Dylan Moerland / ever.day: Building an AI-Native Company

In this episode, we hear the story of Dylan Moerland, founder of ever.day. What started as a skills intelligence platform evolved into a company helping people services companies transform the way they make people decisions with AI. Dylan believes technology should augment people, not replace them, combining data and science with human judgment. We also talk about pivoting when the market changes, the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, taking true ownership, and building an AI-native company designed to scale.

Creators and Guests

Host

Armijn Woudman

Armijn Woudman is a Creative Strategist and Communication Specialist driven by one core belief: with creativity, you can solve almost anything. After founding the branding agency Studio Buffalo in 2004, Armijn expanded his craft into UX design and previously led his own communication agency. Currently, he works as a Creative Facilitator and Concept Developer, and part-time as a Marketing Lead at Up!Rotterdam, where he combines strategy, storytelling, and design to create impactful communication. For Armijn, communication isn’t just a profession, it’s a passion. From building brands to hosting podcasts, he’s always searching for the real story beneath the surface and finding ways to make it tangible, human, and meaningful. Creating this podcast is just one of the many things he does with genuine love and curiosity.

Guest

Dylan Moerland

Dylan Moerland is the founder of ever.day, an AI company helping people services companies make better people decisions through data and science. With a background in software engineering and innovation, Dylan is passionate about using AI to augment human decision-making and build smarter organizations.

What is FOUNDED.?

Founded. An in-depth podcast, where founders of businesses from different growth stages, talk honestly about failure, doubt and recovery.

Armijn: In this episode, we listen to Dylan Moerland, founder of ever.day. ever.day helps companies make better people decisions by using AI to match people, skills and opportunities. Instead of relying on just gut feeling, ever.day helps companies make people decisions based on data and evidence.

Today, we talk about building an AI startup, the challenges, and what it really takes to turn an idea into a growing company.

How was my pitch?

Dylan: Yeah, that was actually pretty good.

Armijn: Oh, thank you! Anything to add?

Dylan: I think an important aspect is that we're really an AI transformation company. We help everyone within a company make better decisions related to people, based on data.

We help you analyze and optimize your business processes related to people, implementing agentic AI to provide the right evidence and the right data, so you can make the call.

Armijn: But what's wrong with gut feeling?

Dylan: A lot of things are wrong with it. In the end, of course, we still have to rely on gut feeling. It's really important that you can make autonomous decisions.

But gut feeling also introduces things like bias, and it's not always trustworthy. What we do is provide you with the right information, intelligence and data, so you can still make the decision yourself. Your gut feeling is still there, but now it's supported by evidence.

Armijn: So then you can say: my gut feeling was right.

Dylan: Exactly.

Armijn: Thank God!

Were you always someone who wanted to make the world a better place?

Dylan: No. When I was a kid, I had this innate need to understand everything. I loved science, but I also really loved understanding how people worked and how interactions worked.

I was much more occupied with learning how the world worked, how people worked and how things worked. I wasn't really focused on making it better yet. First, I needed to understand what it actually was.

Don't get me wrong, I always tried to be a kind and friendly person, but I was way too amazed by everything I still needed to learn and understand to think: okay, how am I going to improve this?

Now I'm at a point where I feel like I understand the world a little bit better, and I can do my part in making it a better place.

Armijn: And more efficient.

Dylan: More efficient. That's something that's inherent to me. I've always loved process optimization. I've always loved innovation in general. Innovation is there to make things more efficient, easier, more straightforward and repeatable.

Armijn: And don't forget about the people.

Dylan: Don't forget about the people. Absolutely.

Armijn: Who did you want to become when you were six?

Dylan: I wanted to be a lot of different things when I was younger. When I was six, I think I wanted to become an archaeologist.

Armijn: Indiana Jones?

Dylan: Exactly! Again, I wanted to learn and understand everything. A lot of things came from history, and dinosaurs looked really cool to me. It sounded like something very fun to dive into.

When I was six, I basically just wanted to understand and learn everything around me.

I've always been a builder. When I was young, I was already taking things apart. I think I was an engineer before I even understood the word "engineer".

I wrote my first line of code when I was about eleven years old. I became really amazed by what you could do with a computer. But even before that, I was taking everything in the house apart.

My parents weren't always that happy about it. I electrocuted myself quite often, which was a little less fun.

