From Code to Capital: Jonathan’s Entrepreneurial Story

He built an international software company from scratch, growing it to 47 employees and $4 million in recurring revenue. Then he sold it. Along the way, he discovered that entrepreneurship takes more than a great product and a solid business model.

This is Jonathan van Driessen’s story. About the myth of the predictable formula, the loneliness of leadership and what remains when you can finally stop driving everything forward.

It all started by chance. Jonathan van Driessen began his career as an IT consultant at Deloitte. An internal move introduced him to Salesforce and helped him spot a gap in the market. In 2018, together with his cofounder Anthony, he launched DESelect, software that made it easier to segment marketing campaigns within Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

At first, they built the company alongside their consulting work. But as revenue grew, so did their commitment, right in the middle of the uncertainty of a global pandemic.

"We actually did pretty well during COVID. It may even have worked in our favor, because more companies had to focus on digital marketing. And that was exactly what we were doing with DESelect.", Jonathan says.

By 2022, revenue had passed the $1 million mark. The logical next step? Raise outside funding to break into the US market. They secured $5.5 million from a VC investor. Anthony moved to the US. The money started flowing.

When the growth formula no longer works

With venture capital in the bank came a relentless expectation: aggressive growth within eighteen months. Jonathan bought into that logic. “Based on our models and what we had seen in the past, we thought: two salespeople generate this much revenue. So to generate that much more revenue, we simply need to hire that many more salespeople. That turned out not to be true.”

Unfortunately, the outreach did not generate the pipeline they had expected. The people were there. The revenue was not. Meanwhile, the clock kept ticking. It was the first time his trusted logic, more input leads to more output, had failed him.

At the same time, his own role was changing almost every quarter. From developer to team lead, from team lead to the executive team, then to becoming the public face of the company at international events. “It’s probably been two years now since I last wrote any real code. I identify much less as a developer these days.”

He sees that shift as a natural evolution, but it also forced him to develop skills that did not come naturally. “When you spend years behind a computer writing code, it’s hardly a social job. You learn how to write complex code, but not how to manage people. In the end, that was probably the biggest shift for me: going from working for myself to actually becoming an entrepreneur.”

The perfect storm: When the market rewrites the plan

The real test was still to come. The tech market cooled, interest rates rose and companies started cutting back on software spending. Then Salesforce, the platform DESelect was built on, announced a major migration to a new system. Suddenly, DESelect’s core functionality was at risk of becoming obsolete.

“The market was starting to turn against us. That makes you stop and think. What does this mean for the company? What is our company still worth?”

During that same period, Jonathan had to go through two rounds of layoffs. First four people, then another fifteen.

“People rely on you to provide for their families. When you have to let people go because of something that isn’t their fault, you feel terrible about it. It’s not an easy message to deliver.”

At the same time, a potential sale process was quietly set in motion. Not out of panic, but out of a sense of responsibility. Two other options were also on the table: building a new product or raising another round of funding. Believing transparency was the right approach, they shared these options with the team. But Jonathan still wonders whether that was the right decision.

“People started drawing their own conclusions. Morale dropped and employee turnover increased. It’s very difficult to sell a company when you have high employee turnover.”

It was a period when Jonathan often felt alone as a leader, carrying existential questions and intense uncertainty that he could not share with his team, his investors or even fully admit to himself.

A sounding board in the storm

It was during this period that a session in the Ecosystem Leadership Circle, the leadership group Jonathan is part of, facilitated by executive coach Debbie Baute, gave him a much needed release. Everything was coming to a head: the sales process was underway, company morale was at an all time low and a conflict with his cofounder added even more pressure.

As an entrepreneur, you build a kind of armor to survive periods like this. In the Circle, Jonathan no longer needed to keep those defenses up. “There were still a lot of emotions I had been carrying without really stopping to acknowledge them. The Circle gave me the space to let them in. Everyone opened up in their own way, and that gave me the chance to get things off my chest and process what I had been carrying with me.”

Why did it work? “Because it was a safe space to share with other leaders who understood what I was going through. There were things I couldn’t discuss with my employees, but I could talk about them in the Circle. That support meant a lot to me.”

When the pieces fall into place

In August, DESelect was successfully acquired by a UK based group that brings together companies from the Salesforce ecosystem. The employees stayed on. Many even say they are better off now, with more career opportunities, a larger organization and more products to work on. “In the end, it did feel a bit like a hero’s journey, with a good outcome,” Jonathan concludes.

What does he take away from those intense years at the helm of DESelect? Two lessons.

The first is about endurance. “As an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to commit to one thing for a long time. Even when it’s really hard. Even when it hurts. You have to be able to stick with it until the end.”

The second is about what really makes a company work. “People say a SaaS company is easy to run because it’s software. But a SaaS company is still built by people. It’s really the combination of the product and the people behind it.”

The architect of the (eco)system

Jonathan is ready for a new chapter. This time, capital rather than code will take center stage. He no longer sees himself running the operational side of a business. Instead, he wants to act as a strategic advisor to the leaders who do.

The Ecosystem Leadership journey reinforced an important insight: his greatest impact does not come from leading everything himself, but from building systems that can continue to grow without him. His focus is now on acquiring existing companies. Not to run them himself, but to help them grow by bringing together the right people, capital and ideas.

“Every company has a bottleneck. If I see a company with a bottleneck that I think I can solve through a few strategic changes, that feels like a really interesting puzzle to solve.”