Giving First, Learning Always with Dutch Startup Founder Julien Jukema

It first starts, I think, with the bluff that you just. Think you can do it, and then you need to like convince one or two people that you can. Then you get your first show and then like you're good to go. That's Julian Ucma, founder of anywise.audio, A tool that allows you to transform any text into a complete audio learning experience.

It is used at a number of universities. It's backed by science. It boost productivity by making on the go. Learning were convenient and time efficient. But before Julian started Anywise. He did a number of cool things like owning a secondhand fashion store where he gave 30% of the profits to a cancer foundation, and he was the co initiator of Netherland unk, a project where every week they recognized three individuals and the Netherlands who made a remarkable impact during the Corona crisis.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. As you listen, you can find me on LinkedIn at Eric Cher. Tag me, say hello. Let me know that you're listening, and now let's talk with Julian. Hey Julian. Welcome to Innovators Can Laugh. How you doing today? Thank you. Doing very well. What about you? I'm all right.

First question for you, Julian. What are, what are one or two interesting things about you that most people don't know? Ooh, good question. I think I grew, probably, a lot of people dunno, they grow up in a very, very, very small village. Somewhere in the countryside, in the Netherlands, need to bike to school front and back every 25 kilometers.

25 kilometers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a good, good workout. And then I, in high school, it was a bit of a misfit, so I needed to get out of like a normal program and did all kinds of different levels and ended up at the University of Amsterdam, but it took me like six years for normal people, like take two.

So it's also something which is not that familiar, I think. Did you feel chemistry? Cuz I failed chemistry at university. I had to take the class three times in order to pass it. I had it with mathematics. It was horrible, like always the same. Like I did a million trainings to get like mathematics in. And then finally, finally, it worked well enough.

Yeah, my toughest classs was calculus for mathematics. And I still remember the formula. Oh god, I forgot it. The quadratic formula. I still remember it by heart. Never used it once in my life. Never. Yeah. Well that's a, that brings open and discussion on the indication system. Right. But that, that's a, that's a long one.

Yeah. No, that's, that's definitely a separate discussion, right? The things that we need to learn and pass in order to get a diploma or whatever, and much time, many hours are wasted on doing those things that you never really get to apply in your real life whatsoever. But enough about that. There was something that I read, your mom called you the best moderator in the world.

That's right. The best moderator in the world. So before, before we jump into Anywise, I just wanna hear how did you get started being a MO moderator and what was that experience like? Julian? Basically like all the things have started, it first starts, I think, with the bluff that you just think you can do it and then you need to like convince one or two people that you can.

Then you get your first show and then like you're good to go. Also, my mother would call me everything in the world, just which to make me feel good. So I don't know if it's like very objective point of reference, but no, with the moderating, actually, I, I really wanted to do it and I never really knew how to get started.

So a friend of mine was organized, organized like a pitch competition for the University of Amsterdam, and he was looking for someone, I said like, I, I can do this. And he wanted to pay me like 200 euros for Halton. I was like, what? So I, I, I remember walking home, like going crazy and I was like, Is this real?

That was like huge back in, back then, and that's how it, how it started. But I'm not very actively doing it, trying to focus as much as possible on the business. That's good money for just like a short amount of time. Yeah. For back then it was like crazy. I was, I, I remember I was like dancing on the street almost because it was just because I really wanted to make it happen and then it actually happened.

What was, was that one of the first entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial things you've ever did before Julian? No. No, no. I wouldn't say so. No. I think. So I started my first company a couple of years before that, which was a sustainable suit business. We picked up suits, which our lawyers wouldn't wear anymore, sold them to students, and 30% went to the cancer foundation to.

So you could do something good with your old suit and also people buying them would do something good with their money. 30% is a lot that, that's pretty big. Yeah. I mean, companies are over here boasting about we get 1% of our revenue to a good charity, but you're over here doing 30%. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we, we work with law firms and then I would go in there, get like 102 old suits and like plastic bags, and take them home again, and then filter them like the high quality from the low quality, and then wash them, clean them, and sell them again with the tailor next to it. I read something that the circular economy, when it comes to fashion is supposed to grow something crazy, like 300 billion to 600 billion within the next three or four years.