But I just had this innate need to understand what something was and how it worked.

Armijn: Was there a moment when you really got interested specifically in tech?

Dylan: Yes. Science had always been really interesting to me: how stars work, how electricity works, all of that.

And it all comes together inside a computer. It always felt almost magical that simply by typing some words on a keyboard, you could create something entirely new.

It's the entire philosophy of being able to will something into being. You can think of something and then make it.

With a computer, you basically don't need anything. If you're doing electrical engineering or industrial automation, you need a lot of physical stuff. When you're doing software engineering, you just need your laptop and you can build whatever you want.

When I started diving into that at eleven, I was completely sold.

The funny thing is that I never wanted to become a software engineer.

Armijn: Why not?

Dylan: Because it was mine. It was my passion and my hobby. I didn't want to give that to a university or, later, to a boss.

I thought: no, this is mine. I'm having fun here, and this should only be for fun.

I challenged myself to understand how computers worked, how I could make them do things they weren't supposed to do, and how I could create games for my friends to play together.

Then, of course, at some point I had to choose what I was going to study. And I did a lot of different things, as long as it wasn't computer science.

Armijn: A lot of different things? Can you give some examples?

Dylan: Sure. I studied industrial automation, embedded systems engineering, electrical engineering and psychology.

Armijn: Psychology is something completely different.

Dylan: Of course. But again, I wanted to understand more and learn more. I just didn't want to become a software engineer because that was mine.

I never finished any of those studies, by the way.

At one point, after five or six years, I thought: okay, maybe I need a grown-up job.

So I became a software engineer. I never finished university, and I loved software engineering from the very first second.

I started my career at digital agencies as a software engineer. I did that for a couple of years and then moved into innovation and software consultancy, focusing more on enterprises.

Armijn: Did it feel like selling your soul?

Dylan: No, not at all.

Armijn: You had good bosses?

Dylan: Good bosses, yeah.

Sometimes it felt a little bit like hard labor. From the very beginning I was working sixty, seventy, sometimes eighty hours a week because I loved it.

That's also where the line between work and passion completely disappears.

In those early years I was still writing code myself when I got home. Not for work, just for myself. Creating games or building something cool.

It was still my hobby and my passion.

That has disappeared a little bit now. I'm still doing it, but not as much as before.

Armijn: You have other hobbies now.

Dylan: I have other hobbies. And friends I need to look after as well.

Armijn: People can be nice.

Dylan: Sometimes!

As a founder, you don't have that much spare time. So now I prefer spending that time with them, while still creating everything when I'm on the clock.

Armijn: I have a specific question from a former guest, Mischulaikah Grüne from OrthoFoodie.

What awakened the fire to follow your dream?

Because when you talk about it, it feels like there's a fire. What awakened that feeling of: I'm going to give up my life for this big dream?

Dylan: For me, it was really about the impact I saw generative AI having, and specifically how scared people were becoming of this new innovation.

At the end of my traditional career, I was Head of Technology at a consultancy firm. Then ChatGPT 3.5 was released.

For me, that was really cool. My entire focus became making sure we could ethically innovate with generative AI for corporate clients.

I set up an innovation lab and started doing projects. I was having a lot of fun. New technology, new innovation: that's what I live for.

But at the same time, I saw more and more software engineers becoming afraid that they would be replaced by AI.

For me, that didn't make any sense.

As an engineer, you commit to a lifetime of learning. We have to learn a new tool every other week to stay relevant in the job market. We're extremely digitally literate.

So for me it was simply: hey, there's a new tool. Try it out.

Honestly, it's probably the best multipurpose tool ever created. But it's still a tool. Learn how to use it and you can have a wonderful career.

But that didn't resonate with them at all.

Those initial conversations turned into genuine fear. It became the topic of the day almost every day.

That really got me thinking.

Knowledge work is going to change completely, dramatically and faster than ever before.

And it's not just engineering. People in other occupations are even less prepared than software engineers. They're less digitally literate and often don't already have that continuous learning cycle built into their careers.

But their careers are going to go through the same dramatic change.

I still believe it's much more about human augmentation than human replacement.

But people do get scared.

That really motivated me. The future of knowledge work is broken if we don't do something. A lot of people are going to become upset and afraid, and they're going to resist innovation.

And innovation is a good thing.

