For the 30th episode of One the Come Up, it was my fortune to be joined by Anton Toll Håkanson, the CEO and founder of DayCape. Toll Håkanson’s career began somewhere far away from entrepreneurship or user experience: scuba diving. After being a scuba diving instructor for a year, he decided to head off to Hyper Island, where he got his first taste of entrepreneurship, and where he developed his idea for DayCape. After completing his time on the Island, and subsequently following that up with a year at Berghs School of Management, it was time to launch DayCape and Daymonics. The former is an app that helps children with cognitive deficits navigate their days with a fun and interactive calendar. The latter is Håkanson’s freelance company for UX/UI design and strategy consultancy. In 2015, Day Cape went through the Reach for Change incubator, ultimately being one of the winners of 2015 Change Leaders. Today, DayCape has expanded to seven Countries and helps the lives of thousands of users.

The first Dutchman on the Podcast!, Ferdinand Grapperhaus is the CEO of Nextsense, a company aimed at decarbonizing real estate. Grapperhaus’ career began at Delft University of Technology, where, when pursuing his MSc, he made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: a substance to be used in windows to convert natural light into energy. Recognizing the potential of this innovation, Grapperhaus and a co-founder started Physee in 2014 (Physics + Seeing = Physee). In 2024, they merged with EDGE Next, the daughter company of Edge Technologies, becoming NextSense. Pivoting to AI and software, their new technology aims to reduce energy consumption of real estate through data insight. Here’s a paradox for you: AI can be used to optimize and reduce energy consumption. However, AI requires huge data centers. I’m not one for riddles, but I’m grateful that people like Mr Grapperhaus are out there trying to solve them.

For the 27th episode of One the Come Up, I was fortunate to share the time with Mr Matthew Rastovac. The former CEO of Respell (now acquired by Salesforce), his career began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Here, Mr Rastovac was co-president of Founders, the university’s entrepreneurship club, where he doubled the group’s budget and grew from 5 to 60 members. During this time, he also landed internships at NASA and Facebook. One semester shy of completing his four years, he landed a job at Cameo (who can turn down a startup soon-to-be Unicorn?) where he designed and implemented core components of Cameo's infrastructure. However, realizing he had more potential as an entrepreneur and founder, he moved to the Bay Area and joined Atmos, a dream home builder. After going through Y Combinator, starting a founders dorm room in San Fran., and building 30-50 homes, he was officially bitten by the startup bug. And so came about Respell, a no-code AI agent builder. Where the future will be for Mr Matthew Rastovac, I do not know. But as The Chords once said, Life could be a sojourn ;)