Knowledge With over 25 years of experience in online technology, we accumulated our lessons learned, insights and inspiration into a extensive knowledge base and practical management book. What we know about iT. CTO.online In today's fast-paced online industry, technology leadership is foundational. In constant change and evolution, the online market demands relentless (re)innovation in product and platform development in flawless operations. ​ In this intense and exciting game, a new breed of leadership is arising. A next generation of CTOs who are intrinsically driven by agile, transformative, and servant leadership principles to unleash the full potential of their people in creating and operating online products. ​ Our online CTO knowledge portal is an accumulation of more than 25 years of first-hand experience and proven strategies that guided me to navigate my own journey in this turbulent space. It aims to guide, inspire, and empower aspiring and seasoned CTOs on their lifetime journey. You'll learn that the path to CTO greatness is all about the human factor in creating and operating your digital products. As you progress, you will be challenged by actionable takeaways and self-reflection questions to get you going. ​ As a fellow CTO for many years, I for sure made my fair share of misjudgments and errors. I firmly believe that making those same mistakes has been instrumental in becoming the person and advisor I aspire to be. This book is my testament to all the invaluable lessons I have learned from my personal experiences. I hope it serves you as an inspirational guide, offering practicalities and insights to navigate the intricate path of technology leadership in confidence, personal growth and success, and most of a lot of excitement on your way. Order Book The only source of knowledge is experience. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

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Publications Sharing our secrets. Mar 21 The Future of Commerce is Composable All Publications Strategy Organization Tooling Search Log in / Sign up Andre Buren Mar 21 3 min Strategy The Future of Commerce is Composable Explaining why a composable MACH technology architecture for online platforms is the key to the future of modern digital commerce. 91 views 0 comments 1 like. Post not marked as liked 1 All Publications (1) 1 post Strategy (1) 1 post Organization (0) 0 posts Tooling (0) 0 posts API first Cloud native Composable Digital Commerce Headless Commerce MACH Microservices

RE:innovation Online companies are enabled, centered, and bound by their technology foundation. Commercial success is heavenly dependent on the extent technology can keep up with the continuous advancing product and market dynamics. Breaking the Start to Scale-up Dilemma. From START-UP excitement ... Let's face IT. The majority of the established online companies are dealing with the same technology challenges and dilemmas. ​ They operate an increasingly complex platform driven by increasing urgencies for developing and releasing customer-facing features to grow the user base of their IT platform. For the right entrepreneurial reasons, this has become their primary IT focus. Keeping up with the essential business development from start-up, break-even to the glorious scale-up phase. It all paid off well. ​ The business seems to be ready to fly off to new heights. New investors and stakeholders are lining up to participate in this next-level journey. New management and talent are attracted to join the ride with many new product ideas to add to the booming IT roadmap. New ambitions are set to reach market dominance with winner-takes-it-all bravery. Everybody seems to be excited.... ... to SCALE-UP frustrations Behind the scenes, the only department that is less excited is Technology. For the last years, they have been under increasing pressure and frustrations to deliver as they did so excitedly during the start-up phase. The lead technical developer of the early days, who has been promoted to CTO, is increasingly under scrutiny. The rapidly growing IT teams spend more and more time on maintaining the complex inflexible technology rather than delivering crucial new product features on time. Increasing backlogs reveal that the whole machinery has become less agile, less cost-effective, and surely less exciting to work on. Enter the infamous START to SCALE-UP dilemma. The technology platform that was sufficient to kick off your business initially has become increasingly problematic to serve the next-level business objectives. Problems that drill down to the core fundamentals of the underlying IT platform. Our Approach What needs to happen is to bring back the same speed, agility, cost-effectiveness, and excitement as in the start-up days. ​ This can only be done by reshaping the ever-growing platform into new smaller pieces to allow for new startup alike dynamics. Facing the start-to-scale-up dilemma essentially implies growing bigger by organizing smaller. As it sounds simple, it is a complex transformation as re-engineering the core platform may never compromise the running money-making platform in uptime and integrity. ​ The running operations of the platform need to be protected and risk-controlled at all times and costs. This causes many dilemmas between operational stability and the strategic need-for-speed to rebuild and modernize the platform to meet new business demands. ​ Breaking through the start-to-scale-up dilemma requires a different kind of technology leadership. One that cuts through all the complexities and interdependencies from business strategy to operational running technologies. Our Solution Our integral solution challenges and addresses the technology architecture, organization, processes, and culture altogether. Enabling new output-driven productivities in co-development over multiple locations and cloud-driven scalabilities in running operations. ​ Nowadays, enabling co-development on a one-central platform is crucial to compete on an international e-commerce stage. Our approach addresses the core of the technology center from architecture to organizational breakdown to new ways of working through distributed teams. ​ Decoupling and scaling up the initial start-up technology landscape into autonomous services and teams will provide essential autonomy and ownership to regain start-up speed in development, agility, and cost-effectiveness. ​ It will set the pathway for new scale-up levels where lead-time to market of new development and resilient operations can thrive again, serviced by worldwide engineering talent regardless of location or coding technologies It is time to RE:innovate. Breaking through the start to scale-up dilemma requires a new kind of technology leadership. Book Free Discovery Session

