New York, Brooklyn, and an appointment with Monet.

Techwolf, Jolly, LPs, founders, 2026 planning and our community.

I spent a few days in New York, and I stayed in Brooklyn. I arrived in time to spend the weekend, and I was lucky enough to go to the Brooklyn museum. The Monet in Venice exhibition was breathtaking. There are probably a bunch of strained founder / VC metaphors I could do about Monet, innovation, rejection, success, 996 and his patron, but I won’t.

If you are in the NYC area, get over to the Brooklyn Museum and marvel at his genius. Monet spent some time in Venice. At first he was afraid to paint it, because he thought it too beautiful, but I’m very glad he did. The curators snuck in a couple of waterlilies and the London houses of parliament painting for good measure, and they did a truly brilliant job. I booked online and went early, so I had the place almost to myself.

Monet in Venice Exhibition

I stayed at ACE hotel in Brooklyn, which is indeed ace. I also popped into The Center for Non-Fiction and Finer Sounds. Bookshops and Recordshops are especially happy places for me.

My main reason for being in town was the Techwolf strategy workshop day. Andreas, Mikaël and Jeroen have put together strong board, with Diane Gherson, former CHRO of IBM, Fred Destin founder of Stride, and Dave Kellogg, the marketing GOAT in town for the workshop. I learn a lot from Diane, Dave and Fred.

Techwolf is now hitting its stride in North America. It is amazing to see how this company has grown. Techwolf is now shaping a category, and it is fascinating to be a small part of that journey. The sales machine is not just humming it is growling.

I’m particularly impressed with two developments on the product side, the workforce intelligence product, and their responsible AI open source commitments. In Yas, Techwolf has a world class CPO.

Epic, as Andreas would say. And Techwolf is hiring.

Then Jason, Audrey and I spent two days planning out 2026. Having Audrey on board is great for Jason and me. She challenges our assumptions, and we are a better firm for it.

Here we are at Wall Street, after an excellent taco no 1 lunch around the corner.

We also spent some time getting an update from Dean Zimberg and Wil Hagen at Jolly. Great to see the progress they are making, moving up into enterprise. If you are challenged to motivate frontline workers then you really need to have a look at what Jolly is up to. I’m intrigued by incentive engineering. I can imagine all sorts of interesting integrations with the leading HR and T&A vendors too. One to watch. They are also hiring. I do need to introduce Dean to Steve Hunt.

We got a bunch of founders and a few of our LPs (Aliénor, Christoph and François-Xavier) together for dinner. Our LPs are a secret weapon. Whether it is M&A advice, in-depth knowledge of the recruitment industry, intros into corporates, founder to founder advice, product strategy or more, our LPs deliver. We are really lucky to have them. Thanks to the founders from Narrative, Getro, Techwolf, Jolly and Kombo for joining us. When founders and LPs talk with each other, magic happens.

I had a couple of songs queued for this post, but I happened to play an XX song in our team meeting by mistake. Audrey knew all the words, so that’s a pretty good reason. I can’t remember which song it was, but here is VCR.

I have a pretty awesome job.