S01E04 - Crisis Management with Ruud van den Beukel

FH - And this is a bit of a weird conversation because this is the first time we speak in English together, right?

RB - Yeah, pretty much. Well, I think we did speak in English back in Switzerland when I came to visit you there, and we had some friends over. But that's only when other people are there that also don't speak Dutch.

FH - But, yeah, in a way, there are the people now here, but they are just here virtually, I guess, which is they're outside of our vision. But you guys are here. Welcome to the show. Today we have a guest, Ruud van den Beukel. And my first question to Ruud is, like, hey, Ruud, what do you do in daily life?

RB - Well, I'm the CEO of Merlin Software, and what we do is we create software for crisis management. Those are tools that help organizations to basically manage all the information that pops up when an organization is hit by a crisis.

FH - And a crisis could be basically just.

RB - About anything that risks the continuity of an organization. So it could be a big fire in one of the buildings, could be identity crisis, could be image crisis, could be cybersecurity crisis, could be a lot of things.

FH - So anything that pops up, like right now that needs attention right now, is that a crisis? Because we hear a lot about everything in the Netherlands is a crisis. Nowaday we've got the nitrogen crisis. Is that a crisis? How you define the crisis.

RB - We connect it with the continuity of the organization. So if you were, let's say, shell, then the whole thing around nitrogen would definitely be an issue to take into account. But whether or not it's urgent enough to call the crisis, I'm not so sure. So it's a combination of both things.

FH - And now you mentioned shell. So what are the people that you do? Because it's a software product, right? Who uses your software? Is that like the shelves of this world, or is the individual end users, like consumers?

RB - No. Would more be like the shelves of this world? So bigger corporate organizations or parts of the government or local government that use our software to prepare for their crisis management.

FH - Okay. And you've been doing this for a few years. You've got clients all over the Netherlands. That's what I hear you talk about. I'm actually not sure. Do you also have clients outside the Netherlands? This is an international rollout.

RB - Yeah, a few. Not that much. But we do some events in Brazil. We have a couple of customers in Germany, a couple of customers in Belgium. So it's not our main focus, but we do have a couple of customers outside of the Netherlands.

FH - And do they all use the software in the same way?

RB - No, but they use the same software. So that's sort of a funny thing. We have one product that is well, we kind of sometimes make the comparison with a swiss army knife. Right. So it's one tool, but you can use it in a lot of different ways. And there's, of course, definitely a difference between, let's say, the hospital that uses our software for their crisis management preparations and the way a big festival, let's say, in Belgium or Brazil, uses our software to manage basically more on a day to day basis the incidents that they ran into.

FH - Right. Was that also the way you intended it, or are you more surprised by the use cases that your clients find?

RB - Well, we've always been growing the product in a very how would you say? Yeah, I can't really think of the word to cut this out a bit, but just when you're kind of looking for yeah, okay. We've been always.

FH - One, two, three.

RB - So we've always been growing the product in a very organic way. We started off with a tool that was mainly focused on recording the meetings, crisis management meetings, but based on customer request, we've grown the tool into what it is right now, very organically. Always working with the customer, talking with potential customers on what product or what solution they're looking for that is related to something that we are already doing. And that would just require a minor or a little bit of tweaking to make it fit their use. Case always with the idea in mind that any additions we do would also be beneficial to the customers we already have. Or if it's not beneficial, then at least it won't hurt them. As we're growing, that becomes harder and harder, obviously, because you're adding more and more stuff, and we don't want to have people having to interact with more and more stuff. Because during a crisis situation, you want to be able to use the tool very intuitively because people are simply not using the tool on a daily basis normally.

FH - Right. So just as sort of a matter of a recap of what your software does, can you walk us through, like, the workflow from before a crisis, during a crisis, after crisis, how does your software help in that way?

RB - Well, before a crisis, we would work with an organization to make sure that any plans they've already developed on how they would handle a certain crisis scenario. To make sure that all those plans are available in our tool. Make sure that basically the administration stuff is already done. So the people that would have to use the tool at some point are in the organization. We would help them train people. And for a lot of organizations, basically, that's it. Right. Because a lot of organizations luckily aren't hit by a crisis. Weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever. Less hope, right? No, exactly. So in most cases, it's just preparation, preparation, preparation, and that's it. But it is very important to be prepared because we all know at some point, any organization will be hit by some sort of crisis. And during a crisis, our tool helps with registering all this information. So what is actually going on right now? What do we know about the current situation? What do we expect to happen within the next days or weeks, and how can we cope with that expected situation? So to hopefully get ahead of the curve, basically, because if you don't do this, then you're always just reactively replying to whatever situation throws at you. But you want to be able to think ahead and work ahead so that you can get ahead of the curve. And then in the aftermath of a crisis, our tool really helps with, well, going back and showing, for example, to an insurance company what you did to make sure that you dealt with this crisis with the least amount. Of disaster and also to learn from the crisis to make sure that you can improve your plans, improve your training, and improve your organization, basically. So that if a crisis may be the exact same type of crisis, maybe a different kind of crisis would be dealt with in a more efficient, better way next time, right?