Our People We advise, lead and supervise online companies toward next levels in technology strategy, innovation, product, software development, architecture, operations, security, and governance. Who is doing iT. Andre Buren (1971) is an executive advisor, supervisor, and interim CTO for innovative and modern technology leadership. ​ He has more than 25 years of broad experience in managing technology from vision and strategy, to planning, management, product and software development to running operations, security, audit, and corporate governance. ​ Andre is a people servant and pragmatic results-driven leader with high energy and enthusiasm. He is an inspired decision-maker, leading complex organizational structures by building high-performing teams in a winning and enjoying culture. ​ He believes enjoyment is a critical element in a productive and thriving culture. In his approach, there is a constant drive towards motivating people, who are at the core of any successful business. As an executive coach, Andre helps new generation leaders grow into senior executive roles, having his clients benefit from his own experience and lessons learned as a technology leader. He likes to challenge and counsel, with the ultimate goal of increasing the (business) impact of technology on organizational strategy, people, and society. Andre’s coaching style is best described as candid, honest, sometimes direct, and confronting while attentively listening and connecting. ​ His style in coaching is to create an environment where open and challenging conversations can convert into committed actions. "We will explore new ways how to turn challenges into pragmatic and effective next steps to inspire, transform and deliver impact for your business, your technology domain, and your people going forward." ​ "I believe in our ability to accomplish anything we are passionate about. Finding the ‘why’ within yourself, and in your organization, will bring out the best to serve your business. As a coach, I focus on identifying your purpose, energy, and what drives you." ​ "I am keen to align the corporate vision in relation to your personal purpose and values to unleash higher performance and satisfaction." Today’s supervisory board of online companies has to contend with a host of new dynamics, challenges and risks. Maintaining competitive advantage in today’s fast-moving online markets is one of them as it requires governance with a deeper focus on technology. In its accountability for the organization’s performance and sustainability, supervisory boards face increasing responsibility in validating the right technology foundation for the company to be successful. ​“Technology is often underrepresented on the supervisory board level. This is even the case for online businesses primarily built upon technology. Supervisory is still primarily scoped around (regulatory) audit and compliance." "The real risks for online companies to stay ahead in their increasingly changing technology landscape are much more complex and range from the right technology strategic roadmap to the operational resilience of its infrastructure.” Successful leadership and companies thrive on authentic and intrinsic motivated people. In rapidly changing competitive environments, digitalization drives the need for new business models, customer requirements and boardroom dynamics. Do not judge me on my successes, judge me on how many times I fell down and got back up again.

