity firm bought the marketing firm that spun off from Fashiolista.