Hi friend,

At Builders, we try to do as much as possible to recreate the ease of spontaneous conversations around the water cooler digitally. For instance, next to the platforms for daily communications such as Zoom and Slack, we've implemented Remotion to make remote work feel less distant.

With Remotion, you see who's available to talk and can quickly start a video call. You get reminded to create a new selfie daily, and one's status is automatically synced from Google Calendar or manually by choosing different statuses.

Of course, solutions like this only get us so far. As a pleasant surprise earlier this month, we've got to play around with Clubhouse. For those who don't know, Clubhouse is an app that enables drop-in audio chat, similar to a live podcast setting. Clubhouse rooms and clubs provide the opportunity to talk about topics inside a safe space, with a live and engaged audience.

If you are on Clubhouse already, let's meet at the Startup Studios Club for some water cooler talk!

News from our universe 🪐

• We started a new tradition at Builders, during our annual Launch Dinner we kick-off our yearly studio goals and plans together with our studio team; the first edition was good fun!

• Builders got recognized as one of the 50 most important Venture Builders in Europe by Cledara.

• We are currently bringing our community of like-minded builders and operators in tech to the next level. We are very excited to share more on this soon.

• Do you follow us on Instagram already? Over the last couple of weeks, we've been highlighting our venture building process.

• Earlier this month we've welcomed Danny Streur as our new Tech Lead at Influentials. Feel free to say hi!

• Did you catch Michael Steinmann at the RE:Connect, the world's largest real estate conference earlier? Michael's talk on Operating Coliving at Scale is now streaming.

What we’re following 👀

• Influentials shared their thoughts on influencer marketing space in 2021.

• Our very own Sharon Klaver has written an inspiring opinion piece on diversity-focused leadership.

• Techleap takes a look at the current state of the Dutch startup ecosystem.

• Ben Thompson from Stratechery explains the inevitability behind the success of Clubhouse.

• 2021 is the year of SPACs with their potential to disrupt the VC world.

• At last, big congrats to Martijn for selling Revue (the platform we’re sending our very own newsletter from) to Twitter most recently.

Come build with us 🧑‍💻

• Future Founder at Builders

• Full-Stack (Symfony, React) Developer at Influentials (NL)

Forward always!

Michael van Lier

Managing Director at Builders