€70M raised. A bankrupt company. And a 30-year-old founder who bought the wreckage and turned it into something that now operates across 21 countries.

The 13th edition of Builders Investor House landed at umob in Rotterdam, co-hosted with Bibi Jorissen. And once again, the room delivered the kind of evening that makes you wonder why most events even bother with name tags and panel moderators.

Setting the scene

Investor House has always run on one idea: put builders and backers in a room where nobody has to perform. No panels, no scripts, no polished keynotes. Just operators talking to operators.

Thirteen editions in, the format keeps proving itself. The same group of operator-investors and VCs keeps showing up. And more importantly, the same thing keeps happening: people leave with more energy, better conversations, and real follow-ups.

This edition was special for a reason beyond the story itself. Bibi Jorissen took the stage as our first female founder speaker, and what followed was exactly why Investor House exists.

Ventures on stage

Before the fireside, four Builders ventures shared where they're heading.

Everday opened with the growing skills gap that most HR systems can't keep up with. Their AI-driven workforce intelligence platform tackles a question every company struggles with: who can actually do what, and where are the gaps?

Avery followed with the problem every hiring manager has lived through. Too many interviews, too little signal, and no real memory of what worked and what didn't. Avery is building the intelligence layer that sits above ATS systems.

Cortena addressed the reality that pre-accounting and invoice processing in most businesses is still painfully manual. Their AI-powered automation resonated with founders who've spent too many hours reconciling spreadsheets.

Trigger brought a different angle. Social media content that actually performs isn't about posting more. It's about understanding why people engage. Trigger's platform helps teams build content strategies grounded in behavioral science.

Different categories, same underlying theme: systems that think alongside the people who run them.

Fireside with Bibi: Buying a €70M wreck and building it into 21 countries

Here's the headline most people miss: umob acquired a company that raised €70M, built the world's first Mobility-as-a-Service platform, and went bankrupt. Bibi bought the wreckage. Merged it into umob. Then won an 11-year exclusive concession in Eindhoven, expanded to 21 countries, and did it with a team of 25.
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She's 30.

That sequence alone would have been enough to carry the evening. But the real value came from what Bibi was willing to talk about openly.

What €70M in failure actually teaches you

The fireside didn't stay surface-level. Bibi went into what it means to inherit a company that burned through €70M and still build something that works. Not in theory. In practice. The kind of lessons you only learn when you're the one picking up the pieces.

City councils as a moat

One of the more surprising insights: selling to a city council might be a better moat than any growth hack. In mobility, the concession model creates defensibility that software startups rarely get. Win the contract, and you're in for years.

In Eindhoven, umob is now the main contractor responsible for operators like Dott, Felyx, and Cargoroo running in the city. That's a lot of accountability for a 25-person company. But it's also a position that's nearly impossible to replicate once you hold it. It's slow, political, and unglamorous. But it compounds.

The tension between mission and scale

Bibi was honest about something that nobody in mobility wants to say out loud: there's a real tension between mission and scale. Building sustainable urban mobility sounds great until you're trying to make unit economics work with scooters on street corners. The "booking.com of mobility" pitch sounds clean. The execution is anything but.

Collisions after the stage

As always, the best moments happened after the fireside ended. The room shifted into fast-paced conversations between founders comparing notes, investors pressure-testing assumptions, and people connecting dots they wouldn't have found anywhere else.

We're not trying to host the biggest events. We're building a room people want to be in. And thirteen editions in, that still feels like the right thing to optimize for.

Closing

The 13th edition of Builders Investor House reminded us again why this format keeps growing: founders talking honestly to founders, investors offering perspective without pretense, and everyone showing up willing to share what actually works.

A huge thank you to Bibi and the umob team for co-hosting and for bringing the real version of their story. It was a privilege to host the event together.