This ABC Night we again had some great speakers. Unfortunately we had to have our ABC Night online instead of physically. This however did bring some extra opportunities, we had a larger amount of people who subscribed to our event! We started the ABC Night with a word from our co-hosts, Round One Ventures. Round One Ventures is an investment enterprise especially for start-up student entrepreneurs. After that we had a guest who called in all the way from Silicon Valley, Buster Franken from FruitPunch AI. He tells us about the polished version of Fruitpunch AI and the complete story behind the company. After a short break, we continued with Marijn van Aerle from Floryn, a company that provides loans to small- and medium enterprises. The entire evening was on the theme of early financing. We ended the evening with a small Kahoot in which we also granted a prize to the winner.
So we started the evening with the story of Round One Ventures, our co-hosts of this ABC Night. We got to meet Jur and Jasper, both co-founders of Round One Ventures. They tell us about how they want to help student entrepreneurs who want to get started for themselves but can not get the finances in order to do so. They find that in the Netherlands people are too afraid and careful to make a move. That is something they want to change with Round One Ventures, they want to bring the American mindset alive by starting a student-run investment fund. They also combine startups with experienced entrepreneurs to help the Dutch startup ecosystem. So are you a student-entrepreneur with an amazing business idea but you can not get the funding? This might be your chance!
We then went on to hear the story of Buster Franken, from FruitPunch AI. He tells us his story in two different forms, first the story he tells his investors, like a small business pitch. After, the story of how he really got to where he is now. FruitPunch AI is a business that specializes in artificial intelligence. Buster tells us about how, when you want to work in the field of AI, building a portfolio is more important than a diploma. Basically your work experience is more relevant than your knowledge you got from a school. He wanted to design a program in which young and talented engineers who want to work in the field of AI can gain experience. Which is how he started with FruitPunch AI, a community platform where you can learn to solve real-life challenges in the field of AI. They get to work on real problems in tech companies and this way gain the experience that is required by companies.
At last, we had Marijn van Aerle from Floryn. Floryn provides loans to small- and medium enterprises. These loans vary from ten thousand to three million euros. They want to be able to help smaller companies grow more easily. These days when you get a loan from the bank, you have to provide a lot of documents before you’re able to get a loan. So, Floryn wants to make this easier for people, while still providing good quality service. When they provide a loan to people, they don’t look at it from a bank’s perspective, but from an entrepreneur’s perspective. As they are entrepreneurs themselves, they know the struggles entrepreneurs face today.
The ABC Night ended with a fun quiz about entrepreneurship, unfortunately we weren’t able to see you all in real life. But over all we can say this evening was yet another success! We hope to see you all next month for our 5th ABC Night and meet you all in person again.
Dutch 
English