Can I book a salmon sperm treatment for two?

A quick note before I start: I am writing this in a personal capacity, separate from Bonsai. This is Yeslin, and this is how I see things. I am speaking for myself, not on behalf of Mees, our team or the company.

I am not writing this because I think I am special, or because I think what we do at Bonsai is so extraordinary. Mostly, I notice how easily I keep going without ever looking back. So I am trying to make a deliberate moment for that. To write down what happened, how it affected me and who was there for us. This is my way of taking that moment.

I am writing this at almost 9 p.m. at the office. Mees is in the other room, Thom is next to me. Bonsai is now a seven-figure business, we work with fifteen people and build business-critical systems for organisations handling billions. In the Netherlands and Germany, with Ireland and Hong Kong now in the mix too. We are 25.

But to explain what this means to me, I need to go back to an 84-euro bill. Registering with the Chamber of Commerce.

And to a conversation at Served, on Stadhuisplein in Rotterdam.

Five hundred euros

Mees and I sat opposite each other. We had turned down our job offers and needed to decide whether to get an office from 1 September 2024. In the previous six months, we had brought in less than ten thousand euros in revenue.

The office cost five hundred euros a month. Eighteen square metres in a building rented out under a temporary property guardianship arrangement.

Meanwhile, friends were buying houses. They had jobs, company cars, girlfriends. Their lives were moving in a direction you could point to. Every euro we brought in went straight back into the business. My savings at 23 had never been particularly impressive, and they kept getting smaller.

We discussed whether we would be better off paying ourselves 250 euros each from our partnership. At least that would cover some personal expenses. That was a real decision at the time: a place to build, or a little financial breathing room for ourselves.

We looked at each other in silence for two minutes.

“No, man. That would be stupid.”

We wanted to go all in. Change something, build something our way. And we both knew we wanted to spend those five hundred euros on a place where we could do that.

On 2 September 2024, I was sitting in our own office in my swimming shorts. It was ridiculously hot.

Man, I could cry thinking about it.

Eighteen square metres. A temporary office. And I sat there feeling as though I had achieved everything I had ever wanted. I can still feel that pride. We had a place of our own, somewhere we could go every day to build Bonsai.

Those five hundred euros a month were the best money we ever spent. Whatever happens next, nobody can take that moment away from us.

Without our parents, this would never have happened

When I say we built Bonsai without outside capital, there is something I need to add. Without our parents, it would never have happened.

Especially at the beginning, they gave us so much. A roof over our heads. Food. And, above all, emotional support. We had people looking after us while we put everything we had into something that was far from guaranteed to work.

That is priceless. And it belongs in this story just as much as the hours we put in ourselves.

We could reinvest our cash flow every month because other parts of our lives were being supported. That does not diminish our effort, but it makes their contribution incredibly important. I never want to talk about our journey in a way that suggests Mees and I did all of this alone.

No investor showed up with a bag of money. There were parents who made sure we could eat, sleep and keep going. I do not know how you ever thank someone enough for that.

The alarm went off at 4:45 a.m.

The year before that first office, my days were already pretty tightly scheduled.

The alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. I was in the gym at 5, done by 5:45 and on the bus to Rotterdam at 6:18. From 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., I worked at Allianz on the Coolsingel. Around 4 p.m., I was home and back to working on the business.

I was also doing my second master’s degree, in corporate law. So when I really had to, I studied. But every hour spent studying was an hour I could not spend on Bonsai. And at the time, that felt like losing.

At Allianz, I worked under my jefe at the time, Marck Verhage. He always arrived early too, and stayed late. A proper boss. Everyone I spoke to respected him and looked up to him. So did I. I learned a lot from him, got a lot of opportunities through him and, above all, felt supported.

Once, at the market by Blaak, he said to me: “Yeslin, fuck those jobs. Fuck the money. Go do it. You can always get a job.”

Something like that stays with you. Especially when it comes from someone you look up to, while you are still wrestling with the decision yourself.

Thank you, Marck. I will always be grateful.

Meanwhile, Mees and I were working on Bonsai everywhere. While studying, around our jobs, even in hospital when Mees was there with a broken jaw. Calling, calling. Asking, asking. Learning, learning. We barely cared what time it was or where we were. We wanted to understand how things worked, how they could be better and what we had to do to move forward.

We felt like we wanted it more than anyone else. We still do.

Choosing each other

What I may value most of all is that Mees chose me. And I chose him.

When we sat opposite each other at Served, there was no seven-figure business. There was no team of fifteen and no big names to show off. We mostly had a plan, a huge amount of drive and each other. That was enough for us to decide: you are the person I want to do this with.

That is a big deal to me. You tie a huge part of your life to someone when you do not even know what lies ahead for you personally. You make decisions together that affect your money, your time, your future and the people around you.

Mees knows what these years have taken. I do not need to explain why that first office meant so much to me. He was there. We have both given things up, both given it everything and watched Bonsai slowly become something bigger than the two of us.

I am so glad he wanted to do this with me. And that I get to do it with him. Between all the hard work, you probably do not say that enough. So here it is, Mees: thank you for choosing me. I am proud that we are here together.