So there's still a lot of demand for it. It's because the younger generation, they just don't see the value in, in, in spending a lot of money on, on clothes. So that could be a business that you go back to maybe one day. Well, I saw actually someone, I was very much so I started this five years ago, something like that.

Right. Six years maybe. Then I, but it was an operational hassle because you have these suits in your hands, like two or three or four or five times a year only like charge like 100, 150 euros. So it was a lot of work for not a lot of revenue. So you, it could work, but then you need to like scale like crazy.

And actually, so I very much hoped that someone would like retry it. And then not too long ago, one month ago, I was at a conference on Chad g pt and someone actually is doing it again in the Netherlands. I was like, Hey, this is cool. Like, have you tried this? Have you tried this? Or like, how was his fanboy now?

Like, it, it shouldn't, like you guys, it, it should, it should be there in the world. Like it shouldn't be necessary for young people to spend a lot of money on a suit which is not high quality and maybe made by. Child labor and all that bullshit, like, oh yeah. High quality already in the market. It shouldn't go to waste.

Totally agree. Before Covid, I used to wear suits, but after Covid I just work from home. I haven't put on a suit since 2020 I think. No, that's crazy. Right. The thing is you just need to like create some, some, some activities for yourself where you can like suit up, like go to the concert, but like concerts or classical concerts a bit more like those are always good spots too.

Yeah. Also, you don't really an excuse though, but I have the same, I also hardly wear suits anymore. Go do a marathon or tough mud or something and stand out from the crowd by wearing one of my nice re suits that, yeah, there were, there were a lot of money. Now I never wear it anymore. But also I read something that was quite interesting here, and I know I'm gonna mess this up.

I'm gonna botch this, but it was called Netherland bed, Don Bed. That's actually not the, not that bad of a pronunciation. Okay. Okay. Well it was just one word really. I mean, I wasn't gonna screw up the Netherlands or the other ones. Yeah. But this happened during the Corona crisis, and this was something that every week.

You recognize three individuals who are making a remarkable impact in the community or in the city. And what you guys did for them was that you were hooking them up with nice restaurants. Maybe they got like a free meal at a really Michelin star restaurant, or stay at a four or five hotel star experience.

Just kind of give them a special experience. I have never heard of anything like this. Julian, where did you come up with the idea for this and what? What was the inspiration? Good question. So we started with the two of us with Danya, Fanta fantastic person. But she and I were both very frustrated about the fact that beginning of Covid was a lot of positive, like people helping each other.

And after the first month, it was basically only negative news, although we had people working their offices off day in, day out, keep the country running. So it was extremely frustrating to see that although this, we, like all this bad stuff happened, like people in the hospitals, like with these that you couldn't go on the streets and stuff like that.

And we would've learned from the, from the people who did good stuff for each other. So what we thought is that it would be extremely important to show one person from critical sectors, so like healthcare, people working in elderly care that people will work for, to help others day in, day out, to show to them that if you do good, you are seen and we rewarded sometimes.

So that's why we contacted all the five star hotels in the Netherlands to ask if they want to offer a free night's sleep. It was completely voluntary initiative. And we captured their stories with a team of eventually 62 photographers and journalists and made a book out of it. So now if you open it, you can just see that people, like in the, in the darkest, I wouldn't say darkest of time, but like dark times, do good stuff for each other.

So it's a very, like 8 48 really, really interesting, cool stories about people who just choose to get out of bed every morning, jump out of bed, put their feet on the ground and think like, okay, I'm gonna do something good for another human being. What was the reception like from the restaurants and hotels?

Was it like 50% agreed to this or was it less than that? Well, it was a bit the same as how everything works, right? Like it's always a domino system, in my opinion. It's always, you need to get the first one or two or three on board, which is the hardest always. I also had 12 like famous Dutch people in it just to bump up the marketing value because all the money went to a, a fund, which took care of healthcare works, who were like sick for a long time.

