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Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands
00:17:28
We meet tech entrepreneur and member of the Dutch royal family, Constantijn van Oranje
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- [00:00]
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- [01:20]
Matthew Kenyon
Hello, you're with Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Matthew Kenyon. Today sitting down with a man who who's immersed in the worlds of European tech and investment. Constantine von Aranje has worked as a business consultant and at the European Commission. And now he marshals support for the Dutch tech sector through his organization, TechLeap, set up to back the founders and startups hoping to shape the future of Europe's economy. It's a position which gives him a platform to have his say on the most important issues facing the Continent today.
- [01:56]
Constantine von Aranje
We need to be more competitive. The Draghi report is now one year old, so we don't need to analyze further. We really now have to actually get to execution.
- [02:04]
Matthew Kenyon
But Constantine von Aranje juggles those interventions with another role as a senior member of the Dutch royal family. He's a prince of the Netherlands. His brother is the Dutch king. So how free does he feel to say what he thinks about the worlds of business and finance, where he spends.
- [02:22]
Constantine von Aranje
His daily life in those areas? I don't mince my words. I do, of course, choose my words.
- [02:28]
Matthew Kenyon
We talk politics, regulation and unicorns on business. Daily meets from the BBC World Service. As a senior member of The Dutch royal family. Constantine Vanaranja has a number of different titles. He is after all, the third son of former Queen Beatrix and the youngest brother a of King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands. But Business Daily wanted to sit down with him. Not because of that, but because of what he does at TechLeap, the organisation which he co founded to help the Dutch tech sector grow and which is immersed in the start up culture which buzzes around in places like Amsterdam and Eindhoven and Delft. That culture, Constantine says, has always been there in a country which needs technology to survive.
- [03:20]
Constantine von Aranje
The country is nearly one third under sea level, so we had to innovate ourselves into existence. So I think there's a quite a natural cultural drive around innovation, around questioning authority. We're a very equalitarian country. It's very likely that someone will always challenge decisions and which is also good for innovations, not so good for execution by the way, we might come to that. But for innovation, to challenge the status quo is of course a very good quality.
- [03:49]
Matthew Kenyon
Let me just take you to your role within Tech Leap in particular. Your official title I think is Envoy to Tech Leap. So what does that mean? It strikes me that you're more than a cheerleader, more than a figurehead to this. I mean, you know, you're engaged in these arguments and the debates around how things should be developed for the Dutch economy and the European economy.
- [04:13]
Constantine von Aranje
So how do you see your Envoy is a bit of an ominous title. I don't really know what it is, but I guess you're the basically the flag bearer or something. But yes, we actually have two other people who co founded Tech Leap and before that startup Delta. I've been always very much engaged in the strategy and also the kind of the general direction of where the organization is going to. But of course in the Netherlands, but also abroad it helps to to have a certain stature which could open doors or creates a bit more buzz around what we're doing. In the Netherlands, I try to use that in a most kind of productive way.
- [04:51]
Matthew Kenyon
And you have that stature as a member of the royal family, Prince of the Netherlands, brother of the King. You also have that stature from your career over the previous decades in the European Commission and so on. How does that meld together your status as a member of the royal family and the day to day work that you've done over the decades.
- [05:11]
Constantine von Aranje
So in the Netherlands it's slightly different than some other royal families. We don't have like a royal list or anything. So the second brother and myself, we always had to Basically develop our own careers. We are not paid by the government. And for me, this role actually blends the two quite nicely. So I spent most of my professional life outside of the Netherlands because that was in a sense easier because I didn't have to mix roles and I could just basically develop my own professional identity as well. And after being the chief of staff of Nelly Krus at the European Commission and we developed a digital agenda, I returned to the Netherlands and there I found actually this role, which actually quite nicely blends the two.
- [05:52]
Matthew Kenyon
When we spoke, we were in the run up to a general election in the Netherlands, and tax, migration, the country's place in Europe and the world, were all live issues in the campaign. You might think that as a senior member of the royal family, he would steer clear of getting involved in subjects that are deeply political. But that's not how Constantin von Aranja sees his job at Tech Leap. He's here to argue that what's good for the tech sector is good for the country. And that means intervening.
