Meet Steven, CTO at Obeyo

People deserve great experiences and connections with others. Coming from a family with mixed backgrounds, I strongly see the value of getting exposed to different realities so that you can see the possibilities you have as an individual. I believe that giving people the tools to build better experiences and more connected environments makes this world a much better place.

About

From a young age, I’ve been interested in building and designing things that offer a great experience. While still studying, I started providing Web development services to entrepreneurs I knew back then, together with a friend.

I joined forces with two other friends and formed Grible, a boutique agency focused on helping companies get new products out there. Exceptional products require a deep understanding of users and, while we learned how to get that understanding, we noticed the companies we worked for kept struggling with it. This pushed us to start the venture-backed startup Shipright, a SaaS solution that helps product teams gather valuable feedback from users and stay connected with them, leading to better product decisions and experiences. Because of the strong belief in the power of community and a passion for great product craftsmanship, we started a movement called Build With Users.

After advising other startups for a while on becoming more user-centric and getting a strong product mindset, I joined Obeyo to continue this path of bringing people closer together in the place where they live, supported by an exceptional product experience.

IPS team photo

Building on a strong foundation

My background is in engineering, but I love to also navigate between design, product management, connecting with users, and building the company machine. I noticed that this generalist view is hard to understand for some companies I worked for, as roles are often strictly separated. For me, getting back in an early-stage venture is therefore great, as it allows me to work on the machine as a whole rather than thinking in boxes.

Over time I’ve built upon certain traits that I think have helped me succeed:

  • Going deep, and trying to understand things top-to-bottom
  • Being OK only with exceptional work
  • Having a broad understanding of the aspects of successful businesses, but being specialized only in a few
  • Being highly structured, organized and focused on simplicity

What attracted me to Builders was their early approach to validating the potential for a new business. It is very powerful and sets a company up for success. My personal passion is building great products together with users, and having early market validation and a well-thought-out starting point is essential for that.

Builders also have a strong team that supports the startup from day 1, which gives us access to talent in a stage where most startups need to rely fully on the founding team. This has already proven to be very helpful in terms of the community and content we’ve been able to create.


Creating a community from scratch


For me, the user should always be at the centre of our efforts. These are some things I value highly when working on any solution:


  • Craftsmanship - creating products that people love
  • Power of community - bringing people together and having fun experiences together
  • Empowering people to grow and become a better version of themselves

I’m super excited to work together with the Obeyo users to help them make their life easier. This means diving into their workflow and jumping on calls regularly, but also being open to receiving their feedback. I love to hear thoughts from users on what we are doing (even work-in-progress), and how we can make things easier, more valuable, and more fun.


What lies ahead


In the past decades, our lives and the people and information we have access to have completely changed through technology. At the same time, loneliness, lack of direction in life and other social issues are more present than ever. I believe the key to changing this is to bring great experiences, personal connections, and our physical world together. This is why I strongly believe in co-living and the value it can bring to the lives of people. It should be possible for anyone to have a meaningful, trusted connection to the people around them at the place where they live.


Influentials

A comprehensive marketplace platform that connects some of the biggest brands in Benelux with content creators or ‘influencers’ who collaboratively create authentic social media campaigns.

Areas of expertise

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Obeyo

Obeyo makes residential communities come to life by enabling residents to build genuine connections, streamlining all communications, making shared services accessible, and connecting them to smart building features.

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