So I wanted to get as much money as possible with the, with the book. And actually like, so we got the first like, Was one very friendly guy at what, five star? Five star hotel He got us in, booked us up with three nights, and then the most like prominent Dutch hotels. Also. It's like we stood be behind the initiative.

Like I called them a million times, right? Don't get me wrong, like I emailed them, called them. I, I think I've called every hotel than Houston, but at the end we ended up with even like more nights than we could give it away. Okay. This is really cool. Now, when you say book, you mean like a physical book?

Not, not a digital book. A physical book? No, it's a physical book. Yep. So it's. Cool stories, 48 stories, 12 stories, 12 views from like more well-known people and all kinds of empty city photos, which you now find very weird. Like Amsterdam from the sky would complete like museum squares, for example. Very busy square, like no one there, like all these very characteristic photos for, for that time period.

Or also like those photographers also donated them for free. So it became like a, yeah, I hope, just a little spark. So if not another crisis hits that we know like, okay, people will do good. We can trust each other. Yeah. And when you contacted these people to let them know that they were the recipient of like a free, you know, hotel stay or you know, Michelin star dinner, what, what were some of their responses?

Like? We, we had people crying on the phone. Cause we asked, like we, we went to the radio station, said like, Hey, we wanna like ask people to nominate a person in their environment, right. So people like, so you could like nominate someone else. They could then we had like a couple of people checking, like all the nominations and then we would determine like, okay, this is this is, this is story.

We sh we should be seen. And literally people crying because they, of course they didn't expect it whatsoever. But for example, people working with people like with a large, like a disability home or people with a disability. Like they were like struggling so much during the crisis. And then like one afternoon they got this phone call like, Hey, we, we, we, we appreciate what you do and you can stay there for chill there for the weekend and relax and recharge.

And we're like, I still get goosebumps when I tell this. It was, were a really cool project. I actually have the book. Yeah. That's so cool. I know it's a podcast, but you can see it. That is so cool, man. Really, really cool. Yeah. Oh wow. Wow. And so the public that got to decide, they would just go to a website and they would just, you know, cast the name of the person and that's how, okay.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, so it was written your book from everyone, for everyone. That's fascinating. Fascinating. After a quick break, Julian and I talk about what was the inspiration for building Anywise? I'll give you a hint. He got cancer. Hey, in case you didn't know, the Innovators Can Laugh. Newsletter comes out every Thursday.

You find out which startup founders are coming on the show, along with links to posts I found interesting on the web. My Best Dad jokes, quotes from Napoleon to Chris Rock and my thoughts and strategies on what I am doing to live a rich life with happiness as a Texas expat living in Europe. Sign up for the newsletter@innovatorscanlaugh.com.

Welcome back to my conversation with Juliet. I am fascinated with his project Netherland bed dunk, calling celebrities, hotels, restaurants, all this effort so that people who were in the front lines during the Corona crisis could feel appreciated. Now let's hear his inspiration for Anywise. Okay, well let's jump into Anywise.

So Anywise, why don't you tell us what it is and how that got started? What, what was the inspiration for that? Juliet's a good question. Anywise, I think, got started also about four years ago of the inspiration for it. After I, or, well, during my, the founding of my first two companies, so like the, so company, I also became sick.

I due to chemo. Well, due to cancer, I need to undergo chemotherapy and operation. What? Cancer, cancer. Okay. Okay. Need to do operations as soon as, like immediately next day to stop it from spreading and then chemotherapy to stop it, to detain it further, which ended up fine. Like were there any symptoms that were go happening?

Like how did you discover it or how did you know? Yeah. Different. No, not that, not that apparently. But at one point I just felt like something was off, like with a big tumor basically, which I could just see. And then, but it was such a far from your bad show, right? Like it's so, it's so far away, like people having cancer.

So you don't think that, that it's you. But I went to the doctors and then they sent me to the hospital straight away and then into surgery straight away as well. But, so that's how long? Well, I will do chronological, but so I lost my ability to read temporarily due to chemotherapy. Really? That's one of the side effects that can happen if you like.