FH - That makes a lot of sense, business wise. The thing that I'm a bit puzzled with and now it's time to get a hard question. You wake up at a day many years in the past, and you were like, you know what? You know what I'm going to do with my life? I'm going to make suffer for crisis management. How does that work? Sunday morning, you wake up and I like, eureka, I got it, I got it. So what happened there?

RB - As you would expect, it really didn't happen that way. Surprise, surprise. Actually, a friend of mine, Renee, he's also my business partner, he had another company where they helped organizations prepare for crisis situations. So they did a lot of training exercises, things like that, preparing for crisis situations. And back in the day, so it's about eight years ago now, what most organizations used to do is they would put flip over papers on the wall, and they would ask some secretary to write down whatever was said during the meeting. So they would have the crisis management meeting in the exercise setting, and somebody would be on the wall with a paper and a pencil writing down whatever was said. That was about 2015, and basically, Renee figured that was not the appropriate way of doing things anymore. I mean, it still is appropriate if you're in the situation where you have no Internet, no electricity, no nothing. But in most crisis situations, that's just not the case. Right? You do have Internet. You do have electricity. You can simply work together and make life much, much easier with the support of a good software tool. So that's where we started from that idea. And from there it grew, basically, because if you're creating a log of this crisis management meeting, then based from that log, you would also create actions. If we create actions. We want people to know about these actions. You want to keep on status updates with the actions. So you also create an action module, and then based on that, you add more and more and more modules simply because it's the most logic thing to do based on that starting point.

FH - Right. So then still, one morning, your friend Renee calls. You said, hey, I got the best idea in the world, and you immediately got excited. You're like, oh, man, I found my calling.

RB - Yes, because we used to work together at some point in the past as well, of course. As you might recall, I get really annoyed by people doing manual stuff that is unnecessary, that can be done so much simpler, better, quicker by a computer program. And so the same case here, indeed. I do kind of get excited about people throwing these sort of problems at me where I think, all right, how can we make this so much better, so much easier for the people in the organization that are dealing with basically the crappy tools that they're using right now.

FH - Right. So I'm going to hold that thought about making life better for people around you till a little later in the show and you know exactly why it we're going to keep it as a teaser for the listeners.

RB - Sure.

FH - The reason I ask you about what's your calling and why do you do that is because you've been doing this for many years and not on day one. It was an overnight success. It was a success in the making. You have to stick with it. Right?

RB - Yeah.

FH - And you need to keep that motivation up and also if the results are not yet showing. So it's important. And thank you for sharing your story that way. The other question that is related to more like the woo and the people, I understand now why you want to do it, but why are you the best person for the job to tackle this problem, you and Renee? I guess because yeah, it's like a sorry, go ahead.

RB - Well, it's a good question, but I think the combination that we have indeed, with Renee and myself between the two of us is knowledge about crisis management and experience on what these teams do, how they work, what does work and what doesn't work. And myself more from the technical perspective on how you would solve basically an analog problem using digital tools. Making the translation between the problem and the software tool is something I've been really interested in for a long time, and I've been doing that also for quite a long time. So the combination of the two of us, I think, really made for a good team to tackle this issue.

FH - And you mentioned that Renee has more experience or prior experience to crisis management.

RB - Yeah, as I just mentioned, he had another company where they did a lot of crisis management exercises and trainings and he had been doing that for a couple of years before we dove into this problem so he already had quite a bit of experience with that.

FH - So what would have happened if you would have tackled the problem of crisis management and how companies deal with it just on your own or with another co founder who had no prior experience? How would it have different what's the benefit that an industry expert like Renee brought into the company?

RB - Well, to be completely frank, if Renee would not have brought it up, I probably wouldn't have started there because it's not ideation is one yeah, definitely and it's not a field many people know about, I certainly didn't. So if he would not have brought it up, I would never have thought about it but let's say I would have that, what would have differed? Well, what we did in the beginning, and I think from a technical perspective, I could maybe have done some of that on my own, but it's really bringing together all these customers and potential customers, especially in the beginning, that would be willing to share with us the kind of problems they were running into. That gave us and me a very good picture of what the solution would have to do. And that's where the whole thing started rolling, you might say, ideation. But it's also access to people that know the problem really well.

