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Who and what is
SoftwareStartups?

What is this site all about?

Running a technology-heavy startup startup outside Silicon Valley’s blanket of expertise and big-ticket VCs requires a different touch. And building a deep-tech startup is a vastly different ball game.

Startup treasure map

Especially outside Silicon Valley, the entrepreneur has no expert guide to navigate through the swamp of deeply fragmented funds, corporate booby traps, and the minefield of cultural differences.

Running a successful software startup in this playing field is about so much more than the precise software technology. SoftwareStartups aims to share experiences in all aspects of startup life. For example:

  • raising millions with small-time angels and VCs;
  • running rock-bottom cash-flows while leveraging EU research projects;
  • filing software patents in Europe’s restrictive patent laws;
  • running Lean in the face of constant innovation;
  • building a multi-cultural team of world-class programmers
  • evangelizing on the market pain and becoming a thought leader.

And software. From the embedded world to the cloud, data & AI.

Who and why?

Martijn kayaking the remote Zanskar river, Ladakh, India, 4000m altitude

I am dr. Martijn Rutten, an entrepreneur in high-tech software. As Fractional CTO, I build on my 25+ years of software & entrepreneurship experience to help startups and scale-ups handle their diverse software challenges.

My experiences as founder, CEO, and scale-up CTO taught me that entrepreneurs that have personally navigated the minefield of running a high-tech software company are a rare breed. That triggered me to share my experiences in digging with my feet in ten inches of mud. Having built software teams, IP, and product portfolios from scratch to scale three times, I finally opted to not try to impact just one company, but many.

Whenever I am not innovating with entrepreneurs, you’ll likely find me navigating whitewater rivers in distant corners of the world.

Martijn Rutten