People are inherently a little bit scared of change. But you need to understand what's good about it, how you can use it, how you can implement it and how it can benefit you. Otherwise, you're going to get a lot of resistance.

So we really set out to help companies and people understand what they can do with this new technology, and with innovation in general.

Innovation is never going to slow down. Every bit of innovation enables us to innovate even faster, which is super exciting.

But sometimes we need tools to get everyone to the level where they can actually use it, work with it and keep building on innovation.

Armijn: So that fire, that dream, wasn't actually that long ago?

Dylan: No. It was around two years ago that it really came together.

I'd known for a long time that I wanted to start my own company. But this was the moment when I saw a big issue in the world.

I like doing good. And I would love to use my brain for the betterment of everyone.

I've also done things that didn't necessarily do that. I've worked in finance and logistics, where you're basically helping rich companies become even richer.

I liked it at the time and I learned a lot from it.

But now I could actually drive some impact and hopefully make people's lives a little bit better.

It all came together at that point, and that motivated me to start ever.day.

Armijn: When I listen to you, it also sounds like you're trying to make people who are afraid less afraid, and show them what the technology can actually do.

It almost sounds a little bit like the C-word: consulting.

Dylan: Yes, I get that.

Yes and no.

I think something really cool is happening in the world right now. Because of AI, traditional service companies can basically operate at the unit economics that traditional SaaS companies do.

You can augment people to do their work so well that it can beat the implementation of a SaaS tool, time and time again, if you look at the value provided versus what it costs.

I really believe service companies are going through a renaissance.

I deliberately say service companies, not consulting companies, because I don't think consulting is the solution.

What you deliver shouldn't end in a pitch deck. It should end in an outcome. In impact. In change. In the implementation of technology, not just advice.

So consulting isn't it anymore, and SaaS isn't it anymore.

I think that combination is incredibly strong.

With my digital transformation background, we really focus on how we can make AI work for people's decisions.

How can we make it easier to implement? How can we help with change management? How can we analyze your business processes and say: if you implement AI here, this is what happens?

Then we build the agents and implement them into your current tech stack.

Your people can still work almost the same way. Of course, with any transformation you have to optimize your processes a little bit, but they can still work with the same tools. They just get a better outcome.

And we can do this extremely efficiently because, using AI in the right way, we can all 10x ourselves.

Armijn: That makes sense.

I said this when we spoke before: I've worked with a lot of technical people, and sometimes it's hard to communicate with them. But you're doing very well.

Dylan: Thank you.

Armijn: Maybe that's because you also went into psychology and all these other fields?

Dylan: It's funny you say that, because it took me more than twenty years to realize: I love people and I love innovation and technology.

It took me twenty years to think: oh, let's bring those together and turn that into my company.

And now we're there.

I really love understanding how people work, how businesses work and how processes work. But inherently, I'm a technical person.

I think that's also what makes this work. I can approach these people-related decisions from a more innovative, technical point of view and try to do something different.

Armijn: Let's go a little bit into the technical side. What does ever.day actually do? Say you have an HR process. What does AI do?

Dylan: That really depends on what you want to solve.

An easy example I like to use is implementing skills-based hiring within a company.

We start by asking: what do you do right now? What does your hiring process look like?

Then we get the flowchart and look at the setup in the ATS. We look at the different stages and ask: when do we need information? What information is missing? How can we do this better, with more context and more evidence?

Then we build agents that connect directly into your ATS.

Whenever you move someone to a particular step in the pipeline, maybe we want to ask that person something, do automated research, or use our skills engine to compare the requirements with that person's competencies.

That allows us to give much clearer advice.

If you want to implement skills-based hiring, we look at your process, ask those questions and leave you with the agent running.

You don't actually have to enter another tool if you don't want to.

The outcome we deliver is an optimized hiring process that's skills-based.

Armijn: So first you dive into the company and discover where the red flags are and where you can make things more efficient?

Dylan: Exactly.

That's essentially what digital transformation is: taking a process and making it digital and more efficient.

AI transformation is basically the same thing.

You look at your now-digital process and ask: how can we implement agentic AI to make this process even better?

The important side note is that people always keep the decision.

We provide more evidence. We provide reasoning. We bring context together. We give you a bird's-eye view because we understand your entire company.

But we're only going to give advice that's explainable and traceable. We're never going to make the decision for you.

