Who are you
I am Sven Lens, 49 years old and I have two daughters. I live on a sailing boat, so I can literally say that I have no permanent place of residence.
What business do you have?
As a freelancer I work under the name Sven Lens Nautic in the nautical and maritime industry. I have also been working independently as a sound and music technician since 2000. Thereby I worked for broadcasters, bands, festivals, production companies and many more. I have done sound for Motörhead, Snoop Dogg & Willie Nelson, Netflix, ESPN and All You Need Is Love, among others.
I currently work for Waterkaarten.app, which has 60,000 users. How I got there is a funny story. I was cruising my boat in Arnhem and I was using the app back then, but I noticed that nothing was right with the data they were giving. So I gave a 1-star review to the company that makes that app. When they contacted me about that, it turned out that I had a very good click with the owner and I started working there as a product owner.
What are your plans with your company and what are you running into?
Actually, I’m doing business within Waterkaarten.app. Every year we have a theme that we work on. In 2023, that was greatly improving the route planner, because it just wasn’t good enough. In addition, we had a focus on being able to connect external onboard devices. Both of those succeeded, although it was a lot of work.
In 2024, we are going for internationalization. We already did the Netherlands, Belgium and England. To that will be added France and Germany this year. In those countries we are going to get our routes and data more in order. We also want to improve the funnel, the conversion from trial to paid subscription.
Why did you join the MetalBC?
I don’t like networking, but I am good at nattering. Besides, I like to be approachable and when I see someone in a metal shirt I know I can probably talk to them, because you have a common passion for music. You already know that person wants to bring attention to a company or share knowledge and that combination works for me. So in one fell swoop I have a lot of new contacts to throw my anchor out to, haha.
What music/work-related story have you experienced in practice?
When I was just working at Waterkaarten.app, I visited the existing contacts to get acquainted and see what we could do for each other. One of our main data suppliers is Rijkswaterstaat. For example, daily water depth measurements of all rivers, which are open source available. So I started talking to our contact there, Paul, someone who reports directly to the minister.
Gradually we found out that we had a part passion for music. He likes to record in the studio and he has a very good contact with Suicidal Tendencies. Then we immediately had a click. Out of the hour and a half we had, we spent an hour and twenty minutes talking about Pantera, Machine Head and other music we both like. I knew I could call him directly right away if I wanted to know anything. And we also went to Jera On Air together right after that to see Suicidal Tendencies and Life Of Agony play.
In what area would you like to spar with other members of the club?
Because we have such a big, good club, I would like to do some kind of business reviews. Personally, I like to look at other companies in the kitchen to see if I can learn something from them. But I also like to put myself on the rack, so I’m curious to see what MetalBC members think of our business practices and where they could be better. Growth, turnover and knowledge of data, that’s what I like to spar with others about. Everyone has insights, let’s share them!
Want to know more? Please contact Sven.