Jouri Schoemaker

Jouri gives entrepreneurs a boost. During his lectures, he shares his philosophy: pitch your idea as early as possible so that you can steer the concept in the right direction together with experts. He inspires the audience and shows them that one concept can make all the difference. Jouri is available as a speaker at Het Sprekershuys. Sessions With an honest and transparent storytelling style, Jouri shares the huge ups and downs he has experienced with Pieter Pot. Within two years, he grew from a startup in a spare room to a scale-up with 12 million in investments. Within a year, he went from a big international promise to bankruptcy, only to make a comeback within two months. Jouri’s story is one of pioneering, resilience, and perseverance, where he reveals the power of an incredibly strong community and shows how he contributes to system change. Dutch Pitching Champion As co-founder of Shakeon (a successful international high-tech startup), founder of Groens Paradijs (a groundbreaking concept for Dutch care homes), and TEDx speaker, Jouri knows a thing or two about delivering a strong pitch. In April 2016, he was even crowned Dutch Pitching Champion, and since then, he has become a sought-after speaker and pitch trainer for entrepreneurs, account managers, journalists, students, marketers, and recruiters. Pitching is not a sales pitch: it’s not a monologue but the start of a dialogue. Pieter Pot Jouri also founded his own company: Pieter Pot. Driven by the desire to make a difference in the world, Jouri says he fell in love with the plastic issue. As a former TU Delft student, he wanted nothing more than to contribute to finding a solution to this problem. With Pieter Pot, he achieved lower CO₂ emissions and less dependence on resources such as oil. Pieter Pot is a zero-waste grocery delivery service that delivers your groceries in glass jars or containers. These are refilled once they’re empty, and deliveries are made by cargo bike. Fully sustainable! What started in the Rotterdam region has rapidly grown into a nationwide delivery service. However, the growth was so explosive that Jouri stepped down from his role as CEO and sold his shares. After a financially challenging period for Pieter Pot, he became CEO again thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. Despite the challenge, Jouri looks optimistically toward the company’s future and, by growing steadily, hopes for success for Pieter Pot. He shares his own experience to encourage people to keep going, especially when things seem impossible.