Experience In our service providing, we are inspired by more than 25+ years of broad agnostic working and educational experience in online technology leadership, advisory, and supervision. How we did iT. Technology Supervisory Supervisory board member at the Dutch national lottery organization. In its mission, the Dutch lottery organization promotes health and social impact through the financial support of major sports and social organizations. Operating labels include the Staatsloterij, Lotto, Eurojackpot, Miljoenenspel, Lucky Day, Krasloten, and Toto. Part of the audit committee overseeing the technology space and financial reporting, audit, and regulatory compliance. Certified International Director (IDP) - INSEAD . The International Directors Program (IDP) is strategically placed to facilitate directors in shaping their skills and enabling more effective corporate governance in our ever-evolving world. The program delves into a wide range of topics, such as fair process leadership, investment strategy, digital innovation and transformation, social responsibility, cross-cultural awareness, boardroom dynamics, biases, and counterfactuals. Technology Leadership CTO for Takeaway.com - the leading platform for food ordering and delivery services. Responsible for scaling up technology in all its next-levels like enabling hyper business growth, convergence and integration to a one-platform strategy, platform (re)innovation, organizing for international (co)development, stabilizing and scaling running operations, transforming to new tech-firm values and culture, establishing topline security and fintech compliance and governance. CTO for Expereo.com - responsible for its renewed product strategy, B2B ecommerce platform technology, and global internet operations. Offering true Internet as a service (GIaas) as a disruptive alternative for traditional private enterprise networking. Development of a worldwide internet overlay network infrastructure and a unique innovative e-commerce B2B platform to manage a global base of local internet providers, expanding over 185 countries. CTO for Emesa.nl - enabling the rapid technology growth from startup to unicorn status. Responsible for the IT strategy, product roadmap, software development, and operations of leading auction and deal websites and apps, like vakantieveilingen.nl, inpakkenenwegwezen.nl, actievandedag.nl, and aladoo.com. (Re)building a comprehensive IT platform at scale to enable rapid expansion over multiple countries in high-traffic B2C dynamics. Master of Business Administration (MBA) - Purdue University's Krannert School of Management provides a top-tier international MBA program that aims to develop strategic leaders capable of tackling global challenges. The program offers hands-on learning opportunities to both undergraduate and graduate students, allowing them to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world situations. This prepares students for the constantly evolving business world and equips them to succeed in their future careers. Technology Advisory KPMG | Senior/Manager IT Audit, Advisory & Consulting . Gaining broad knowledge and experience in the field of technology strategy, security, governance, infrastructure, and system implementations at a wide range of (enterprise) companies. Responsible for leading assignments, and managing client relations while growing the professional practice in business development. Special focus and expertise in transformative corporate information security and governance. Amsterdam University | Certified IT Auditor (RE). A three-year postgraduate program, sponsored by KPMG; covering a broad range of information risk and technology audit and assurance domains. Special focus on corporate governance and security to help companies transition pragmatically to the new online economy (>1998). The program includes the first year of foundation in financial audit and internal control organization. Certification is subjected to work record and continuous learning. Tilburg University | Information Science & Business Economics (Drs) . Master programs at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Gaining extensive knowledge and analytical skills in business economics, computer science, technology architecture, and algorithmic and software programming. Special focus on successful strategies and application of new web (multi) media in the learning organization for philips.com in the early days of Compact Disc Interactive, multimedia, and the internet (1994).

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CTO Leadership We provide supporting services to technology leaders. Ranging from strategic sound-boarding to assisting them in corporate digital transformation and program management, while guiding them in next levels of personal effectiveness, productivity, and development. How we lead iT. VISIONARY LEADERSHIP Effective CTOs develop a strategic vision that enables them to anticipate future trends and opportunities so that when shifts are required they can inspire key people and the wider team to buy into that vision. Equally critical is your ability to communicate that vision across the company and in language that resonates for all stakeholders, technologists and non-technologists. We are here to help in sound-boarding your vision, strategy and transformational communication, as well as in critical decision making. MANAGING LEADERSHIP As for other C-suite roles, there is often a more natural learning path towards senior management, this is rarely the case for CTOs and tech leaders in general. Managing team dynamics is however one of the most critical tasks for any tech leader. It’s one that involves understanding the individual, how they operate, where they perform best, and most importantly, what might be affecting their performance. We are to help them to address the gap in skills from the technical to the managerial. PERSONAL LEADERSHIP Leaving the former coding profession behind can make the transition from the technical to the managerial overwhelming. Having an objective perspective, whether for an immediate managerial issue or long-term career road map, can become a valued part of your working armory. We love to help, coach and cheerlead ambitious tech leaders into next-level senior technology roles. We will assess your true self, recognizing your intrinsic motivations, strengths, improvements, and even life purpose life. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. Book Free Discovery Session

