My adventure called Payt - Sander Kamstra, Managing Board
My adventure called Payt.
I had known Aziz for a while. We ping-ponged regularly at the Euroborg where we both worked. I was in the final period of my company ApplicationNet and Aziz was doing desk work as an accountant, or something like that. That never became entirely clear. An enterprising guy Aziz, and in 2012 he had bought, together with Merijn, a piece of software. The name of the software; Want my money!
One day Aziz came over to my house to have a cup of tea with me in the garden and told me about his latest purchase. Asking me if I would take a look at it and asking me if I would be interested in co-founding it. Aziz took Merijn with him, and I took Rob and Jelger with me. Rob and Jelger worked at KPN and we had enjoyed a very close collaboration in the previous four years. We were keen on continuing that. So it started with the five of us? Well, not really. We also needed someone who could really build something. And so Herman joined us. And Herman had already worked on the code through Warpnet, so actually Herman was the first and then we joined. Right after that, Sebastiaan joined. The magnificent seven.
In 2013, we doubled in turnover compared to 2012 to €26,535 in that whole year. We suffered a loss of more than €400,000. And that loss did not diminish in the following years. Certainly not when we also decided to become the main sponsor of FC Groningen. That was exciting, of course. Looking back, everything seems so logical. But when you have to face decisions, you have to have strong nerves. Especially because we did not seek external capital and therefore made up all the losses ourselves. Most of the start-up group went all-in. The last penny of savings ánd more was put into our beautiful company. In 2020 we nearly hit the debt mark of €5 million when we finally had some money left over.
What makes Payt so special to me is that we have an awful lot of quality in-house. Wherever you look in our organisation, there are smart people everywhere who have their sights wider than their own job. It all seems so easy, but anyone who has worked at another company knows how different it can be. If you bring in the wrong customers, make bad software or have too much staff turnover. How much time, energy and customer satisfaction it costs when mistakes are made. Not that we don’t make mistakes. But they are limited and we then solve them neatly and preferably structurally. It is an honour for me to work for Payt and with you!
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