Why we're here. and where we're going.

A scaling company faces hundreds of challenges, and we'd be lying if we said we could solve them all. We focus on two, because they're the two where community makes the difference.

The first is connections — social capital. The right introduction opens a door that would otherwise stay shut for years: a warm intro to an investor, a recommendation for a key hire, a path to your first enterprise customer. Building that network takes time most founders don't have, so we curate it for you — access to decision-makers, experienced founders, and domain experts, without the years of legwork.

The second is decisions — quality and speed. Expand to Germany or the UK first? How do you structure this round? When do you hire a CFO? These calls carry enormous consequences, and most of the time you make them with less information than you'd like. Our peer circles and expert network give you battle-tested perspective — not theory from people who've never built anything, but the real account of someone who made the same decision and can tell you what worked and what didn't.

For years the ecosystem has obsessed over stages — pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B. It's convenient shorthand, and it misses the point. What matters isn't your rung on a funding ladder; it's ambition, and the ability to deliver.

Those lines are blurring anyway. Capital cycles, product velocity, and talent markets no longer map cleanly to yesterday's labels. Size does change the texture of the work — what's urgent at €1M ARR isn't what's urgent at €50M — so we match you with peers operating at a similar level, where the advice fits the reality you're in. We serve ambitious tech companies right across the scaling journey, from founders chasing product-market fit to teams preparing for the public markets. The stage changes; the need for peer connection doesn't.

What we look for is simple: technology at the core, active founder involvement in strategy, a base in the Netherlands with international ambition, and proof of velocity — revenue growth, committed investors, or unmistakable traction. No arbitrary revenue cutoffs. We assess companies one at a time and weight momentum over labels. If you're moving fast and building something real, you belong here.

Everyone gets the same platform and the same events. The difference is the circle you join — peers facing similar decisions, at a similar speed and scale. That curated matching is what turns an introduction into a relationship that actually moves your business.

Everything we build rests on one insight: deep relationships create outsized value. So we keep our offering to a few things and try to do them well.

Connect is the baseline — your way into the community. Curated events, the peer directory, the platform, and the wider network building in the Netherlands. Quarterly gatherings, warm intros to our expert network, and the ability to find and be found by other members. It's for founders and leaders who want to start building new relationships.

Circles is the premium room. Eight people with common ground — similar roles, stages, and challenges — meeting quarter after quarter to work through real problems. Not lectures, not panels: peer advisory. You bring your challenges in advance, you tackle them together, and trust grows because you've been candid about the hard stuff. One Circle might be Chief Product Officers wrestling with product-market fit; another, founders navigating a raise, or CTOs scaling their engineering teams. What they share is depth — with the same people, session after session.

Cities turns domestic connections global. Small, curated groups travel to San Francisco, London, or Berlin to tap foreign networks, meet international investors, and study how other ecosystems work. Shared intensity abroad builds bonds that last.

And Rise is our most intensive programme, reserved for companies backed by the Techleap Fund — small batches of six to nine, twice a year, with dedicated programme management. Circles scales what we learned building Rise; Rise stays the deep dive for portfolio teams.

I want to be plain about the money, because a community that hides its model doesn't deserve your trust.

We charge for access — members pay for seats that unlock the events, the platform, and the community. More people with meaningful access means more value, and yes, more revenue. We price per seat, not per company: a founder owns the account and assigns seats across the leadership team, so you pay for the people who actually use it, and you add seats as the team grows.

We tier by stage. Early-stage companies pay less per seat than growth-stage companies — not to extract maximum value, but to keep teams at different stages in the same room. Most start on Connect and move to Circles when they want deeper relationships and structured problem-solving.

The pricing itself is a markup, full stop. No complex models, no hidden margins. If our costs fall, your price falls. The markup covers overhead and keeps the lights on; the rest goes back into delivering value.

Beyond memberships, we work with Founding Members like Adyen and Picnic, and Strategic Partners like Deloitte and Loyens & Loeff. Partners bring real, practiced expertise in the areas scaleups need — legal, consulting, accounting, infrastructure — under one rule: primary business, real expertise, no marketing dressed up as content. We aim for a 50/50 split between member and partner revenue, on purpose: it keeps the community accessible, and it keeps partners with genuine skin in the game.

None of this works if people show up to consume. Techleap isn't a service — it's a community you help build, which means showing up, contributing, and being willing to help others.

In Circles and Rise, that's literal: you submit your challenges before each session so the agenda reflects real problems, you come prepared, and you help others through their challenges, not only your own. The topics come from members, not from us — we provide the format and the facilitation, you provide the substance.

The same goes for the network. The best introductions come from members introducing each other; when you meet someone great at an event, connect them to someone else who should know them. The network effect only works when people actively work it.

Our Founding Members take on more. They join Government Affairs Circles where they help shape our policy agenda, take part in public-affairs and media work, and help position the ecosystem on the national stage. It's genuinely two-way: we bring insight, access, and coordination; they bring expertise and time.

The Netherlands is a great place to start and a small place to stay. Every ambitious company here eventually goes international, and most ecosystems fail at exactly that border — strong local networks, and then you're on your own.

We mean to be the gateway. Our Cities programme takes small, curated groups to San Francisco, London, Berlin, and beyond — not tourism, but relationships, the kind that take years otherwise. You meet investors who write checks, operators who've scaled there, and founders who can tell you what it takes and what to avoid. A warm introduction beats months of cold outreach.

It runs both ways. We bring international speakers and experts to our events here, so you get access to global thinking without leaving the country, and over time the founders we take abroad invite those contacts back to Amsterdam. The relationships compound.

Our north star is simple: every member should take at least one international trip during their membership. We want to turn domestically networked companies into globally connected scaleups. This isn't an add-on — it's central. The ecosystem only reaches its potential when its best companies compete globally, and our job is to make sure they have the connections to do it.

All of it rests on a single bet: that meaningful relationships drive scaling success more reliably than any one programme, resource, or piece of advice.

It isn't the obvious bet. The startup world loves accelerators, masterclasses, playbooks — there's always someone selling a framework that promises success if you just follow the steps. We think the best answers already exist, in the heads of founders who solved the same problem six months ago, and that trust built through repeated, candid conversation creates more value than any curriculum. Community beats content.

So our job is simple, even if it isn't easy: connect the best minds building in the Netherlands, create the conditions for them to help each other, and then get out of the way.

The next few years will test the bet. Will community-first scaling support deliver the impact this ecosystem deserves? We intend to find out — and we're glad you're in the room while we do.