- [06:23]
Constantine von Aranje
What you need is talent. You need capital, you need an ambition. And if those come together, then you can build incredible companies and then it's more. Do I get enough staff? So is there visa regulation that's blocking me, or is the education system not producing enough high quality technical talent? Or is there a fiscal policy that doesn't help me? So there's kind of policies that basically block that development. And what we try to do is to single to the government, well, these are issues blocking the development of the talent tech sector. It's up to you to decide if you think that's important or not. And we, of course, because that's where we are, where we come in, we believe that it's for a competitive and an innovative and also resilient economy. It's really important that you have new companies being formed, technology brought to the market and trying to stay competitive at the global level. We actually believe we're serving the public good by serving the tech sector.
- [07:22]
Matthew Kenyon
Those issues you talk about, migration, for instance, are very political issues and explicitly party political issues. In your position personally, as a member of the royal family, do you temper what you say because of that, do you try and avoid party politics?
- [07:42]
Constantine von Aranje
I definitely try to avoid party politics. I try to hover above or below. I don't want to engage in party politics. We're always looking for what we feel is an objective that everyone can align to. We want to create a stronger tax base in the Netherlands. We want to be able to retain our welfare state and we think that this is a good way to do that. But it does mean that in those areas, I don't mince my words. I do of course choose my words. I don't step into heavy political debates where I think that either we can't win them or, or two, they don't going to deliver anything for the companies that we're serving. There's one exemption of course, when governments start to introduce things that are really blocking the development of the tech sector, like currently there's discussion around taxing the carry from private equity and especially venture capital funds. We think that it's very inconsistent with a policy that tries to bring more investments into the tech sector too, then at the same time increase the taxes coming out of that, that is capital that's gained on the basis of risky investments and you should allow the return to come as well to those investors. So that's something that we would speak up about.
- [08:54]
Matthew Kenyon
So it doesn't sound like you're that cautious. I mean, you know, clearly you're aware of your role and you don't want to get involved in the day to day debate, in the run up to an election or at any time. But you do say what you think.
- [09:07]
Constantine von Aranje
Yeah, I always say what I think. I sometimes don't say what I think. But I don't want to be part of a public deb where that doesn't serve my purpose.
- [09:17]
Matthew Kenyon
And in the context of Tech Leap, your purpose, funded by the government, so you do have that relationship with the Dutch state as well, is to develop the Dutch tech sector essentially for the benefit of everyone.
- [09:32]
Constantine von Aranje
Yeah, and by, by any means possible. So we first did more structural, systemic interventions, you know, talking about more coding in schools or those kind of things to now really supporting the companies that we think have the highest chance of being successful. And I think you need to do both. One is about setting the right frameworks and the other is really about supporting a number of companies that are successful because we know that those successful companies will be engines again of other companies that will emerge from it. The system really works quite simply. A company is successful, attracts a lot of capital. If it exits, that capital comes to individuals but also to the investors. They will either start new companies or they will invest back into the, into the system. And if you can keep that flywheel going and keep it growing, then you've got a sustainable tech sector.
- [10:23]
Matthew Kenyon
You're with Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
- [10:29]
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- [10:58]
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- [11:27]
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- [11:30]
Matthew Kenyon
I'm Matthew Kenyon and today we're meeting Constantine Vonoranja, who as well as being Prince of the Netherlands and the brother of the Dutch king, is also an outspoken advocate for tech startups in his country and across Europe as co founder of the organisation techleap. Europe's position is especially under scrutiny at the moment as the United States and China tussle for tech supremacy and the old world order changes rapidly. It is, says Constantine Vonoranje, a moment which the continent has to seize or be left behind.
- [12:06]
Constantine von Aranje
In Europe we do favor legacy over innovation. So for instance, the car industry has had the opportunity to lobby and to defend itself in a way that it actually blocked electric vehicles and autonomous driving, whereas it was developed by a startup in the US and now in China. And we keep doing this. We thought we were leading in mobile telephony, but these were old companies and they had completely different interest than to innovate in the communication space. They had an interest to keep everything as it is. We tend to then invest a lot in research. We develop some of the best research and some of the best technologies, but we are somehow scared to then pull through and then also add an industrial policy to that or an innovation policy. Whereas in other countries we always point at the us But China has been formidable and also Singapore and the UAE and India as well recently in taking this very seriously and looking at we're not developing technology just as an academic effort like you could with quantum computing. Now we're looking to actually produce a quantum computer and it needs to do stuff. And we as a government are going to procure that.
- [13:23]
Matthew Kenyon
You don't see it as a zero sum game. I mean, if you spend a bit of time on LinkedIn for instance, and you are very active on LinkedIn, I know, in, in this tech world and so on, then you don't have to look very far to see people who are saying either Europe is driving ahead, we're fantastic, or the other way around, the US is totally dominating. Europe doesn't know what it's doing. It's very black and white.