That's not our job.

We want to augment people so they can make better decisions.

Armijn: You started the business a few years ago?

Dylan: About two and a half years ago. That's when we started exploring ideas and figuring out what we wanted to do.

It was very different back then.

Armijn: Totally different? What's the difference?

Dylan: From a world perspective, AI adoption is already completely different.

Two and a half years ago, we weren't used to chatting with our software applications yet.

But our original idea was also very different.

We started ever.day as a skills intelligence company. We built more traditional, science-based solutions around skills intelligence.

We thought: this engine is incredible. There's so much intelligence here that people previously couldn't get, and now they can get it in minutes instead of having to run cycles for half a year or a year.

We thought that was really cool.

Then we realized people don't really want to buy intelligence. They want outcomes. They want something that delivers direct impact and direct value.

That's definitely something we learned over time, and it took a little longer than we wanted.

We did a lot of validation before we started. I think we talked to more than 200 people leaders before we actually started building our first product.

We got our first design partners and launching customers. They were telling us: "Yes, we're definitely going to buy this when you launch."

We did all that grinding to make sure we'd validated it.

Then we built it.

For the first couple of months it resonated. We got some early traction, although we didn't scale fast enough.

But then you notice how fast the world is changing.

Just delivering intelligence and metrics wasn't enough anymore.

The world moves so quickly now that, as a company, you have to be able to move with it.

How you deliver your intelligence, what people actually get out of it and how you implement it: those became the key questions.

It's much more about distribution and impact than simply about how smart your product is.

We did the research. We did the grinding. We got the validation. We built it. Initially it worked.

And then the world changed so quickly that it started breaking apart underneath our feet.

At least, that's how it feels at that point.

It's really important to keep listening, keep your ears open and recognize when something isn't working.

That's painful and really difficult.

If you spend half a year researching, a couple of months building, get customers and they seem happy, and then you have to admit: this isn't working, it isn't scaling fast enough, it isn't creating the impact we want...

The only people you can really blame are yourselves.

Before I became an entrepreneur, I always felt like I had a huge sense of ownership.

When I became a founder, I immediately realized that what I had previously thought was ownership was actually commitment.

I was extremely committed. I worked sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week and wanted everything I touched to be as good as possible.

But that's still not ownership.

You only really understand ownership when you start something yourself and become an entrepreneur.

Then you have to make decisions that sometimes feel like you're starting all over again.

Those decisions hurt.

But at the same time, they're super exciting.

That's the world we live in right now. It's exciting how quickly things change.

It can be scary, but I think it's what makes it worth being alive right now.

Armijn: Did you imagine entrepreneurship would be what it actually is?

Dylan: Yes, except it's ten times more intense than I thought.

Everyone told me from the beginning: it's going to be a roller coaster.

And I believed that. Of course it's going to be a roller coaster.

But how big is that roller coaster?

When a real roller coaster goes down, it's still exciting. It's still cool.

When your company is going down, it doesn't give you that same thrill.

You still get that knot in your stomach and think: okay, something is happening. I need to do something.

But it's not excitement.

At those moments it's really tough. It's hard to stay motivated and keep going.

Of course you do keep going.

But there are moments when you think: none of this is working. Why isn't it working?

That sense of impostor syndrome can pop up.

Am I the right person? Am I doing this right? Did I make a mistake? Where did I make those mistakes? How could I have done this better?

Those are all the questions you try to answer when things start going down.

That's not the most exciting feeling.

But then, at the same time, signing the first deal for your new proposition gives you so much adrenaline.

It's incomparable to any other feeling.

When it hits for the first time again, you think: okay, yes. There is something here.

You feel that magic. It sends shocks through your entire body.

We're onto something. We're going to get it.

So yes, it looks like a roller coaster, but it's so much more intense than I could ever have imagined before actually doing it.

Armijn: What advice would you give yourself? If you could talk to the Dylan of two and a half years ago, what would you tell him?

Dylan: You're going to be fine.

I think the most important thing would be to stay grounded and keep feeling everything.

The highs and the lows.

Celebrate every moment intensely.

We do that here as well. We have four champagne bottles with goals written on them. When we hit those goals, we celebrate.

But the lows are important too.

When things go wrong, it's very easy to immediately go back to grinding, pushing and trying new things to dig yourself out of the hole.

