Sebastiaan van der Lans has a big heart for open source. In 2006 he co-founded Amsterdam’s first WordPress agency ‘Van Ons’ , which is a leading digital agency now, serving over 100M page views a year. In 2019, Sebastiaan founded WordProof , the winner of Europe’s ‘Blockchains for Social Good’ contest 2020. Sebastiaan has a strong passion for improving the playing fields of publishing, SEO, and e-commerce. Solutions by his teams are actively being used by over 100000 organizations. Let’s build the Trusted Web , together!
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Andy Warhol
- Joost de Valk Founder & CEO of Yoast
- Marieke van de Rakt CEO of Yoast
- Matt Mullenweg Co-founder, WordPress
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I’ve always been entrepreneur since I was four or five. I was washing the cars for all the neighbours and I always was thinking in business”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment Book by Eckhart Tolle
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Book by Mark Manson
Favourite Quote:
- “Celebrate progress, tomorrow is just a dream away” Walt Disney
- “I believe open source to be the only way to build a pro-privacy, anti-monopoly, open web. This will require open source communities to be long-term sustainable—possibly for hundreds of years.” Dries Buytaert founder of Drupal
Recommended Online Resources:
Twitter – It’s what’s happening. From breaking news and entertainment to sports and politics, get the full story with all the live commentary.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“see if you can embrace open source in a way. Open source is really a way to shift world that is about me to a world that is about we… If you are in it for the long-term you can build amazing billion-dollar companies. There is more and more billion-dollar companies, unicorns purely based on open source software and communities. And my challenge for all would be if you embrace the idea, the schools of thought in open source”…[Listen for More]
More About Sebastiaan van der Lans:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” Mahatma Gandhi
Other Quotes From the Chat with Sebastiaan van der Lans:
- “be even more transparent in everything”
- “ask for what you want. You don’t ask you will get it. In the Netherlands we call this the law of Santa Claus. If you don’t ask what you need you will get something else… So being humble and just ask them to”
- “open source, it’s always a long-term game but eventually it will dominate every industry… Open source is an amazing strategy when executed right”
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