An international tennis umpire in a past life, Mike van Pamelen is used to making big calls.
One example was the decision to leave a comfortable job with an American multinational technology organization to start his own company. Today Mike is the managing director of the Amsterdam-based Kentivo, a specialist in using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to drive market insights and optimize procurement processes.
A continent with a top-heavy population pyramid means many businesses are facing the same problem: an aging workforce, a shortage of new talent in the market, and the looming threat of decades of knowledge being lost. Realistically, these organizations face two options: accept their fate without a fight or do something about it. With business-friendly technology, Kentivo BV is helping businesses who are ready to do something about it.
Kentivo has been an Openprovider customer since 2019. It is also a valued Openprovider Member.
A DNA of entrepreneurship
Mike’s entrepreneurial spirit is evident instantaneously. It’s something, he says, that runs in the family. “My parents were small-time entrepreneurs,” he says. Growing up in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen – a part of the world where “the Dutch consider me Belgian and the Belgians consider me Dutch,” he jokes – his father was a tax advisor who had a small company. His mother, now in her ninth decade, has been a lifelong freelancer and she continues to teach how to design and make bobbin lace. “She still goes to Germany every year to teach lessons,” he says with visible admiration.
It’s not difficult, therefore, to see where his living-life-on-the-front-foot attitude comes from. That he completed a master’s in both physics and theoretical astronomy confirms Mike’s passion for new discovery – it’s precisely this proactiveness that underlines Kentivo’s approach to helping businesses with an aging workforce to capture and transfer their know-how. “People are scarce and good people are especially scarce,” he says. Kentivo’s tailored and easy-to-use A.I. solutions help organizations retain that knowledge and turn their data into actionable insights.
And just like Openprovider, Kentivo is passionate about providing tailored, intelligent solutions that empower businesses. “We saw an opportunity to bridge the gap by offering A.I. solutions that are both highly customizable and user-friendly,” says van Pamelen when talking about Kentivo’s development in recent years. “Traditional vendors and competitors were not adequately addressing the need for seamless integration of data analytics with business processes, leaving many organizations struggling to turn their data into actionable insights.”
He describes the decision to invest heavily in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies as “a pivotal moment” in Kentivo’s story. The move was driven by the pains of a large retail change client who was struggling with optimizing their inventory management and forecasting demand accurately. The tools and methods in place at the time were not equipped to handle the complexity and volume of their data, leading to frequent stockouts and overstock situations. This, in turn, affected profitability and customer satisfaction.
“The challenges they faced led us to develop a custom solution that leveraged advanced algorithms to analyze large datasets, identify patterns, and predict future trends with a high degree of accuracy,” says van Pamelen. “The success of this project was a game-changer for Kentivo.” A star – or in this case, a Genie – was born. Kentivo’s Genie Machine Learning platform has since enabled us to develop A.I.-driven solutions that provide deeper insights and more predictive power for our clients.
If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together
Talking about his time at IBM, a period he thoroughly enjoyed, he says there was always something nagging at him from within to start something for himself. “I had the feeling that if I stayed there a bit longer, I would have ended up staying forever.” But years of calling double faults and winning points had prepared him well for trusting in himself to make big decisions where the margins were finest. “You have only one life and I’m a sucker for new experiences,” he says. “I wanted to build more things for myself. Large companies have lots of advantages, but even if you build something up, you don’t build it for yourself. Sometimes you have to take the plunge and see where it takes you.”
He recalls the advice that his primary school teacher gave him in first grade: Don’t worry about what others think, trust yourself. “I’ve always kept that advice. It made me leave a comfortable job to start Kentivo in 2012 during the financial crisis even though people told me I was crazy.”
Going it alone, however, was never an option for Mike. “I always wanted to do it with other people,” he says. Kentivo’s partnership-focused approach has strengthened ever since, a strategy that has driven strong growth while fostering a lean, agile organization. “We learned that even if we have the know-how, it’s best not to do everything ourselves,” says Mike. “It just creates some unnecessary costs, headaches, and distractions. We started sourcing everything that was more cost-effective and learned to rip things out of our A.I. solutions when the market started to offer it. Anything that can be automated, we will automate. Where others are better and more cost-effective, we source and integrate it.”
When speaking to Mike, it’s clear that he is a team player with a shared-success mindset. As a business leader, he is a strong advocate of business partnerships that drive mutual benefits. “I think it’s very important to delegate and source as much as you can,” he says. “It’s important to have the know-how. In the tech business, as a founder or as a manager, you have to know technology yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to do it yourself, but it means you can source solutions in a smarter way.” It is precisely this mindset that has enabled Kentivo to find streamlined and automated solutions that can be easily integrated into existing workflows. He explains how the API automation offered by Openprovider enables Kentivo to offer cost-effective solutions to customers, thus making artificial intelligence accessible for small and mid-sized companies. “I can easily get a new domain registered for customers automatically. I can set up the whole infrastructure around DNS automatically.”
Overcoming adversity through agility
The Covid-19 pandemic hit Kentivo hard. “The sudden economic downturn led to budget cuts, particularly in innovation funding, and our employees struggled to adapt to the new remote work environment,” says Mike. It undoubtedly made him further appreciate the challenges that entrepreneurs face. There was no safety net, the type that large corporations enjoy because of their scale. But Mike trusted in himself and his team to hold their serve. “No matter what consultants and advisors say, as business owners we always make the decisions. You can seek a lot of input and it is always good to listen to others, but you yourself have to make the decision and for that, you have to trust yourself.”
This period taught Kentivo to do more with fewer resources and emphasized the importance of efficiency. “With innovation projects on hold, we needed to redefine our value proposition. We shifted our focus from purely innovation-driven projects to delivering actionable insights that directly helped our clients grow.”
Artificial intelligence – across all sectors – is here to stay. “I don’t see any domain that will not be affected by AI,” says Mike. While Kentivo looks well-placed to unlock new opportunities with its artificial intelligence solutions, he is keen to underline that long-term, sustainable business success will be achieved by humans and technology working together. “Humans always fight the last battle,” he says.
“We like cool new innovations, but only if they bring real value, not because people think it has value,” says van Pamelen. “We separate the A.I. hype from what A.I. can really mean for business. Make sure the technology solves real-world problems, otherwise you will not find any customers.”
Combining proven know-how and cutting-edge technology, it appears that van Pamelen and the team at Kentivo have plenty of aces up their sleeves ready to be served.
