Momentum isn’t a moment

November looked loud from the outside - SaaS Summit, the AI Deltaplan, a national newspaper interview, new roles across ventures, a benchmarks report with High Alpha.

But none of that is momentum. Momentum is what happens after the noise.

It’s the data room sent before it feels ready. The next iteration shipped the same day feedback arrives. The founder juggling four different worlds and still finding clarity. The teams building, learning, and looping faster than the market expects.

Momentum doesn’t peak on launch day. It compounds in the habits that come after.

First things first: Momentum needs a system behind it

We said it publicly and lived it privately: after raising capital, there is no “breathing room.” There is only movement.

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

• Weekly transparency → alignment at speed. We shifted every venture to weekly product updates — internal and external. Proof: faster loops, fewer syncs, more decisions grounded in what actually moved.

• Studio context → finally compounding. Hundreds of calls logged, clustered, and linked through our internal VSI system. Proof: earlier pattern detection, tighter stage-gates, fewer “I think we said this once” debates.

• Founder momentum → visible, measurable. Data rooms built and iterated in hours. GTMs sharpened mid-tour. Proof: multiple ventures saw faster follow-ups, cleaner messaging, and first-customer signals.

Momentum is not a mood. It’s a muscle. And muscles only grow if you keep adding weight 👉 We’re hiring across ventures: Founding Engineers @ Everday, CTO / Technical Co-Founder @ Trigger.

In the loop: Stages, summits, and sharp takes

A few moments that shaped the month:

• SaaS Summit Benelux — pitching from 2030. Instead of running a booth, we built a stage. Founders pitched their company as if it were already 2030 — bold bets, faceless tech, software talking to software, and where the real leverage will live. Takeaway: the next decade belongs to those willing to think absurdly big. Read more. 🔗

• AI Deltaplan — ambition as infrastructure. Michael contributed to the national plan on talent and ecosystems. The message was blunt: Talent doesn’t leave for money. It leaves for lack of ambition. If we want builders to stay, we must create room for them to build things that matter. Read more. 🔗

• High Alpha × Builders — Operation AI. We released the 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report together with High Alpha. Signal of the year: AI-native companies aren’t playing efficiency games; they’re redesigning their operating systems. Read more. 🔗

• Navigator Spotlight — Tristan Ozero. Drop Tristan into any messy problem and minutes later the whiteboard tells the truth. Visual facilitation as alignment. Momentum through clarity. Read more. 🔗

Ventures in motion: From friction to forward

• Trigger — hiring the architect of meaning. Federico and the studio are searching for a CTO who can turn creative chaos into cognitive intelligence. Multimodal AI, context graphs, story logic — the real frontier of meaning-making. If you care about why stories work, not just what worked — this is the role. Explore the role. 🔗

• Everday — engineering momentum. Graph-based workforce intelligence, multi-agent systems, Neo4j + LangGraph. The team is expanding, because the product is accelerating. Join as a Founding Engineer. 🔗

• Avery — momentum as a habit. What started as a “should we gather TA leaders?” idea turned into 30+ Talent Acquisition leaders in one room - full of insight, honesty, and real energy. Check out the recap. 🔗

• Cortena — building the financial brain. Three months since incorporation. Fast movement. Plenty of mistakes. Course corrections that made the product better. Every conversation with finance leaders is shaping what Cortena becomes - sometimes forcing steps back so the next ones move forward. Messy, intense, worth it. And still the beginning.

👀 What we’re reading (and writing):

• Why venture studios don’t scale — and why context is the real bottleneck. My deep dive on the paradox every studio faces: the faster you move, the heavier everything gets. The solution? Not more partners, but systems that turn context into infrastructure. The backbone behind momentum.

• Infrastructure isn’t support — it’s speed. In conversation with Michael Gustafsson, we unpacked why “multicloud from day one” is complexity cosplay and why hero engineers are liabilities, not leverage. Infra = experimentation surface = moat.

• De Telegraaf — capital isn’t an achievement. Sharon shared our story in a national feature: raising millions isn’t the win, proving customers truly want what you’re building is. Funding is fuel, not validation.

• Builders Drive Talks — speed in public. Data rooms built in days, iterated in hours, sent to VCs on the same energy we build product with. The unglamorous side of compounding momentum.

Final word: Momentum compounds in the reps

Momentum is a system. Built in the friction no one sees, the conversations that turn mess into clarity, and the loops that tighten every week

Claims are free. Momentum is earned.

Forward, always,

Michael van Lier
Managing Director at Builders