But those moments are really important for learning.

You shouldn't become completely overwhelmed by disappointment, but you should understand why something went wrong, what you could have done differently and how you can handle it better next time.

Create a system that allows you to keep learning from those moments.

I think that's the most important lesson I'd give myself: the bad times are learning moments too.

It's funny because that's something I always told my teammates.

I really believe in failing forward.

Make mistakes.

If you haven't made a mistake in the last two weeks, you're not learning. You're not pushing yourself.

You have to make mistakes to keep improving.

But telling other people that is different from living up to those standards yourself when you have complete ownership of your own company.

Those mistakes feel a little bit more painful.

I'd remind myself that every mistake is another learning opportunity and something I can improve next time.

Armijn: But that takes character. And guts.

How do you get that? Do you meditate? Work out? Cry a lot? Talk to people?

Dylan: I don't meditate. Maybe I should try it more.

I have ADHD, so sitting still for too long with my eyes closed makes my entire body really uncomfortable. It's not really for me.

Going to the gym and working out is super important.

Ironically, it's also the first thing that goes when I enter stress mode. Then I think: okay, that has to go, I need to focus.

But having that pattern and rhythm of taking care of yourself, eating healthily, working out and moving enough is really important.

Having a good social network and safety net is also incredibly important.

I couldn't have done this without my partner and my friends around me.

As an entrepreneur, you're going to feel alone a lot of the time.

It's something you have to do yourself. And I think it's also something you do partly to prove to yourself that you can do it.

But it's important to share it with the people around you.

You're going to see your friends a little less. You're going to be preoccupied when you're having a date with your partner.

There are a lot of people around you who are influenced by what you're doing.

Respect that. Understand that.

And if you go through it together, you can fall back on them as well.

Have those conversations.

They can remind you that you're human, which is something you sometimes automatically forget when you're trying to build something new.

When you're so preoccupied with making the business work, it can become difficult to separate who's Dylan and who's ever.day.

Having people around you helps you remember that you're still human.

And there's room for that too.

Armijn: What do you think happens when you succeed? What does success look like to you as a founder?

Because everything you're describing is learning, improving, learning, improving. When do you reach the point where you think: we're there?

Dylan: I think we're getting there.

One obvious thing is when people actually use your solution and give you feedback like: this helped me so much.

For us, it's really cool to see that translate into an impact on people's lives.

Maybe we've helped improve talent management or helped people adapt to AI more easily.

Those things really drive the impact for me.

When we're helping enough companies make better people decisions, that's success to me.

Making sure companies and people actually get through this transformation of knowledge work.

If we can help make that transformation even a little bit better, easier and more understandable for people, that's success.

That's what I want to do.

I want to help as many companies and people as I can through this transformation with AI.

Armijn: This is a question from Thomas from Everox. You've answered it a little bit already, but what's the biggest waste of time for a founder?

Dylan: There are a lot of things you can waste time on.

But right now, I really feel that anything you're doing twice is a waste of time.

You can automate and digitalize so much now.

Create an operating system for yourself using AI. Make sure all the data is there and that every process you manually perform is documented. Then see if AI can do it for you.

You get this compound interest.

Every time you automate something, the next time it takes you less time.

I'm not saying AI should write every single LinkedIn outreach message for you or that you shouldn't be creative anymore.

But if you notice you're repeating yourself and it's taking a couple of minutes every time, it's a shame not to automate it, or at least create something that reduces the amount of time you need to spend on it.

And endless validation without selling something is also a waste of time.

We did a lot of that at the beginning.

We validated a lot, but the market can now change faster than you can build.

Traditionally, we had to spend a lot of time doing validation.

Validation is still important. I'm not saying: don't talk to anyone and just build whatever you want.

But the amount of time it takes to create something has been reduced insanely.

You don't have time to sit around and wait.

Validate fast. Build fast. Sell it fast.

If someone is willing to pay for it, you know you've got something worth doing.

Then accelerate from there.

Armijn: So don't stop validating, but validate enough?

Dylan: Exactly. Validate enough, and validate using the right markers.

Don't trust everything everyone tells you.

People inherently want to be positive.

If you're talking to a decision-maker and you say: "If I can solve this for you, that's going to be amazing, right?"

They'll say: "Yeah, that's amazing."

But then ask: "Are you going to pay for it?"

