From port to startup fort: How Lars Crama is ‘Making it Happen’ in Rotterdam

Can a port city reinvent itself as a hub for startups and innovation? While cities known for their industrial base often struggle to digitise and transform, Rotterdam showcases a successful model and competes with major technology hubs in Europe.

At the driver seat of this transformation is Lars Crama, the Private Lead of Up!Rotterdam, who proudly refers to himself as the city’s biggest fan. His passion for Rotterdam doesn’t stem solely from being born and raised there; it is largely due to the remarkable development of its innovative ecosystem.

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are catalysts for change,” says Crama, before adding, “They’re what drives me.”

Before joining Up!Rotterdam, Crama spent the first part of his career scaling Oxyma, winner of multiple FD Gazellen Awards. He also led the European go-to-market for Precima, a Fortune 500 venture. In 2015, he decided to focus his time and energy on innovation ecosystems by working extensively in Amsterdam to help build corporate innovation programs across 10 countries.

When he returned to his hometown of Rotterdam, he saw the city brimming with opportunities and this realisation, he says led to Up!Rotterdam, a platform to help startups get to scale.

Up!Rotterdam

In the summer of 2019, Crama says they brought together 30 key stakeholders for a pizza session in the Hilton. In between the sound of eating pizzas, they created what would eventually become Up!Rotterdam but the seeds were sown when a single line in a coalition agreement called for action to support startups and scaleups.

The initiative officially took root in September 2019 and it has a clear mandate – to help companies scale by providing access to talent, capital, and international market expansion while strengthening the startup ecosystem.

“From the beginning, we’ve taken a regional approach, including Delft and its Technical University, which has been an essential source of innovation and talent,” explains Crama.

Since its inception, Crama doesn’t shy away from admitting that it has been a journey of constant iteration. “We tested ideas, scaled what worked, shut down what didn’t and spun out what we could,” he adds.

In its five years, the Rotterdam startup ecosystem has evolved from activation to globalisation phase. Its focus on nurturing talents and building successful startups in the field of transition – energy, circular economy, digitalisation, and wellbeing – has positioned the region as a leader in deeptech and impact across all industries.

The ecosystem is now home to over 3,000 startups and scaleups employing over 45,000 people. The combined market value of these companies has nearly tripled from €12B in 2019 to €35B in 2023. The region has also seen investments double between 2021 and 2023. While Upstream Festival, which started as a connection between ecosystem players, transformed into the largest startup festival in the Benelux.

Collaboration and connection

The success of Up!Rotterdam can be owed to Crama’s leadership, startups thriving to make the transition economy a reality and its powerful message: Make the network work for you. The idea here is to foster collaboration and connection and they are doing this by being industry agnostic. “By strengthening existing initiatives and developing new ones together with our partners, we ensure the ecosystem continues to grow,” adds Crama.

He further adds that one of the core beliefs of the ecosystem is peer learning, wherein founders can learn from each other. Up!Rotterdam facilitates this peer learning through curated dinners, deep dives, and CEO sessions. It also helps that as a public-private collaboration, Up!Rotterdam can tap into government resources to create a balanced and effective approach.

“We’re proud of the success stories we’ve helped create,” Crama tells me, adding that Mendix, Nearfield Instruments, Paebbl, Umob, and Oyster Heaven are the five startups to watch in the ecosystem.

Before being acquired by Siemens and becoming a unicorn in the process, Mendix pioneered the low-code revolution and the acquisition has helped the Rotterdam-based startup to scale even further and cement its leadership in enterprise digital transformation.

Nearfield Instruments could be the next unicorn with the startup emerging as a standout player in semiconductor measurement and inspection. It recently raised €135M to scale globally and expand into markets like the US, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Paebbl is driving sustainable innovation, Umob is redefining mobility with its all-in-one transportation app and Oyster Heaven is showing that nature restoration can be a scalable business model. Check out the 12 startups powering the energy transition and circularity in Rotterdam.

Where transition happens

In just five years, Up!Rotterdam has gone from strength to strength to make Rotterdam a breeding ground for transition startups. However, by 2029, the region wants to be known as the place “where the transition happens” and he reckons that will require long-term vision.

This vision begins with addressing the bottlenecks to growth and scaling startups into global leaders. He says the immediate goal is to empower ambitious startups and scaleups to become market leaders in energy, circularity, digitalisation, and wellbeing.

“The next step is scaling more companies to global success, building on the legacy of leaders like Mendix and Nearfield Instruments,” he quips.

If you take a lens and look at Up!Rotterdam’s journey, you will see a cluster of milestones. The first milestone is getting started but it is followed by turning Upstream Festival into a powerhouse event for startups and seeing the likes of Mendix and Nearfield Instruments become global disruptors.

Crama says this is made possible by partner support from day one, co-creators who joined since, and a team comprising leaders like Ekim Sincer, Lisette Braakenburg, and Rory Heltzel.

Rest is not a reward and Crama is not resting. He says Up!Rotterdam is hard at work to launch a new program that will extend Up!’s best practices across South Holland in 2025. With this program, he says they will further strengthen the regional ecosystem and ensure sustainable impact. Crama follows what he preaches and for him it is all making it happen and the next five years will be all about making Rotterdam a thriving ecosystem that solves global challenges.