A Lunch & Learn with Willem – Startup Coach of the Year 2025

Date: May 26th 2026 – 12 noon – 1PM UK Time 
Format: Online via Zoom

Event Overview

Not everyone can attend our in-person events. This online Lunch & Learn is designed for those who want practical, high-impact insight in a focused, accessible format.

In this session, Willem explores what truly drives entrepreneurial success,  not tactics, not theory, but the psychology behind how successful entrepreneurs think, decide, and act when certainty disappears.

This is not about “teaching people to fish.”
It’s about developing fishermen.

Through real-world experience built in high-pressure, unpredictable environments, Willem will introduce a practical operating framework called The Entrepreneurial Thinking Compass — a tool designed to help leaders and professionals function effectively when strategy and playbooks fall behind reality.

What You’ll Gain

By attending this session, participants will:

  • Understand how successful entrepreneurs make decisions under uncertainty

  • Learn how to operate when clarity is missing but responsibility remains

  • Develop tools to overcome fear, rejection, and demotivation

  • Gain insight into choosing the right co-founder or business partner

  • Recognize common entrepreneurial traps — including “buying the bus” too early

  • Strengthen resilience and adaptability in fast-changing environments

  • Apply entrepreneurial thinking inside established organisations

This session is relevant whether you are starting a business, leading a team, navigating career transitions, or building something new inside an existing organisation.

Why Willem?

Willem’s work is not built on theory.

It is proven in environments where certainty is absent and failure carries real consequences.

He has worked in some of the most unpredictable conditions imaginable, helping individuals with little more than determination learn how to think, decide, and act their way forward. In those environments, entrepreneurial thinking is not a concept,  it is a necessity.

If these tools work where there are no safety nets, limited resources, and constant uncertainty, they work even more powerfully inside organisations with talent, structure, and scale.

This is what makes Willem different.

His frameworks are field-tested under pressure, not designed for classrooms or slide decks.

About Willem

Willem is the Startup Coach of the Year 2025 and Startup Mentor of the Year 2023, and has been recognised by Thinkers360 as a Top 50 Global Thought Leader in Lean Startup in 2022, 2023 and 2025, as well as in Careers in 2025. He brings over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience across manufacturing, online and creative industries. His work centres on a critical challenge facing modern organisations: how people think and act when certainty is gone and responsibility remains. Willem holds a Master’s degree from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom and is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, working with clients worldwide.

Who Should Attend

  • Founders and aspiring entrepreneurs

  • Leaders navigating change

  • Professionals seeking greater resilience

  • Teams operating in fast-moving environments

  • Anyone interested in developing practical entrepreneurial capability

Join Us Online in May

Step away from your desk. Bring your lunch.
Learn how to navigate uncertainty with clarity and confidence.

Can’t make this event? Register here to keep up to date about our next events

Newsletter

"*" indicates required fields