About me

The official bio

Sander is co-founder and CEO at Unless. Previously, he was CTO at myTomorrows (Balderton Capital, EQT Ventures, Octopus Ventures), co-founder and CTO of Peecho (Peak Capital), CTO at Sumis (acquired) and Chief Architect at Albelli (acquired).

He lives in Amsterdam with his pet snail, teaches a weekly kung fu class and is a competitive obstacle racer.

The less official bio

I am a slightly big-headed chaotic. You can wake me up for bananas, yoghurt with muesli and reruns of Barbapapa.

0 - 18

I was born in Dordrecht in 1974. It is not a particularly notable place. Next to falling in love continuously, I spent most of my time there struggling with athletics and (with arguably more success) graffiti.

18 - 23

At university, I graduated at geophysics. I loved the shady field trips to long forgotten areas, like the snake-infested mud mountains of Inner Mongolia - searching for natural resources, Roman kilns, fossils or weapons.

23 - 35

Attracted by the booming internet industry, I started my own company Centrical. Customers were Akzo Nobel, Utrecht Medical Center and finally Albumprinter. This rapidly growing start-up hired me in 2006 as their chief architect, until it got acquired by Vistaprint in 2010 - and lived on under the name “Albelli”.

35 - 39

In 2010, I took the plunge and started Peecho, a cloud print platform. Start-up life is is an emotional roller coaster: the ups are high and the downs are low. The company is doing great right now.

39 - 42

In 2015, I started a new adventure at myTomorrows, a disruptive healthcare start-up. During weekends, I built a new thing called Unless (formerly Teletext.io) with a friend, just for fun.

42 - now

In 2017, I decided to focus on Unless entirely. We are building a platform to make websites communicate like humans. Sounds like magic? Check Unless.com.

Personal snippets:

• I live in the city center of Amsterdam - on an old ship.
• Every Friday, I teach a class of Kung Fu.
• Sunday is grappling day, Saturday is for kickboxing. Weekdays are for Crossfit.
• But… I may be happiest when running obstacle course races.
• I love arctic mountains and hot deserts - or any other place that suggests certain death.
• I do not eat meat because I appreciate cows, pigs and octopuses too much to eat them - and I am way too lazy to sort it all out.