That's a very different question.

Go directly to the decision-makers and validate with them.

And often, the people you're trying to sell to aren't the ones making the final decision.

Talk to the right people. Validate in the right way.

Then build it and get it out there.

Armijn: Good advice. Put it on a tile.

When we look at your founder journey, you're about two and a half years in. What are the biggest difficulties you've faced?

Or is it just: roller coaster, but everything was fine?

Dylan: Definitely a roller coaster. And it was fine in the end.

But of course there are moments when you hit the wall.

You realize: we have to pivot our entire company again because this isn't working.

You're not seeing traction. You're not seeing growth. People are churning.

Every directional change you try still doesn't resonate.

Being in that room of uncertainty, while knowing that your goal and ambition and what you want to achieve is something the world needs, is incredibly difficult.

Every pivot we've had to go through has been difficult.

"Pivot hard, pivot often" is something I truly believe in, especially with how fast the world is moving right now.

But it means killing your darlings.

You have to accept that sometimes the outcome looks a little more bleak than it did the day before.

It's really important to see that early enough.

If you get the sensation that something isn't going to work, start experimenting on the side.

Try a different use case. Find a different way to distribute the solution. Validate something else.

If you wait too long, even though you already had the feeling and probably had the data to back it up, you're wasting time.

Sometimes you hold yourself back and think: maybe it might still work. There's still a slight chance.

No. Go for it.

You can't waste time pursuing something that doesn't show enough potential.

Armijn: So again, build data-based evidence?

Dylan: Exactly.

Your gut feeling is still there and it's still really important. Believe in yourself, but make sure it's backed by data.

That's exactly what we do with ever.day.

We drink our own champagne.

We do AI transformation and run our company as an AI-native company. We make sure we have the data to back our evidence, but we still keep the decision ourselves.

Just like we do for customers.

We give you the evidence, but you keep the decision.

I'm not saying gut feeling is inherently wrong. I just don't want to be blindsided by data that wasn't there and therefore make the wrong decision.

Armijn: You got funded at an early stage, which is worth celebrating. But was there a moment in your journey when you really felt a positive shift?

Dylan: Yes.

For us, that really happened when we shifted towards becoming an AI transformation company and changed the way we distribute our solution.

Now we're working with partners who traditionally operate as people-service companies. We help them transform the way they work and make it more AI-native.

Then we partner together and do something cool.

That's ultimately the way we distribute what we've built.

Technology isn't defensible anymore. Product isn't defensible anymore.

Even if you spend a lot of time building something, the amount of time it takes someone else to recreate it keeps coming down.

So the way you distribute it becomes incredibly important.

For us, that's now through service delivery.

Actually helping people get the outcome instead of giving them another tool they have to implement.

That completely changed the way we do things, but it also changed the numbers we're seeing.

Armijn: Maybe that's also because you're really working together with the client. You get into the details, find out where you can make improvements, and the client immediately sees the benefits.

Dylan: Exactly.

And we don't only work through partners. We also sell directly to companies and do the AI transformation ourselves.

People are willing to pay for your time and knowledge as long as it's beneficial.

Setting up a tool yourself costs a lot of money internally.

You have to figure out your business processes, set everything up, train your people and so on.

Instead, we're saying: don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. We understand this. Give it to us and you'll get the outcome.

People are really happy with that because they don't have to worry about it.

We see a lot of AI transformation failing around people decisions when companies try to implement it themselves or simply buy tools from the market.

Demonstrating ROI around people decisions is really difficult, especially in talent management.

There are also issues around data.

We're talking about semantically complex information. Sometimes we're talking about one-on-one reviews and other quite personal information.

You don't want that data to be all over the place.

It's also opinionated information, so you have to process it in the right way.

That's why you need real reasoning and explainability.

Those are areas where we can deliver much more value and flexibility.

Armijn: Do you think it will become more scalable in the future?

Dylan: Yes.

That's something we're going to start exploring soon: a self-service version of our platform.

Right now, when we're doing AI transformation, we understand your business process by asking the right questions.

I think that as frontier models get better, the product and platform should eventually be able to do that as well.

A good frontier model should be able to ask the same questions I would ask a customer.

Armijn: When? Half a year?

Dylan: With how fast everything is developing and being adopted, definitely.

We've already created a studio where you can build your own solutions.

