Impact through
collective entrepreneurship

What we mean
by our meaning

We believe that entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs should go back to the core of their existence: finding, creating and facilitating solutions to social challenges that affect us all. Our goal is to make meaningful entrepreneurship the new normal. To achieve this, we start up new businesses, help existing ones to scale up, transform large companies into meaningful enterprises and invest in existing ventures. We want to achieve impact through collective entrepreneurship.

We are all Powered by Meaning.

Photo credit: Jurre Rompa

OUR VENTURES

YSE

Develop Your Future

YSE helps people and organisations to shape their future by means of the best possible development programmes. By working with the young talents of YSE, organisations are able to change, modernise, accelerate and rejuvenate. YSE consists of a team of experienced trainers, coaches and young professionals who are passionate about contributing to personal and organisational development. YSE recruits and develops talented young individuals by arranging tailor-made traineeships and offers a pool of top young talent for organisations to draw on. They also offer various services to businesses in the fields of HR, Learning and Development, and provide consultancy, training and workshops.
www.yse.nl

Kirkman Company

Time to transform

Kirkman Company delivers successful transformations of organisations, heading towards 100% relevance for all stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, environment, society and shareholders. Whether it’s about the challenges of today or the opportunities of tomorrow. Within a department or for the organisation as a whole. Because there’s always room for improvement, or because sometimes things really do need to change. Kirkman Company transforms organisations. With a team of 80 dedicated professionals with a strong individual identity. Their core values say a lot about the way they work together: enterprising, connecting, passionate, confident (but not cocky), “no guts, no story” and ego-free.
www.kirkmancompany.com

Buildings That Matter

Creating buildings with meaning

Buildings That Matter invests capital and effort in creating beautiful, exceptional buildings. They are transformed into circular buildings, with a social function for the environment. The buildings can be used for multiple purposes: displaying the beauty of circular products, showing how we can build or renovate circularly for ourselves, and creating places where people can come together to do something beautiful for our world. These can be experimental places, meeting spaces, conference rooms and circular hotspots where all sorts of things can happen. Places with a real buzz.
www.c-beta.nl

Make Participations

Making linear companies circular

Make Participations invests in Dutch manufacturing companies with potential. Companies that are already doing well, but have the potential to reap the benefits of the transition to the circular economy. The Dutch government’s policy is to make the Netherlands’ economy fully circular by 2050. We believe that this huge transition offers fantastic opportunities for early adopters. Circularity is enjoying an unstoppable rise in the Netherlands. Make Participations not only invests in capital, but also plays an active role in helping companies to take the next step that will make them front-runners in the economy of the future.
www.make-participations.com

Social Impact Factory

Hotspot for social entrepreneurship


Social Impact Factory Utrecht is the hotspot for social entrepreneurship. Like any other enterprise, a social enterprise provides a product or service and has a revenue model. However, making money is not the main goal; it is a means to an end. The aim of the social enterprise is to create social added value or “impact”. Social Impact Factory does this by bringing together independent entrepreneurs, start-ups, scale-ups and large organisations in a physical, creative hub. We provide working and meeting spaces for independent professionals, start-ups, scale-ups and large organisations (corporates, public and semi-public organisations). What unites them is their ambition to make an impact with their entrepreneurship.
www.sifutrecht.nl

Next2Company

Transformational business models

Next2Company helps organisations to connect to the new reality with innovative business models. They develop scalable, transformational business models that offer sustainable perspectives. Bridging the chasm between public and private in order to co-create social and economic value is a key part of this. They connect the inner world of organisations with the outer world in order to foster innovation. Daring to let go of old models is essential. Only in this way can Next2Company deliver innovative returns for tomorrow and the day after. As an organisation, they bring the core competencies of businesses and social issues together. Deploying these core competencies in innovative ways creates maximum impact.
www.next2company.com/nl

World Startup Factory

Impact Accelerator

World Startup Factory helps founders accelerate their business with an intensive 30-day boot camp, followed by five months of customised support to increase success in their market. They offer a personal approach with a focus on customer development and strategic partnerships. Turn to them if you are a team of entrepreneurs that are working on solutions for a better world. World Startup Factory started in 2015 and currently has a portfolio of over 54 participations in thriving startups with future-proof solutions. They are a group of seasoned entrepreneurs and investors with an extensive network in the Dutch and European market.
www.worldstartupfactory.com

Outside Inc.

