Inqubator Leeuwarden

I stayed, and these days I look after the community side with the community task force and Inqubator’s director, Rinze Bos.

We asked members what they wanted first. Summer was for getting to know each other, and from September we added learning together. Now every month has 1 social event and 1 for professional development, and every founder gets their story told.

Everyone worked on their own thing, and plenty of members had moved to Leeuwarden from abroad, like me. I’ve been the new person in enough countries to know that kind of quiet from the inside.

I mentioned the chat early on, and these days it runs in Dutch and English.

The note on the jar asked how we could improve the INQ experience, and anyone could drop in a thought or a wish, or text me instead. My other first move was a who-is-who board called Meet the Inqubatees.

After that came surveys, 1-to-1 chats, WhatsApp polls and small test events that I adjusted each time.

It’s a corkboard wall. Every member gets a card with their name, company, photo and the skills they offer.

The board has corners for founder profiles, opportunities and resources, a community pulse and the upcoming events. The pulse corner asks things like “would you rather”, and people answer on sticky notes.

A month before, on 3 April, one wall got its first coat of red paint. On launch day there was a raffle.

The community task force and I named 3 pillars together. Every event sits under 1 of them, so a beach borrel and a Lunch & Learn belong to the same plan.

We started with the personal and the playful. On 9 July we had a borrel on the city beach, where members playtested my Paper Trails prototype and told me what to fix. On 13 August we went out on a boat with a picnic.

On 3 September a group of us from Inqubator joined AI Salon Groningen, a free evening about AI that AI Heroes runs every 2 months, with talks and demo pitches.

I took notes all evening and brought the highlights home for our own first session.

At a Lunch & Learn we eat together and teach each other something. The agenda for the first one, on 15 September, came straight from 3 WhatsApp polls. Members shared how they use AI at work on a FigJam board split into 4 zones, and by my count 12 of us came.

Since 24 September the rhythm is set: 1 social event and 1 professional-development event, every month.

The building already had a monthly vrijmibo, so we skipped planning a separate borrel. On 9 October the vrijmibo was at Club Zero, and I opened it to the whole building.

The invite was a pink sticky note on the glass, with drinks and snacks from 16:00 to 18:00.

Every founder gets new photos and a written story about their business, to share on their own socials and on Inqubator’s.

I designed the series with consent built in: a written yes first, then a spoken one on camera. Each interview follows 5 questions tied to the pillars.

We’re inviting more founders and entrepreneurs to build here. In January, every founder will write a SMART goal for 2027 on a bottle for our Wall of Champagne, 1 bottle per goal.

Until then the fall and winter calendar has 7 dated events, with a Halloween party on 30 October and Lunch & Learns on 13 November and 29 January.