FH - Right. Early customers.

RB - Yeah. Well, early in the sense that there were some organizations back then that actually bought the product before it was even written. Right, so we talked with them, they were really enthusiastic about the idea and they basically said yes before we had.

FH - Anything right, and how did that work? Like practically or operationally? So you call someone and say, hey Jim, we need to talk or can you walk us through that? How do you get your first customer? Do you actually get a and in the end do you get a letter of intent or how does that work? Like really like storytelling operationally. You must have some good war stories here.

RB - Well, I think I do. Yeah. But basically you want to share them in the complete utter beginning, before we even had the company as an entity, what we started with basically was hacked together, PHP sort of thing. That was basically an automated version of the paper form that people used to use for the lawkeeping part. So we did a very quick and dirty mockup of a digitized version of that with some that's kind of funny, in fact, with the shell logo on top of it. We weren't going to show it to Shell but hey, why not fake it.

FH - Till you make it?

RB - Exactly. I still have some screenshot of that first initial version as well, which is really fun to look at now because the product has evolved so much further. But anyway, so we started with that and then showing that to people, giving it to people to see how they would respond, writing down all the stuff they mentioned about. Yeah, but this looks cool. But if I were to use this, I would also have to have this, this and this. That. We were writing down as much of that information as possible. And then with the first actual customer, I think we were in a situation that they were a good customer of the other company Renee was running, so he had regular access with some of their people. He pitched the ID for them. So we're thinking of making a product like this and that. Would you be interested? Well, they said yes, obviously. And then we started working and talking with them, showing the very ugly early thing that we had and working with them, they had to have a lot of trust in us because we said, all right, so we're going to build this and that and it's going to look like this and it's going to work like that. But we didn't have anything to show them yet. But they went ahead and said, yeah, if you're going to build this, then we will buy it. So there was no real letter of intent, but the intention was there and we had from other organizations as well very enthusiastic reactions to that first prototype we had. So we figured we're just going to start this. We can start it very small with a minimal viable product, but just build it and see where we go from there.

FH - Right at one point, because you mentioned a few times now that you take a lot of inspiration from clients and that you grow the product organically with modules and a new module. New module. Don't you run the risk that your product has a lot of width, like it's really broad product but they're not really focused? How do you balance that? If my question makes sense, yeah, it does.

RB - And it's a very good question because, for example, we have an alerts module in our system where you can mass notify a lot of people about the crisis situation or you can alert, let's say, the crisis management team, to come together in the crisis management room where they handle the actual current crisis. And there are organizations in all of the world that have their whole business built around just that specific part of our tool, so they would be much more in depth on what is possible with those sort of tools. But our approach is indeed much more like the Swiss Army knife because in a crisis situation you don't want a tool that does a lot of magic, a lot of very exciting, very detailed things because you can't foresee what it is actually going to do. So we have purposely built, at least for some modules, built something that was not as deep as it could have been, but more on the simple side so that it would be easy to use and easy to understand what this thing does when there's already so much chaos and so much stuff going on in an actual crisis situation. To some extent, yes, it is rather broad, but it does contain everything you would need in a crisis situation. So you don't have to switch between three or four different sort of tools that do the same thing, in some cases in more depth. But we are under the impression that you don't really need that depth in those sort of situations.

FH - Right. And you definitely don't want to be switching from one tool to another and hope that the integration works well.

RB - Exactly. Finding out that this colleague is not in this tool, but in the other tool he or she is, and those sorts of things, you really don't want to have that situation.

FH - Right? Well, I think that gives a pretty good idea of what the tool does. We talked a little bit about the crisis management software, how you came about, and you also mentioned Renee, and you mentioned that you knew Renee from a long time ago. I'm just very curious, not going through your whole resume, but tell us a little bit about more. Who are you? Where did he go to school? What were your earlier jobs? And how did you end up at Merlin?

RB - Big one?

FH - If you want to become the CEO of a software company, how do you do that? What's the secret?

RB - Yeah, what's the secret? Well, the secret is to start your own right? If you want to be CEO, just start your own business. Your CEO from day one. That's the easy answer. But basically, then you're CEO. Just have yourself. So if you want to be CEO and actually also have some people to manage, you would have to grow the company, and that requires a lot of different skills. I studied applied computing sciences at Butcher University, so I have a technical background. But I'm also interested in all the other stuff that is necessary to make an organization run, because you need finance, you need marketing, you need sales, you need a whole lot of stuff. We need security not to forget that information security is a large part of our organization.

