Hi, I'm Ruben Timmerman

My purpose is: accelerating systemic change through conscious practices in people and organisations

Caveats for contacting me: I:Respond slowly to mail
Especially long onesSay no to protect my time
Especially to "intro coffees"Always try to help
Especially good causes

passions

Raising my 15yr old daughter and 2yr old son, Hunt Gather Parent inspired
Preventing populism from gaining power, finding effective interventions to scale
Enabling people in self-managing organisations with Holacracy & OKRs
Trying to outsource operations management for NGOs, a high impact problem
Donating with an effective altruism mindset, consciously evaluating the impact
Investing in funds and startups that have a systemic impact on human & animal suffering
Fighting my chronic back problems with swimming, Iyengar yoga, core workouts.

opinions

I've done a lot of writing, presenting and training on running startups, self-management, OKRs, Holacracy, Getting Things Done, Usability / UX and online marketing. Indulge yourself here:

Articles on Medium

Interviews & podcasts

Talks & workshops

randoms

Here are some random things I like and support:

Supermercator: a great vintage shop / coffee place in De Baarsjes in Amsterdam, with regular creative music nights.
Trusting people handbook: unfinished Operations management guide of Springest, written with some former colleagues
Usarchy, my pre-2009 blog about usability and online marketing, back then quite popular :D

work

I love building this organisation from the ground up together with the founders. It's a startup to scaleup NGO, launching in 15+ countries in 2025, incl. a local foundation in the US. Our purpose and principles align nearly perfectly with mine.

Initiated and led the project to build a new website platform for 30 countries and over 200 chapters, which I still support. I was General Secretary for Tech and Way of Working with the ambition to get closer to a self-managing (volunteer based) organisation, still coaching some of my former colleagues.

IPE is a progressive think tank that publishes economic policy studies to demonstrate how Dutch society could work better. I'm helping out the founder as a coach for growing the organisation, as well as the rest of the team with operational and marketing advice.

I've decided to invest about €500k in impact startups and funds in the first 2 years after selling my company Springest. I also pledged to give away €500k in the next 10 years go good causes. This totals 20% of my pre-taxation wealth. If you have the privilege of living in a wealthy country like me, I urge you to do the same.

More on LinkedIn

past work

Springest got acquired at the end of 2021 after 14 years of pioneering the biggest learning marketplace in Europe. 55 Springeteers worked in Amsterdam and Berlin. We won several prizes for best employer and best learning culture. We fully adopted Holacracy as one of the first companies in Europe in 2012.