Innovation: the guts to burn money

Recently I was a guest at Portera’s podcast hosted and organized by Baris Kavakli and Waleed Siraj. The podcast is about innovation, digitization, and the emerging digital society we currently live in. We talked about gambling, lawnmowers, diving, burning money, and long hours drive with Eric Woolfson, the co-creator of The Alan Parsons Project. I realized one digital anecdote is left to tell about those days by listening back to the podcast.

It is 1995, Amsterdam. I just returned from my Australian road trip by motorbike, trying to make sense of the world around me and finding my way back in the urban jungle. In Australia, I picked up diving and witnessed the incredible and weightless underwater world. Back home, it was my old underground music life again. I was tour manager and drove artists around in the Netherlands: Fish, Proper Grounds, Ramones, Some have Fins, to name a few international ones. Also, multiple Dutch artists saw the inside of my van: Chicas Del Rock, Marshmallows, Jack of Hearts and Claw Boys Claw. By the way, Claw Boys Claw is still going strong after thirty years. Incredible. One of those rare bands that stays fresh, energetic, and improving while growing old. Or maybe it is just my imagination and sweet juvenile memories of the days that life was still more future than history. Anyway, check out their new album: Kite.
The road was my home, the asphalt my…