Innovation with intra- and entrepreneurship

Outside Inc. is enthusiastic about people who want to become or remain front-runners in their sector and to shape a new economy: a “doughnut economy” where a vast wealth of economic and social value is created. Together, they take up the challenge of developing new business models and adding new products and services that make an organisation future-proof. Outside Inc. sees the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a way to bring meaning and substance to innovation challenges. We believe that every transition is crammed with opportunities if you dare to tackle problems in an entrepreneurial way. Whether you’re a start-up or a long-established organisation.
www.outside-inc.nl

FoodStars

Fostering 500 startups in the next five years

World Startup Factory and Truvalu.startups, two international innovation accelerators, initiated FoodStars to invite a broad coalition of corporates, research and knowledge institutes, government bodies and investors to invest together in boosting innovation and entrepreneurship in the sector. Their activities are twofold. First, they foster innovative startups in smart farming that can feed the world’s cities. New technologies, production methods or business models: innovations that not only improve productivity and efficiency. But also have a social, health and/or ecological impact. Second, together with their partners, they are forging a lasting ecosystem for innovative startups in smart farming in metropolitan areas.
www.foodstars.net

Smart Climate Opportunities

Turning climate change into climate chances

Smart Climate Opportunities accelerates the transition towards a smart and sustainable economy. They challenge and inspire people to gain a new way of thinking which is essential to make this transition happen. Secondly, in order to demonstrate that the energy transition brings ample opportunities, they initiate and stimulate entrepreneurial initiatives that accelerate the transition. Smart Climate Opportunities does this by bringing together industry, innovation, capital and science in the areas of energy, mobility, food, water, products and materials. The activities of Smart Climate Opportunities are centred around three main pillars: the academy, ideation sessions and initiatives.
www.smartclimateopportunities.com

Aimforthemoon

Corporate Start-up studio

Powered by Meaning is proud co-founder of Aimforthemoon. Currently, Powered by Meaning holds a minority interest in Aimforthemoon.
www.aimforthemoon.com

Previous participations

We Beat The Mountain

Controlling the waste mountain together

We Beat The Mountain has set itself the goal of reducing the use of new materials by using what we already have. This inspires them to create alternatives to new materials and find new applications for end-of-life materials. Sustainability in the use of materials will lead to radical changes in the way we design and produce goods and applications. They help organisations to build towards sustainable solutions, whether the challenges faced are big or small. We Beat The Mountain was transferred to Desko in October 2018.
www.webeatthemountain.com

Entrepreneurs are the ones filling the gaps and failures in society

NEWS

5 November 2019
World Startup Factory is Europe’s first early-stage investor and startup accelerator to receive B CORP™ Certification
World Startup Factory is excited to announce today at ImpactFest, Europe’s biggest impact meetup where doing good and doing business come together, that the company has achieved B Corp™ Certification. A mark of trust that recognizes its ambition to ac...
Read more
14 March 2019
Three examples of growth
On the second day of spring we have something to celebrate. YSE has outgrown its setting, setting a fine example of the way we scale up. After years of working cosily with Kirkman Company out of our cramped shared premises, it’s high time for a whole new pla...
Read more
more news

IMPACT

Smart Climate Opportunities: How to create a public-private partnership?

In the wake of the Paris Agreement, APG and others asked how pension funds could contribute to this globally supported ambition and how we could make it concrete. Ruud Koornstra and Cas van Arendonk were asked to take this up. The result: the Smart Climate Opportunities Foundation. Cas van Arendonk: ‘At the start you mainly ask yourself where the initiative can really stand out. The core group believes in entrepreneurship and innovation, and is mainly positive in outlook. So we also focus on breakthroughs that really have a major impact on CO2reduction and knowledge sharing through our academy. The next step was to recruit partners. Partners who believe in this idea, but can also contribute to the solutions. It’s now an eclectic mix of companies and several successful projects. Take the Dienst Landelijke Energietransitie (DLE), for example, which shows that making a house energy-neutral doesn’t have to cost all that much, and we’re now applying this on a huge scale. Tangible results, that’s what appeals to me the most. But it’s also fantastic to facilitate breakthrough technologies such as the hydrogen granule with an energy density three times higher than liquid hydrogen.’

C-Bèta: How to make a 126-year-old farm circular?

When the Netherlands held the EU Presidency in 2016, it had to find a home base for the many international guests arriving for the incoming trade mission. Hoeve de Vogel, a 126-year-old farm in the middle of the drained Haarlemmermeer polder, was standing empty and served as a unique venue to show what the Dutch business community already has to offer in the field of the Circular Economy. The farm had to be extensively renovated. Thijs Tauw: ‘It was quite a challenge of course. The skill was to make the building suitable for multiple events at the same time. We also wanted to create workplaces. The main challenge during the renovation was to restore the building in a circular way. Fortunately, we were able to barter a lot of deals with Philips, Ecor, Interface, Moonen Packaging and WEPA among others. Fantastic circular solutions, every last one of them. The challenge lay mainly in the logistics: how to get everything together on time. Just try to find a second-hand façade that’s available for the opening in May. C-Bèta will be constantly in development; it’s there in the name. It’s cool to see so many circular businesses developing here, and so many people already set on the circular track thanks to our events. That’s why we do it.’

Start Scale Transform… Repeat

VACANCIES

Let’s create a more resilient economy: circular and inclusive

Photo credit: Michiel Ton

CONTACT

We are always open to expanding the collective, by investing in new or existing ventures. We apply a careful selection process for ventures aspiring to become part of Powered by Meaning. Would you like more information or do you have a question to ask? We look forward to hearing from you!

Powered by Meaning
Amsterdamsestraatweg 40
3743 DT Baarn
Tel. 088 – 4040410