Founders × Top athletes
Big ambitions changethe person chasing them.
A carefully selected group of founders and top athletes, all actively building businesses, spend a year challenging each other and working on the person behind the ambition.
Fifteen seats. One year. The same room.
Different arenas.
Same drive to build.
Why this exists
Working harder gets you far.
It doesn’t get you everywhere.
The stakes rise. Pressure changes. Eventually, the habits and strengths that got you here stop being enough.
The next level asks for better judgement, more self-awareness, stronger leadership, better recovery and people willing to tell you what you may not see yourself.
This is a room for that work.
Why we started this
Duco & Victor
We started Athlete Founders because we were looking for this room ourselves.
A small group of ambitious people from different worlds, willing to challenge each other and grow beyond what got them here.
Curious? Let’s chat.
The room
One room.
Individual ambitions.
Shared commitment.
You bring what you're actually working on, in yourself and in your business. So does everyone else.
Over the year, the same people see your wins, setbacks and blind spots up close. They challenge your thinking, share what worked and expect the same from you. By the second gathering, nobody needs the backstory and the conversations get sharper.
Why it works
The perspective you need rarely comes from people just like you.
01
Different arenas. Better questions.
Founders and top athletes recognise the same ambition and pressure, but bring different playbooks. That difference creates perspective you rarely find inside your usual circle.
02
Depth takes repetition.
When people know the context, conversations get more honest, feedback gets sharper and commitments become harder to hide from.
The journey
Come with something real to work on.
At the start, you choose the personal and professional goals that matter most.
01
Define
Name what you want to change and what progress would actually look like.
02
Challenge
Put it in front of peers and experts who see the world differently.
03
Apply
Take it back into your life, team or company and test it where it counts.
04
Return
Come back with what moved, what did not and what you need from the room next.
Expertise
Experts in the room.
Not on a stage.
We bring in exceptional people who have operated at the highest level, from scientists and physicians to bestselling experts and coaches behind Olympic gold medal teams. For example:
Erik Scherder
Eelco Meenhorst
Juriaan Galavazi
The expertise follows the room, not the other way around.
Progress
Design a life
that can carry the ambition.
Learn what helps you execute, recover and perform at your best over the long term. How you work. How you recover. Where your energy comes from. What throws you off.
Choose a few signals that matter to you, and use them to reflect, experiment and adjust.
Personal
Energy. Recovery. Focus. Training. Stress. Relationships.
Business
Leadership. Execution. Team. Culture. Growth. Resilience.
Founding Cohort
2027
- Kick-off gathering
- Later this year
- First official session
- Q1
Central NetherlandsQ1 · Central Netherlands
The Founding 15
The room is
taking shape.
Duco Telgenkamp and Victor Straatman are in. The remaining seats go to people whose ambition, openness and experience make the room better.
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The group
Small on purpose.
This only works if every person matters.
- Curated participation
- Join by invitation or request. Same bar either way.
- Entrepreneurial
- Every member is actively building or running a startup, company or entrepreneurial venture.
- Personal commitment
- Every member contributes personally. This is not something you delegate to your company.
- Founding contribution
- €1,900 ex. VAT for the full yearIncluding premium locations, experts, food and drinks throughout the year.
The first priority isn’t to grow the room. It’s to make it worth returning to.
Founding Partners
Independent by design.
Strengthened by the right partners.
01
Revived
Revived brings expertise in human performance, coaching and sustainable high performance.
02
4impact capital
4impact brings experience and access across founders, entrepreneurs and investors who have built, scaled and backed ambitious companies.
We’re looking for founders and top athletes pursuing something that genuinely matters to them, actively building a business and willing to work on themselves as seriously as they work on the goal.
Every request is reviewed personally.