Asking an Entrepreneur: Maarten Poot, co-founder of Felyx

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In 2017, the Amsterdam-based startup Felyx made it to the semi-finals of the Philips Innovation Award. Felyx offers shared electric scooters as a new urban mobility concept. Felix’ e-scooters are available one-way and can be parked anywhere. In this interview with the board of the Philips Innovation Award, Maarten Poot looks back on their journey and explains the value of participating in such an award.

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“Participating in the Philips Innovation Award is a great way to further validate your business model, expand your network and get exposure towards both national press as well as industry experts.”

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Being one of the leading start-up awards in the Netherlands, the event attracts major key stakeholders in the Dutch start-up ecosystem. As a result, it’s a very efficient opportunity to leverage their network and exposure in favour of your company", says Maarten.

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If you could change one thing concerning the development of your start-up, what would you do differently?

Looking back, I would say that we would have start recruiting talent more quickly than we have done in the past. We are looking for the most talented, most ambitious, most goal-oriented people colleagues to help Felyx grow.

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Where do you want to be in five years with your start-up? What is your vision for the future?

Within five years, Felyx is the largest e-scooter company in the world providing its sustainable services in most mega cities worldwide. Traffic congestion and relentless pressure on public transit are a fact of life for urban citizens worldwide. As a result, going around town can be quite a hassle these days, as all current transportation methods have their disadvantages. Shared micro mobility solutions such as Felyx provide an important answer to these challenges, contrary to the current transportation methods as they are faster, cheaper, more sustainable and more fun. We therefore expect an enormous increase of micro mobility solutions, combined with public transport in the city of the future.

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When Maarten is asked to give advise to future participants, he says the following:

“Make sure that everything you do, every process you implement from scratch is highly scalable. If not, don’t do it.”

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I would like to borrow a quote of which I’m fond of:

‍“It’s not the big who eats the small, it’s the fast who eats the slow”.

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This article was originally written by the Philips Innovation Award. You can find more information on their website here. If you want to see the original article, click here.