- [13:48]
Constantine von Aranje
I mean, that's a benchmark. It's politics. You ask yourself, why are people saying this? And we as tech people have the same. On one hand, I'm extremely critical of what's happening in the Netherlands because I want them to do better, I want us to do better. But then you go outside, you want to promote the Netherlands, you know, so it's always kind of, you have to. You have these mixed messages to mixed audiences. I think Europe is definitely not competing with the US and as it should. We have some essential dependencies on cloud companies, which we hardly have. We lack the sophisticated compute companies like Nvidia and we're building them, but they're really small. So that's a political question. Do we want to be independent and does it mean that we start to invest in our companies and that we also accept that some of the cost of manufacturing costs will be much higher? I don't know if the electorate likes that, but if that is the overriding strategic priority, then yes, then we have.
- [14:53]
Matthew Kenyon
He may be envoy for TechLeap and spent his days immersed in the worlds of startups, scale ups, venture capital and so on. But there was plenty of scepticism in our conversation as well, not least around the role of social media and around some of the language that's used when talking about tech and finance. How many people, for instance, actually know that a unicorn means a private company which. Which is valued at more than a billion dollars?
- [15:20]
Constantine von Aranje
I do recognize that tech from Silicon Valley has turned a corner in a way that many people don't appreciate. And that's actually the reason why we're also investing this much in Europe, because we want our version of that. And it's not only about unicorns. I mean, for us, it's also for tech Leap. It's an easy metric and the government likes it. We say we're going to generate two unicorns a year, or why not be more ambitious, let's say five or whatever. Then someone would say yeah, but the Decacorn is also nice. Or someone would say, but why don't we have zebras? I don't know. You have this. It's a pretty useless conversation. But it is a sort of metric for success that everybody understands, which makes it easy. We of course want to talk much more about the impact that these companies are making. I mean, personally, I'm not a technologist by heart. I don't think all technology is good. I think we have a big responsibility and responsibilities, particularly in the public debate, to discuss these technologies and have an opinion about them. And we want to shape them in a way that they don't shape us, but that we shape them or that we at least are happy with what they do to our lives and to our economy, societies. So I don't want to convince the world that tech is good per se. I do think that technology can be and are essential in achieving some of the larger societal challenges that we have in terms of climate change into new energies in terms of disease and epidemic preparedness and these kind of things. And that's all new technology. That's the story we're telling. Not that AI is good or bad, but that if we don't build our own AI, we are going to be a consumer of other ones, AI which we can't really control or regulate. So it's also about being in the game to be able to control it or to steer it in a way that you want as a society. But staying on the sideline is you're going to be a double loser.
- [17:21]
Matthew Kenyon
I just want to ask you one last question then. Are you an optimist about all of this, about A, how technology can help transform our lives for the better if it's built up in the right way, and B, if the Netherlands and Europe, your areas that you have influence on, are going to be able to achieve that in the foreseeable future.
- [17:49]
Constantine von Aranje
I'm an optimist about the world I'm working in. I think this is the nicest part of my job, is working with people that always will see an opportunity. That's what entrepreneurs do. And they will have to improve something 10 times beyond what's currently there. So very optimistic.
- [18:09]
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- [18:12]
Constantine von Aranje
I wouldn't say I'm 100% optimistic about, not about Europe per se, but about our societies, I think. And this maybe has to do also with a lot of the misinformation and hyper individualization and kind of what social media is driving that we're lacking cohesion and we're seeing more polarization and in fact, this country has hardly ever been richer than it is now and wealthier. And actually, if you look at the objective metrics, we're doing really, really well. And still there's a strong feeling of discontent, which is driven by, not by, just by rational argument, but a lot by emotions. And this can be stirred up there. I see that we are, we have, it's hard to defend yourself against that. So our institutions are not a guarantee that we'll, you know, we have independent courts, independent media. These things are absolutely essential to retain our quality of life, our freedoms, the rule of law. And there I'm, I'm more worried and I don't know if tech will solve that. It's something we as humans need to solve ourselves.
- [19:25]
Matthew Kenyon
Tech will only take us so far, in other words, the rest is up to us. I'm Matthew Kenyon reporting from the Netherlands. My thanks to Constantine von Aranje for sitting down to meet Business Daily today. And thanks to you for listening. You can find lots more episodes of Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
- [19:52]
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- [20:07]
Constantine von Aranje
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- [20:09]
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- [20:13]
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