Also, it's maybe because like did you know that if chemotherapy like drops on the floor in the hospital, the firemen need to come to like clean it up because it's such a chemical. Crazy stuff and that they actually, like if it hits the floor, like just laying on the floor, like people can't, normal people like need to stay away as far as possible.

And people in suits need to like, comment and not like the nice suits we just spoke about, but like, yeah, but so it's such a, such a crazy material, which makes you live. It's, that's also interesting. But yeah, it can happen. And yeah, it sounds, it looks like you're recovering well, but during this time you said you couldn't read and how, how was, how long was that going on where you were having trouble reading?

So imagine like I was reading if I was trying to, I love reading, right? So I couldn't do anything. So I wanted to, I was just recovering on the couch at my mother's because I also couldn't really walk because of the surgeries again. And then my, I could read like one or two sentences and I just couldn't remember anything.

So I would try again and try again, and try again and try again. And I just, Like it was, like the information was gone so you read something and immediately lose it. Also, my memory itself was very bad. So we could have this conversation, I could probably tell you three times the same thing and I would've met, wouldn't know, which was very strange as well, because you also doubt if it will ever become normal again, which that was the case.

So that took a while. I think throughout the entire period basically the reading became better, but like the memories stayed very bad. Okay. But it also like eventually led me towards other means of studying. And also let me. I remember one time when I was better and I was in London. I was going on a train and I, I, I, I wasn't already, like with all the reading was still like, not, not the easiest.

And then I started looking for a podcast on my study topics and I found a couple because I did European studies, so it was a lot of history topics, but they were all very long and, and boring and not engaging. And then I thought like, what, what would happen if we would make this very effective? So like short bite-sized on my studio curriculum.

Like I would love this, love this stuff. So that's how, anyways, eventually got born like two years ago. I started executing on that. Mm-hmm By turning, basically if you have like 12 topics you need to know for an exam, you'll create 12 mini learning podcasts. So your study topics explained via didactic way, so you actually remember what you listened to within 10 to 15 minutes.

So you can just take a walk and then learn for your exam. Yeah, no, I was on the website earlier and I heard one of the, the examples and. I was, I was also shocked to see, or surprised to see that people with dyslexia, they have a hard time learning when it comes to like books or looking at a computer screen.

And this for people with dyslexia, this is a, a, an alternative to, to really. Just learn better. And so I, I, I thought I'm a big podcast lover. My wife loves podcasts. You know, I'll see her, you know, she'll be cooking and she's got her ear pods on, or I'll go out for a walk or take the kids to school. And on the way back I'm listening to a podcast myself.

And so I'm a big fan of podcasting. And so what you're saying that why not, Hey, turn this material that you've created and make it sort of like bite-sized 10 to 15 minutes in audio form. And that way your listeners or your audience can, can learn whatever it is that you're trying to teach. And how does it work if somebody goes to the website and is considering this and using this, like how would that work, Julian?

Well, so we we're just opening up actually the option for you as an individual to just turn your reading content immediately into audio bytes. Before we were, for now, we're working with colleges, universities, high schools, but also educational publishers who use our tool like internally. So for example, the college the teacher would create would like take some learning materials, like written sources, upload them.

The first thing which our technology does is that it rewrites it into a didactic script, but also auditive. So it sounds, well that's the difference between reading and like a written text. Mostly not made to sound Well. Yeah. And then it's merely structured within the script, which takes care of repetitions, clear intros, clear outros, clear examples so that topics you listen to actually stick on the brain.

And then it's turned text to speech straight away, so can be with your own voice. Then we need your voice for 30 seconds, and then you can use it for the rest of the fragments. You can also just pick a standard voice, like very, so you can use your own voice up there. You just upload your own voice or speak into a microphone.

Yeah. Yeah. For 30 seconds. About, yeah, 30. All right. I like it. I like it. Okay. Now are there better ways to learn too? I think I was looking at some of your posts on LinkedIn and there was one about a study or something that you actually learned better when you're walking. Do you recall that? So your brain makes your neurons make more connections when you're walking.

