When Henk van de Goor graduated from the School of Journalism in 1992, he aspired to a career as a financial reporter. Until he discovered the then just emerging Internet world. He has now been a senior project manager at Comrads for many years, forming the link between clients and technology. In this blog Henk explains what this career change has brought him and what makes Comrads so unique.

Financial crisis

In 1992 I graduated from the School of Journalism. After my internship at the Financial Telegraph, I was totally looking forward to working there as a financial reporter. However, fate had other plans. It was the time of the financial crisis - one of many - and the Telegraph had to reorganize. The vacancy I had my eye on fell through and I found a temporary job as a desk-researcher with Marcel Metze, an author specializing in the financial world. After a year, I started working as a corporate journalist at Kema.

An unexpected twist

In 1995, something happened that took my career in a completely different direction. The Dutch Journalism Association organized a meeting about the Internet, which was just emerging at the time. Volkskrant tech columnist and publisher Jan Jacobs gave a visionary speech there about how the Internet would change journalism. He had started one of the first companies in the Internet business: Riverland Networks. I found it so inspiring that I approached him after the talk to ask if he might have a job for someone like me. Two weeks later, I was working in his company. I was writing about IT-related topics for their business channel. It was a great time, every day there were new developments in the Internet field. Riverland Networks also made websites. I was approached by my old employer, Kema, who wanted a website built and I was allowed to supervise the project. That's how I got into project management.

Images sent by mail

In 2000, Riverland became part of Lost Boys Business Solutions. Not much later, the Internet bubble burst and I ended up at Van Ginneken and Mostaard (VGM). That company had been a household name in print land for thirty years, but it now also had a digital branch, which had developed the first version of a digital asset management system. Don't imagine too much, these were really the early days of Image bank. Downloading images? There was no such thing. You could order images, which were then burned to CD and sent by mail. Bandwidth was still very limited and storage was prohibitive.

Project manager at Comrads

At VGM, I met Sebastiaan de Ruiter, today Managing Director of Comrads. When - due to the rise of the Internet - print companies started to fall over, VGM also fell victim. Sebastiaan started working as Manager of Business Development at what was then Comrads, a company focused on marketing software. He invited me for a meeting with him and the team in Purmerend, and I felt right at home. I became project manager at Comrads and, together with Sebastiaan, set up a whole project structure. At a certain point, Sebastiaan and his business partner Erwin Klinkenberg felt they could better position themselves independently as developers of marketing software. Thus, Erwin and he became owners of Comrads 2.0 at the end of 2011. I believed in the idea and joined them.

Project management, the link between customer and technology

As project manager, I fulfill the role of liaison between the customer and our technical team. In an interview-like manner, I proceed to find out exactly what the customer wants. By asking question after question, I discover the customer's needs and wishes. Here I can still put my interviewing skills to good use. What I love about my role as project manager is that every client and every project is unique. It is my job to find out what the customer wants - which is how my interview skills still come in handy - and to translate this into concrete solutions. If you put ten customers side by side, eighty percent of the problems are the same, but that twenty percent makes the solution and interpretation customer-specific. That is the beauty of our solution; it is a standard solution with room for configurations.

Family business

Comrads almost feels like a family business to me. The close-knit team of regular players and the good atmosphere make it a nice working environment. Of course, the corona pandemic meant that we couldn't see each other physically as often, but we always kept in touch and continued to work on great projects all the while. What the future holds for me? I have no idea. I'm not much of a planner, as my career path proves. From journalism, I rolled into something completely different. And I'm certainly not worse off for that.

Curious?

Want to learn more about the benefits of Digital Asset Management? Then download our DAM guide. Immediately discover how Comrads can help your brand? Then request a no-obligation demo right away. We like to think along with you. Now and in the future.