Running a business gets into everything

What I could not grasp beforehand was just how all-encompassing running a business is.

You start with something you want to make and an idea of how to sell it. Then you find yourself responsible for the money, the agreements, the planning, the quality and everything that does not go as expected. Work has to come in, it has to be done well and the money actually has to arrive. Meanwhile, you already need to be thinking about what comes next.

When people join, that responsibility grows. They have their own ambitions, expectations and limits. A client is counting on you. Your team is counting on you. And you still have a mind that is supposed to stop working at some point.

Mine barely ever stopped.

I skipped social things. Parties, meetups, pretty much anything that cost money or distracted me from the business. Mees did the same. We wanted every euro and every hour available for Bonsai.

While everyone else moved forward, it sometimes felt like we only had less. Less savings, less free time, less presence in the lives of the people around us. So much was happening, but a lot of it was not yet something you could show. Mostly, you could talk about what you were working on and where you thought it might go.

I chose that myself. Wholeheartedly. At the same time, you feel the consequences of a choice even when you fully believe in it. You can only spend an evening once. If you are at the office, you are absent somewhere else. And the people there do not have to understand that forever.

That might be the hardest thing to explain: how something can give you so much joy, pride and meaning while also asking so much of you.

And suddenly, there is a company

We now work with fifteen people. We have huge clients, and Bonsai really has become a seven-figure business. No bluff.

People sometimes ask whether I expected this.

No, of course not. I had wanted to start a business since I was thirteen. I had ideas about what I wanted to build and how big it could become. But expecting to be here at 25 is something else.

I did hope for it. And I hate the word “hope”, because to me it can sound so powerless. As though you are sitting around waiting for something to come your way. Still, that is the honest answer. I hoped this was possible. And I still hope for more, while we work towards it every day.

Above all, I consider it a fucking honour that organisations trust us to build business-critical systems within two years of doing this full-time.

Up close, you get used to it. You are busy with the work, with what needs to improve, with the next step. Then someone tells you how unusual it actually is, and you have to zoom out for a moment.

Being given that responsibility is special. There are people on the other side who gave us a chance. Who decided to take that step with us. I want to keep that awareness, even as the numbers get bigger and the work starts to feel more normal.

From our first client and our first euro to my first salary and that first office: I feel grateful.

It is an honour that people gave us a chance. That we get to do this work. That fifteen people push me forward every day, teach me things and make things better. That I get to spend my life creating progress in this way.

Right now, nothing comes above that for me.

How far can you keep going?

Mees and I want to push boundaries every day. In results for clients, in revenue, in what we can build and in what we ask of ourselves and our people. Our way has always been to go a hundred million per cent all in. We have crossed limits doing that, to the point where it became unhealthy.

It has brought us a lot. It has also cost us something.

The wrinkles are coming. The hair is falling out. The bags under our eyes are getting bigger. Relationships increasingly fail to work out. Things you once naturally had time and attention for get pushed further into the background.

I can joke about it and suggest a salmon sperm treatment for two, but of course I can also see what I am writing.

Not everyone appreciates how we work. When it comes to outside opinions, I often think: I do not give a shit. I do not need everyone to confirm that this is a good life. But our way of living does affect the people we work with and the people around us. I cannot give them that same answer.

Especially because the boundary keeps moving. When something works, I want to go further. When a goal is reached, I can already see what else is possible. It becomes hard to recognise when I am challenging myself and when I am exhausting myself.

I do not have a neat answer. It would hardly be believable if I pretended I now knew exactly how to balance ambition, health, friendships and relationships.

After all, I am writing this at almost nine in the evening at the office.

But I do want to be honest about that question. How do you stop yourself from being worn down by something you love doing so much? How do you keep appreciating what you have built when your mind is constantly on what still needs to happen?

Sometimes it helps to think back to those five hundred euros. To Mees sitting opposite me at Served. To my swimming shorts in that boiling-hot office. How little it took back then to make me feel so incredibly proud.

I do not want to lose that feeling along the way.

Mees is in the other room

For probably 95 per cent of people, all of this sounds like a pretty terrible deal. Working so much, giving up so much and slowly losing your hair in the process.

Maybe I will see it differently in a few years. I might. All I know is how it feels now, and I feel it in every cell of my body: this is it.

Right now, Bonsai is the most beautiful, exciting and precious thing I have. I am proud of what we have built, of the people building it and of Mees, with whom I made that five-hundred-euros-a-month decision when we could barely pay ourselves anything.

And I am grateful to everyone who made it possible for us to make that choice in the first place.

Meanwhile, Mees is in the other room and Thom is next to me. We have another idea in our heads. We want to get on with it. That is pretty much how it has been for years.

Because however proud I am of what we have built, we are only just getting started. There is still so much to build, learn and change. Mees and I are nowhere near getting everything out of ourselves or Bonsai. It is simply time to go even harder.

When are we booking that salmon sperm treatment for two? God only knows. Whether it will ever happen, I do not know either.

“Dying with my boots on” still sometimes sounds more appealing to me than going home on time. That probably says enough about how much I love this. And about why I need to look after myself a little.

Because I want to be here for a very long time.