Then that's also why you, like they all, everyone always says like, I have better conversations, but you're walking like, that's very true because you actually think better when you're walking. But it's also interesting on the dyslexia part, which you touched upon briefly, like it's 8% in the world, right?

So it's not like a few people have trouble reading. And then the strange thing is that our whole educational system is build up on how well you read. Although we've only been reading for like a couple of hundred years, like entire, like whole society. So within, within a couple of hundred years, like.

Reading has become our main force of gaining knowledge. And if you can't read that well, they also can't learn that well, they also can't perform that well. Yeah, it's completely stupid. So that's what we're trying to turn around. All right. Well this is exciting. What are you excited about in the next 12 months for anyways?

Boom. So we're starting off like large collaborations with large educational publishers. So this is, I think, one of the ways for us to really like get to the market very quickly because they already serve millions of people. And they can just add it next to their books or to their online environment. So this way we're on a, on a goal to help 100 million people learn better in 2030.

And by this way, we can really like gain scale fast for us. It's just like we wanna see faces who are now struggling behind the computers in the evening or like in the afternoon, like being bored or like, don't the, like stressed, like we wanna switch them towards people sitting outside in the sun. And for us, the next, next 12 months is to find the, the fastest channel partners to achieve that.

Okay. And since, since launching anywise, what is one are one of the one or two top obstacles that you've had to overcome? Oof. Couple of them. So we switched business models. So we were first were b2c, so, or maybe consumer to consumer. So we worked, we were marketplace, so a senior student we created and sell it to a junior year.

Did that four year was a very challenging marketing wise, and so we switched that towards b2b. So that pivot was difficult, but we also needed to raise a new round within the pivot, which is also always not like a big recommendation to pivot while fundraising or the other way around. And well, at the beginning I had, I had a co-founder who quit like one year ago, about one year ago with like, when we were fundraising our first round.

So it was al off. Like it has, it hasn't been, always been very easy, but it's, it's going very well right now. Okay. All right. All right. Well now it's the rapid fire section of the podcast here. So just gimme the first answer that comes to your head. Ready? Yep. Okay. Number one strategy to prioritize your time.

Julian. Horrible things first. And then work them towards like the most horrible, towards the best, the most. You like a favorite TV show that you can watch again and again? Game of Thrones easily. And the most interesting thing you did in the last 26 days. Mm. I walked in a part of Sania Compostela. Pil.

Part of where? Sania Compost. It's pilgrim route in the North Spain. All right. All right. An unusual food or drink you consume. Hmm. Unusual food or drink? I do all, well, I, I started to drink more kombucha. It's very stereotypical, but it's also work. It, it's very healthy as well. But in general, I, I eat very, very healthy, I would say it's not that unusual.

It's just a lot of vitamins. Okay. All right. And last question for you. Instead of stock options and bonuses for new employees, you now give your new hires blank oh three. Did there what they wanna do themselves? It's most important. If you like something, you're good at it and you're growing it. Or 10 connections to people they would love to get to know, to learn from, and then make those connections happen.

That is a good answer. That's such a good answer. Oh my God. Being able to connect them with people that can uplift their lives. I've never heard of such an answer like that. That's a really good one, Julianne. I also just thought about it for the first time. Thanks. Okay, Jillian, thank you so much for being on Innovator's Gala.

Thank you very much. Wonderful, wonderful time. Thanks. Yeah. For everybody listening, we'll be we'll be back next next week with another Dutch entrepreneur. Until then, this is Eric signing off. Thank you. I had a great time chatting with Julian. I love his attitude. It's full of drive determination, but I also like how he puts others first.

Definitely a rare jam, and if you wanna learn more about him, you can go to any wise.audio links to all of this are in the show notes. And thank you again, Julian, for being on the show. If you like this episode, send me a note on LinkedIn and subscribe on Apple or Spotify and tell others about it. Cheers