FH - How do you acquire all that information, that knowledge? I also know that you studied in Paris for a bit. Yeah. What does it say about you as a person that A, do you know all about it? And B, you're like, no, no, that's not good enough. I'm going to Paris to study. So what drives you? Another related question how does that drive relate to a job as a software CEO?

RB - I'm just really interested in learning new stuff. You could also say, I'm really curious. I want to know how stuff works, why things do what they do, why it doesn't do something else, all those sort of things. So I'm curious. I want to understand how things work that really helps with acquiring this different stuff. And then on the other side there's also, of course, the necessity, right. If you want to build an organization, you need to have all the moving parts. But when you're just with the three or the four of you in the beginning, you just don't have all the necessary people with a very fixed, focused job. You will all be doing all sorts of things. You can make some distinction. So I'm going to focus on this and you're going to focus on that. But you will all be doing basically three, four, five jobs that will grow into actual jobs at some later stage of the organization. So you need people, generic people in the beginning, I think.

FH - Right. So it's a necessity. The invention is the moderate necessity. Or necessity is the moderate invention, I believe. Yeah, that's the one. But also like the curious mind from the beginning because you can't force yourself to learn new things if you really.

RB - Don'T want to do that, that is for sure.

FH - Rather sit on the couch and watch podcast. It's not going to happen. So you have to have that natural tendency to go out to the world and just pick up a book and just read a book. I guess that's what I learned from your story.

RB - Is that absolutely, yeah. Well, I don't read so much books anymore, but I listen to a lot of books still because it's distilled information where somebody has spent hours and hours and hours and days writing down the best they know and you get to listen to all that stuff in 6 hours. I mean, it's brilliant. With a good book, there's always something to learn that you can apply tomorrow in your own life.

FH - Right. It always reminds me a bit of The Matrix where I think they're on the roof of a building and they see this helicopter and they're like, okay, I'm going to download how to fly a helicopter. And that's sort of how it feels.

RB - That I think a bit before that you have the scene where they're in the Jiu jitsu dojo downloading everything you need to know to be a Jiu Jitsu master. Which is a brilliant scene, but it's very similar indeed. You can learn so much from books without going through all the experiences, all the learning experiences yourself. It's such a time saver.

FH - That's a nice segue. You still do Jujitsu or Akido?

RB - I used to do aikido. Yeah, but I don't do dude anymore.

FH - Okay.

RB - Unfortunately, it's not such an interesting segue. Actually.

FH - I still feel very safe when I walk with you on the street tonight. And speaking of your private life, because we're going into the other topic of service for the people that we talked about at minute number ten in this podcast.

RB - Yes.

FH - I know that you done a lot for scouting. That's been one of your biggest passions. I'm not sure what exactly you're still involved with that?

RB - Well, there's two things I still do with that organization. So during the summer, I cock. Cock love to cut that out.

FH - During the summer. Yeah.

RB - So during the summer, I cook for the little scout groups. They go on summer camp, and I'll be cooking with, of course, a group of other people, the meals for the dinner and lunch, basically. And also, I'm an advisor to the how would you call them in English, I think the Rovers is what they're called. So that's a group of basically 19 to 21 year olds, 19, I should say, 19 to 21 year olds that can basically arrange everything they want they need to do for themselves. But I'm just there to keep an eye out.

FH - Right. And then on top of that all, being a CEO of a software company, doing your front tour work for the scouting, you're like, why won't I be a politician?

RB - Yeah, you know, why not? I just really hate being bored. Right, no, it's tell you about that. Yeah. I've been really interested in that for a very long time. In politics in general.

FH - What do you do in politics? Let's start with that.

RB - Yeah, let's start with that. It's a bit hard to explain, actually, to do it very shortly, but I am connected with the city council of the city I live in, which is Zutermere in the Netherlands, but I'm not actually in the city council, I'm a member of one of their commissions.

FH - So if I introduce you as a politician, did I lie then?

RB - No, you didn't lie. No, you didn't lie. But people might assume I'm actually in the council, but there's only 39 people in Zutermere that are a member of the city council, and I'm not one of them, so let's make that right.

FH - But you were an elected official, I believe, right?

RB - Yeah. No, also not completely.

FH - I'm learning stuff here.

RB - Yeah, it is very interesting, which, again, is one of the things that really makes this whole being a politician thing very interesting, because there is so much to learn about that. I am on the official list where we voted for in 2020, but you didn't get enough votes or I wasn't high enough, whichever way you look at it, to actually get voted into the city council. But then you have, like, the commissions. There's two commissions in sutramir, and basically the members that do get selected into the city council, they can invite other people to join the commissions to help them with some of the work in those commissions. And you don't have to be part of the official list, but usually that is the case.