Our Values We are rooted in belief that engineering is a creative profession and the human factor is the most critical business success factor in leading technology. We are human-centric in propagating the following core values while creating self-driven happy engineering teams with hyperflow productivity. How we deal with iT. VISIONARY & ENTREPRENEURIAL Cutting through complexity, we are constantly challenging the status quo. We offer new ideas and potential improvements, challenging people to innovate, think differently, and take ownership with inspired action. SERVANT LEADERSHIP We are engaging in a serving leadership style to harness people's full potential for themselves and their teams. We lead, coach, and thrive them forward in embracing the change needed for personal development. Core values are the deeply held beliefs that authentically describe the soul of business. PROACTIVE OWNERSHIP We strive to be proactive and act with accountability for our client's success. We provide clear direction and compelling communication, with end-in-mind alignment for achieving goals in expectation, time, and budget. DILIGENT & OUTPUT-DRIVEN In our output-driven execution style, we work hard with passion, dedication creativity, and perseverance to achieve success for our customers. We love attracting, motivating, developing and retaining outstanding talent in support. ADAPTIVE & AGILITY We believe technology needs to be optimally responsive to facilitate advancing business and customer needs. We advocate innovative, loosely coupled (micro-service) architectures to future-proof technology platforms. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION We are committed to earning the trust of our valued customers. We apply a pragmatic value-driven execution style. We aim to surface value soon, in a topdown, simplifying, and incremental aligned way with our customers.

e Venturing We are passionate about innovative online ventures in their mission to serve humanity for a better world. In this aspiration, we target special-purpose startup companies to be supported, incubated and accelerated by our extensive network, potential investment, advisory and leadership. How we thrive with iT. Proposition VALIDATION It all starts with a great idea. But it takes an exceptional founder team and all the best help and resources they can access, to make a great company that achieves growth and makes a real difference. ​ We love to get to know and challenge your online business ideas and proposition to the next level. In our explorative conversations, we will explore, challenge, and stretch your initial idea based on our online experiences in product viability and business success. ​ We do this by providing them with the strategic insights, operational tools, and guidance they need to turn their excellent ideas into powerful initiatives and startups Investment FUNDING In our approach, we aim to de-risk as much as possible for a sound proposition to be pitched to potential investors. ​ We help you find and connect with the right financial partners to help your company go next level and how to prepare for. This could also be us. In many forms and mutualities, especially as the product or service of the to be invested company will help humanity in any shape or form. We will offer our personal networked services to help out in the right timing with the growth of your online business. Advisory HOW We bring in our experiences in building the technology platform needed - or re:innovating your current legacy landscape - to enable your online business strategy in modern principles. We advocate best-in-class SAAS and cloud solutions to enable rapid business growth and lean output-driven product development. We design for loosely coupled enterprise architectures to organize, modernize, develop and maintain secure and future-proof technology platforms. Leadership DO As we walk our talk, we provide clear direction and communication with end-in-mind dynamic principles to achieve strategic goals in expectation, time, and budget. ​ We advocate a servant leadership style to harness your staff's full potential into self-driven happy teams. We love to challenge people to innovate, think differently, take ownership, embrace change, learn and thrive forward in committed action. Vidabed.com ​ Although we spend one-third of our life in bed, innovation has been surprisingly dormant in this industry. ​ That is why we created the Vidabed. The world's first smart bed to provide true life-enhancing sleep innovations and experiences. ​ Vidabed offers individual and self-learning personalized functions to provide the most optimal sleep conditions and wellness in sleep guidance, temperature control, body, and mental wellness. ​ Besides the individual, Vidabed takes potential interference from sleep partners to the next level in anti-snoring and apnea solutions. ​ All for you to get the best out of your dormant life, to become a better person awake. ​ Soulvation.com ​ .Although humanity has never been so socially informed as today, we never felt so disconnected. Economic prosperity and emerging technology have brought us all the means to manifest everything we want. Historically life has never been so comfortable and controllable, as it seems... ​ Ironically to find out by each and one of us in our own unique life journey, that these things are not at the core of real lasting happiness. ​ At the core of true-life wellness is the discovery of who you really are and authentically connecting spiritually with others' souls to expand your awareness. ​ Soulvation is the world's first spiritual dating site for discovering your soul in who you really are by connecting you with unique matching guardian angels to help you on this discovery. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Forum To see this working, head to your live site. All Posts Categories My Posts Sort by: Recent Activity Follow All Categories Create New Post Comments Views Recent Activity Item option menu Get Started with Your Forum Andre Buren · General Discussions 0 0 Mar 05, 2021 Forum - Frameless