But right now, you still have to build it yourself.

And a lot of people don't know what they don't know.

That's something I really learned during my consulting years.

You have to ask the tough questions. The painful questions. You have to dive deeper and really speak the language of the person sitting in the room.

If you don't ask those questions, you'll end up delivering something that isn't the real solution.

Take skills-based hiring again.

If someone comes to me and says: "I want to implement this," my first answer isn't: "Yes."

It's: "Why?"

Why do you want to do this? What's causing problems? What don't you have right now?

You have to go much deeper to understand where they are and whether what they think is the solution is actually the solution.

That's a little bit of consulting, of course, but it's really AI transformation.

Digital transformation isn't simply making something digital. It's making something work better in a digital way.

Now we're doing that with AI and, in our case, agentic AI.

Armijn: What are the next steps in your founder journey?

Dylan: Scale this to the moon!

The next step is closing this year. It's the best year we've ever had, which is super exciting.

We're making the team a little bigger, although I don't believe teams need to become that big anymore because AI can make everyone so much more efficient.

A lot of our focus right now is making sure ever.day itself is run as an AI-native company.

What we're doing for people decisions, we want to do throughout our own company.

Go-to-market, engineering, everything.

Basically, everything you do should be approached from an AI-native perspective.

Don't do things twice. Make sure the context is in the right place.

That's the immediate next part of my founder journey: making ever.day an AI-native company in the way it operates.

Making sure that with a small team we can make this much bigger than it is right now.

The first big next step is finding another partner that provides people services and helping them make those services smarter and better with agentic AI.

Then we can partner together and talk to the right companies.

That's my immediate focus.

Beyond that, it's building the team and making this bigger.

What that's ultimately going to look like, I don't know.

It depends on how fast the world moves and how fast we can scale this.

But it feels really exciting.

Armijn: Is there a question you wish we'd asked, but didn't? Something we should also ask the next founder we interview?

Dylan: I think it's interesting that we didn't talk that much about how to operate a business in this era.

Although I've mentioned it a lot, so maybe it was already part of the conversation.

I think it's incredibly important right now to think about how you operate your own business when there's so much opportunity to operate it in an AI-native way.

How has this innovation and transformation impacted you as a founder and the way you do things?

But also: how do you still appreciate everything?

I know a lot of software engineers who have embraced AI, but they miss that sense of craftsmanship.

I feel like founders might experience that as well when AI starts doing more and more for them.

Which key decisions do you still put a lot of time and detail into? And which things can you let go?

I think that's an important question to ask everyone right now:

How has AI changed the way you operate as a founder, and how has it changed you?

Armijn: We'll ask that question.

You're located here on planet Earth, in Rotterdam. Did you specifically choose this place?

Dylan: I'm born and raised here, so for me it was really convenient. I can walk here in fifteen minutes.

But I built this together with Builder Studio.

They're a startup studio here in Rotterdam focused on the future of work.

Being a first-time entrepreneur, I thought: okay, I need to learn the trade a little bit.

They've helped me tremendously.

We're still here in their office. We're renting our seats here.

So that's why I chose Rotterdam.

And I hope Rotterdam becomes more founder-focused in the near future.

I love the city. I love the architecture. I love the space we have here. I love Upstream.

But I'm a little sad that Upstream is basically the only festival, the only week, that's really focused on innovation and entrepreneurship.

We should have much more of that.

Armijn: Do you have some ideas? Some advice? Some consulting?

Dylan: Some consulting!

Just do it more often.

There are a lot of founders running around in the city and they're all saying the same thing.

If you're a Series C kind of company, there's a lot of room to innovate in Rotterdam and we do a lot for those companies.

But if you're a little bit smaller, the ecosystem isn't as reachable or tangible.

Let's make that bigger.

Rotterdam is a cool city and there's a lot of room to innovate.

We have Erasmus University, we have the port, we have so much cool stuff here.

Let's use that.

Let's embrace being entrepreneurs a little bit more together here. Let's find each other more and do more cool stuff together.

Then we don't all have to go to Amsterdam eventually.

I would hate that.

Armijn: Let's build it here.

Dylan: Build it here.

Armijn: Thank you for your time and for telling your story.

Dylan: Thank you so much. I had a lot of fun.

Armijn: Thanks!

Dylan: Thank you.