Cheers to the new and improved Silicon Canals!

Today marks the beginning of an exciting future for Silicon Canals. As you can see, we have radically changed the way we look. For us, it’s just the beginning. Perhaps it’s a great moment to reflect on where we came from, and where we are heading.

Coin “Silicon Canals”

Almost six years ago, I was riding my bike on the canals (the streets, not the water) in Amsterdam. As I was heading from one place to the other, it surprised me how many tech startups were occupying gorgeous canal houses as their (shared) office space. With Silicon Valley in mind, it seemed logical to coin the term “Silicon Canals”.

First version

Together with our founding employee Arjan Drost, we build the first version of our website that was still functional until this very morning. For many years, we were steady but since a year and a half, we have been growing like crazy. Last month, we’ve reached an all-time high, with more than 100,000 unique users and 150,000 pageviews.

Look and feel

It is now time to fulfil our potential. Although we had already revised our branding before the summer, it was about time we changed our look and feel entirely. Thanks to our partner Bright Idiots, we have now completed this process. The launch of Silicon Canals 2.0 signals our new focus from a personal blog that covered the Amsterdam startup scene in Dutch, to a technology news website with a focus to bring you the European perspective, in English.

Contribution

As this is a moment for reflection, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of everyone involved. Of course, our core team that consists of Akansha Srivastava (editor in chief) and Linda Schilperoort (content marketing manager). But also our design and development team, Ingmar Evers, Ruud Caris, and our extraordinary intern Loïs Konings. Let us not forgot our excellent team of writers based in the Netherlands and India, who are working very hard to produce outstanding content on a daily basis. A special shoutout goes out to Dennis de Vries, who is with us for almost five years now.

Your support

We would like to thank you as a reader, hopefully regularly, too. Especially our earliest fans in Amsterdam. Without your support, it wouldn’t have been possible, to begin with. By now, we have readers all over the world, besides the Benelux mainly from the US, UK, Germany, France, and India. Although we currently focus a lot more on “big tech” and hardware, in particular smartphones, our heart still goes out to startups and technology ecosystem in Europe. So please send us your exclusive news stories, funding announcements, and guest contributions, preferably with a few days heads up under embargo.

European technology news

By now, we have become one of the biggest European technology news websites, and most certainly, the fastest-growing one. Please take the opportunity to review our media kit and see how we can partner up. Take a moment to look at the content we have created for our valued partners EIT Digital, Accenture, and Climatelaunchpad. I hope you enjoy our new look and feel as much as we do. If you have any feedback, do let us know in the comments or send us an email here.