#FoundersFridays: Meet Michiel Slinkert

#FoundersFridays is a StartupAmsterdam interview series: for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Each hero answers questions on their entrepreneurial journey, their learnings, milestones and bottlenecks, as well as on Amsterdam and the Dutch startup scene. It’s a platform for entrepreneurs to speak their minds freely and pass on their learnings to anyone who’s thinking about founding a startup as well.

This week we spoke to Michiel Slinkert, Co-Founder & Chairman of Eevery. Eevery provides a platform where you can measure, improve and report your company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. The innovative platform aims to assist SMEs worldwide to improve their sustainability performance.

How did your career journey lead you to found Eevery?

My career started as an international tax lawyer after which I migrated into broking, banking and investment services. For the past few years, I have been involved in supporting SMEs with growth finance which banks do not provide. During this time ESG became important and the effects of global warming undisputed. Everybody feels (or should feel) the urgency of these topics. However, SMEs need help and support to become more sustainable within a globally accepted ESG framework. Because SMEs collectively have such a big impact on sustainability, helping them improve actually makes a real difference. That is Eevery's mission and the reason why I founded it.

What makes Amsterdam a great city and a great ecosystem for a startup founder?

For more than 400 years, Amsterdam has been a global centre of innovation and business development. The first common stock company was founded in Amsterdam for example. The city has always been noted for tolerance, free thought and speech and has welcomed newcomers from diverse backgrounds. Providing an open and tolerant environment in which all people can thrive has been the basis for its success as a city. Especially today, Amsterdam is particularly attractive for new ideas, businesses and initiatives. It is a magnet for talent and also a great place to live.

What are the goals and needs of Eevery for the upcoming months?

We are running an ambitious and continuous development programme for our platform which will enhance functionality, bring new features and broaden the scope of its users. We need to acheive these development milestones so that the user base and acceptance in the two launching markets can grow sufficiently rapidly. Apart from direct SME users, we want to close a number of enterprise accounts in order to accelerate market penetration. As a next step, we will expand into other countries.

What has been a recent win for your business?

First actual sales of subscriptions in the UK and Holland and the first tenders for enterprise users. Also, an ESG consultancy service provider hosted a large event for its SME clients in June in the UK. They presented the Eevery platform as their new backbone for these services. We are really proud of that as a testimony to the quality of the offer.

Why is it crucial that also SME’s improve their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance and how does Eevery aim to help them?

Collectively SMEs represent over 35% of the economy, 40% of the workforce and over 50% of emissions. Just a slight individual improvement has a big collective impact and is really important. For individual SMEs, good sustainability performance immediately adds value to the business. Apart from the obvious gains from environmental performance, customers are demanding it, employees are sensitive to the social environment and investors and lenders are increasing ESG demands on their clients. So good ESG enhances all value drivers of a business and hence stakeholder and shareholder value.  Eevery provides an accessible, low-cost solution that helps SMEs measure, improve and report their sustainability performance. Practical and understandable but calibrated to worldwide standards so that large stakeholders can relate to and understand the ESG profile.