Building blocks.

After the holidays, the noise drops. No launches to hide behind. No strategy decks to polish. Just fundamentals again: showing up, asking better questions, making small decisions that compound quietly.

Building blocks are not the sexy parts of building. They’re the habits, conversations, and constraints that decide whether anything worth scaling ever gets a chance. Here’s what January looked like inside Builders.

First things first: building blocks beat “AI-authenticity.”

We’re hiring. We’re interviewing. We’re meeting founders, CTOs, and engineers who want to build with us.

And Sharon learned (the hard way) that the biggest red flag in an interview isn’t “lack of experience.” It’s absence. The untrained-LLM vibe. The technically-correct answer that misses the point. Because authenticity isn’t “sounding human.” It’s being present. Having a point of view. Asking the clarifying question instead of producing the perfect sentence.

What this unlocks (and how we’ll prove it):

• Better founder matching → fewer “almost” ventures. We’re optimizing for builder energy, not pitch theatre. Proof: tighter early-stage selection, faster conviction, faster kills.

• More signal per conversation → faster learning velocity. We’ll keep intros human because intros are the vibe check. Proof: better calls, better follow-ups, fewer dead-end loops.

• Hiring builders → shipping builders. We’re adding capacity where it matters: engineering and venture building. Proof: more product shipped, fewer “we’ll get to it” backlogs.

👉 We’re hiring founding builders:

• Entrepreneurs in Residence @ Builders

• Venture Partner @ Builders

• Founding Engineers @ Cortena, Everday, Trigger (and more)

In the loop: Reps, rooms, and real conversations

A few moments that shaped the month:

• Startup Studio Stories (YouTube) — a new format. Real moments, real conversations. Gym energy 🏋️‍♀️, post-gym leadership debates, and Sunday morning at home (building a company while raising a family doesn’t politely wait “after the sprint”). New videos every Thursday at 16:00.

• Studio Roadshow — OSS Ventures in Rotterdam. A full day of studio sh*t: what compounds, where we get it wrong, and how to move faster without breaking trust (or teams). The real playbook isn’t a PDF, it’s built in rooms like this.

• Builders Investor House #13 — landing March 12 at umob. For investors who care about durability over optics, and founders building real infrastructure in regulated markets. Fireside chat with Bibi Jorissen (Founder & CEO). Fewer slides, more signal. Signup 🔗

Ventures in motion: Small building blocks, shipped

• Trigger — Hook Analyzer is live (free). A small tool with a big idea: understand what actually catches attention, and why. (And yes, we’re still building the bigger engine behind it.) Try it now 🔗

• Avery — From search to signed (Tiger Tribe / HEINEKEN). Senior DevOps hire in a brutal market, with limited LinkedIn access. Avery surfaced strong candidates from day one and enabled personalized outreach at scale. Offer accepted. Onboarded. Done. Full story here 🔗

• Everday — Performance reviews without Google Sheets and hope. Crobox cut ~30–40% of the admin time running review cycles, gained real-time visibility, and made feedback more structured and actionable. The real win: calmer cycles → better conversations. They moved from pilot to monthly customer. Read more 🔗

• Cortena — moved upstream (and got paid in Germany). Planning is nice. But finance teams are still buried in ops. So Cortena shifted from “insights” to execution: a pre-accounting agent that works like a trained analyst, now live with the first paying German client via DATEV. Want in? We’re onboarding more DATEV teams. Visit our website 🔗

👀 What we’re reading (and writing):

• Clawd takes over the world: the lobster-themed personal AI assistant that went viral so fast it had to rename (Clawdbot → Moltbot). The interesting part isn’t the mascot, it’s the shift: “AI that actually does things” (calendar, messages, check-ins)… and the very real security tradeoffs that come with it. TechCrunch context 🔗

• The equity question (answered properly): early on “zero” is both true and not true, because there often isn’t a cap table yet. Later, it’s written down. But the story isn’t % - it’s partnership.

• The oldest growth hack still works: when in doubt, pick up the phone and do more calls. (Yes, also 42.)

• A yearly reminder we all need: happy customers > funding. Funding is fuel, not validation.

Final word: Fundamentals compound

The most common trap in early-stage building is thinking the breakthrough will save you. It won’t.

The breakthrough is usually just the result of building blocks stacked for long enough that the market can finally see them.

Forward, always,

Michael van Lier
Managing Director at Builders