FH - Right.

RB - I'm not voted into that. I was asked into that. But it all sort of hangs together.

FH - Right, so let me make another mistake here, then. So I'm assuming that you're really breaking bank here with your politician career. You're raking in the big bags.

RB - No.

FH - Does this educate people? How does it work in the Netherlands if you want to do something for the great TikTok of the city?

RB - Well, for the actual city council members, there's what's the English word in Dutch you would say for hooding?

FH - Well, you got some money.

RB - Yeah. You get a fixed amount of money that basically allows you to work a little bit less for your day job so you can spend enough time on the city council for commission members, that is different. We get some money basically for every meeting that we are part of and sign into.

FH - Right, and is that enough to go to the Burger King or is it enough to go to, like, a five star Michelin restaurant?

RB - It's more than enough to go to the Burger King, but I wouldn't go to the five star restaurant every week. You wouldn't be able to pay that. No.

FH - Yeah. You have to explain a little bit more in depth, and I understand that you don't want to share it, but I think the information about it's, public.

RB - Information, you could easily find it on the internet.

FH - Yeah. But you don't go in there to make money, right. Because you feel it's a calling. So I'm going to ask you a little bit the same question that I asked you before. Why you do murdering? What's your calling? Why do you do this? You did explain it to me eloquently before the show.

RB - Yeah. Let's see if I can do that again in English. The thing is, there's a couple of things that really pull me towards this. One of them is I think it's a fascinating world that I don't really knew a lot about and I still don't really know a lot about, but it's fascinating to see basically how the country or your city is run, how decisions on that level are being made. I find that really interesting. But also, I get so basically, like I mentioned earlier a little bit, I get annoyed when I say people doing things that could be done so much easier, quicker, better, faster. And I tend to think of myself as somebody who has a good idea of how we should be able to do that better, quicker, faster. Basically. It's not a very nice way to say about yourself, but I think I just know it better. Right. I just think I know how we should do this better. And I really want to at some level, I want to see if I'm right about that. But also, there's so much things going on where I think this is just plain stupid, right? Please just stop doing that.

FH - Right.

RB - And you can shout that from the couch at home, but then nobody will listen. And if you start doing that, basically in a room where there's actually people listening that make these decisions, you might achieve something.

FH - Right. And modesty is overrated anyway. I really feel that if people think, hey, I know it better, but then. They start doubting it themselves. Like, oh, do I really know it better? And am I the right person? If you all have those doubts, nothing happens, right?

RB - Exactly. If you think you know it better, speak up.

FH - Yeah. Prove yourself. At least put yourself out there. I can appreciate that that's exactly what you're doing here. So when it comes to your company, when it comes to your work on the council or a committee within the council, what is it that you think you want to achieve? How do you see yourself in the next five years? And coupled to that, and that's sort of the purpose of the show. Like, what do you need? What's your ask on the show from all the people who are listening? What do you want to ask them? How can they help you?

RB - Help me?

FH - Or the City of Suttermi, by the way, because that's what you're yeah, well.

RB - There'S a lot of things to that. I mean, where do I see myself? I see myself learning and growing more and more, because, like I said, that's what I'm really interested in. It's what I really enjoy doing, seeing where I can improve what I do, how I do things, et cetera. Sometimes I fail at that. Of course, let's be clear on that as well. But hopefully on more occasions I succeed. I'll be learning more because I'll be trying more. And where can people help me with that? I'm not sure I need help with that, but I would really like to see people, like we just mentioned, speak up when you think you have something to say. Don't just complain about what your city is doing to your friends and family, but actually speak up and see how you can make a difference.

FH - Right. And for your business, do you need, obviously, new clients? You need new employees? Perhaps you're looking for investors?

RB - Not so much for investors, but we are, of course, looking for good people. Good employees, like every company. Right. But we are growing and we are taking on more people. So we're looking forward to that. And, of course, more employees. No, sorry, more customers as well. I would invite people, if they listen to the first part of this show and they figure this might be something for us, give me a call and we can at least overcoffee discuss whether or not it might actually be a fit for your organization. And if not, we might both learn something, which would be good. And if it actually there is a fit, then we might be able to help you out.

FH - Great. I think that is a nice wrap up of the podcast episode so far. And to that effect, I will include your contact details in the Show Notes. So if people want to contact RIT, go to the show notes, find his details, email address. I'm not sure if I'm going to include phone number, but I'll talk to RIT about that. And, Ruud, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking to you absolutely. And hear your story.

RB - It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.