A day in the life of… Ed Koster!
Nice to meet you! My name is Ed and I am the finance coach at Mercator Launch. My morning usually starts with a good cup of coffee, but today it starts with a couple of things I need to do to finalize the relocation to our new Mercator Launch office. We just got some new presentation screens, however, the screens still need to be mounted on the walls. And I desperately need facility management to help me do that so we can start using them.
After the screens have been put up, I’m ready for my first appointment with one of our startups. I’m helping the entrepreneurs prepare their financials for a Gelderland Valorisation loan. I’m very happy I can help entrepreneurs by simplifying this seemingly daunting financial task. The first step is thoroughly going through their business plan together, because the business plan is the basis for the financial figures. Once we have the relevant input, we can crunch the numbers together. For this, I use the FAST model. For startups this is very helpful, because if you put in the right numbers, you immediately get the financial figures you need, like the cash flow overview and profit & loss.
After this session, I head to a meeting with OostNL, the regional development agency, to explore if their “Groeiversneller” program can be used for one of our startups. It’s a good meeting with business developers of OostNL and I can connect the entrepreneurs to them.
Back at the office I dive into the organization of a visit to Janssen Pharmaceutica. Janssen Pharma is one of the largest medical innovators in The Netherlands and a strategic partner of Radboud University and the Medical Center. In addition, they have their own life science incubator: JLABS. At the end of the month 50 medical PhD students will visit their campus and labs in Belgium. This visit is a great opportunity for me to meet PhD students who might aspire a business career. Setting up your own company with the results of four years of research can be a great career opportunity for a scientist. At Mercator Launch we can help these scientists take their first steps towards an entrepreneurial career!
At the end of the afternoon I have an appointment with Tolooba, an AI startup from Leeuwarden that considers relocating to Nijmegen. The enthusiasm and ambition of these three young entrepreneurs is very contagious and they have a great product! I meet with them to see if I can connect them with the AI research done at the university and show them the offices on campus.
Fully energized I wrap up my day! I feel satisfied that I was able to help a couple of ambitious young people get a little bit further with their companies.
