The Case for European Optimism #5: Olaf @ Orbisk 🍽️
From Test Tubes to Trash Bins: The Dutch Founder Fighting Food Waste with AI 🗑️🤖
Fellow optimists 👋,
2025 is here. And despite seismic shifts on the other side of the Atlantic, I feel the tide is turning - there’s more optimism around European tech lately. 🌊
From Sequoia's Luciana Lixandru, who says Europe's tech scene isn't declining - it's just getting started. She argues we shouldn't compare a teenager (Silicon Valley) to a toddler (EU tech). We have world-class founders, engineers, and growing access to capital. So we should stop saying “Europe sucks” and “get to work to make it better”.
That’s a sentiment echoed by prominent Dutch founders like Rob van den Heuvel, "Stop complaining, Start building", and Paul Veugen, Europe, stop wining, start building.
Speaking of Dutch. Is there a more optimistic colour than orange? Sure, ChatGPT tells me yellow, but I’ll take orange any day. 🟠
Dutch orange in particular (#FF9B00) embodies everything a startup ecosystem should be: bold, confident and relentlessly optimistic. And I feel that kind of energy building in Dutch tech right now.
The Netherlands has a long and proud history of making an outsized impact on the world (did you know NL is the 2nd largest agricultural exporter globally? 🤯).
I’m starting to believe we could do something like that in tech. I’m talking to so many impressive founders here, that I'll struggle to get to the rest of Europe.
Take Olaf van der Veen, co-founder of Orbisk. His journey from lab scientist to founder, tackling one of our most wasteful problems, shows why Europe's "weaknesses" might actually be secret strengths.
Let's get into it…
💡 What You'll Learn:
How a scientist went from failing in labs to fighting food waste in 42 countries
Why Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" won't fix climate change
How a 200 million kg food waste problem became an AI opportunity
Why Europe's "boring" innovations might save the planet
The 200 Million Ton Elephant in the Kitchen 🐘
One third of all food produced (world-wide) is wasted. 1.3 billion tons of food.
14% of that comes from the hospitality industry (restaurants, hotels and catering) That’s 200 million tons wasted (equivalent to 33 million elephants).
If we could reduce this waste by 30%, we'd have enough to feed 80 million of the world’s hungry population.
It would also dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 1kg of wasted food = 4.5 kg of CO2. If food waste was a country, it would be one of the most polluting in the world.
Also: 1kg of food wasted = 7000 litres of water (equivalent to 120 showers!)
Wasted food is also wasted money in hospitality: every 1 kg of waste = €7 lost.
I could go on…
But here's the problem with tackling food waste hospitality:
Commercial kitchens are chaotic. Chefs are focused on creating food and keeping customers happy - not meticulously tracking their waste.
And no wants to spend time going through the bin.
From Lab Coat to Startup 👨🔬
Olaf's path to tackling food waste wasn't straightforward. With a masters in pharmaceutical chemistry, he started in scientific research.
"In medicine, you're in this tiny part of a very long chain," Olaf explains. "It was solitary. And you fail much more than you win - because that's just what proper experimentation is like."
Then came a plot twist. His next move surprising even himself: competing against 800 applicants for 10 spots in the prestigious Ahold retail management program. "I entered that process with no belief I would ever make it," he recalls. "I figured it was good training for my job application skills."
But he got the gig.
And that leap of faith launched him into increasingly complex leadership roles within Ahold - from managing multi-million euro online portfolios to leading a 200-person supermarket team.
But his true calling emerged as a data consultant. There, he found his talent for bridging tech and business. He was an "interpreter between business and technology, two worlds that don't speak each other's language very well, but who need each other… a lot."
More importantly, he found his knack for disruption: "I always had ideas that I believed needed to exist in the world. And even though no one else believed, I prototyped and pushed them out. These often turned out to be ideas that Ahold was looking for."
When it came time to start his own thing, Olaf approached it like the scientist he was - with a hypothesis to test.
Finding the Perfect Problem 🎯
"I wanted to do something in the sustainability space because, you know, good karma and stuff," he jokes, "but also because this is an industry where everything still needs to change."
He knew he'd likely fail - most startups do. But he believed even failure would be valuable: "Let's just start doing something that sounds brilliant, and we'll see how far we get. One way or the other, I'll have earned my stripes in the sustainability space."
The search for the perfect problem came down to three non-negotiables:
1. Impact Potential
"I started researching the biggest problems in the world," Olaf explains. "What's hurting the most when it comes to climate change?" Time and again, food waste topped the list.
2. Tech-Enabled
Having worked in restaurants in his student years, Olaf knew the limitations of manual processes in kitchens. "There's nothing more you can ask these people to do than what they already do," he explains. "Kitchens are super busy places. And the waste bin is the last place you want to be."
This is where tech and AI shine - automating repetitive tasks that humans don’t (or won't) do consistently.
3. Clear Business Case
His key insight was aligning incentives: "Any kilo a kitchen lose is also lost on their bottom line... So the person that needs to take action is the exact same person that would be the economic benefactor of that change."
This alignment is rare in sustainability. Usually the people who need to change aren't the ones who benefit financially. But with food waste, the incentives lined up perfectly.
Together with co-founders, Richard Beks and Bart van Arnhem, Orbisk was born.
The Kitchen's Black Box 🗃️
Think of an airplane's black box recorder. Now imagine if every kitchen had one - a device that could tell you exactly what went wrong, where and when. That's essentially what Orbisk have built.
As Olaf explains, "Your waste bin is the describer of all the inefficiencies in your whole operations when it comes to food. Anything that's inefficient will end up in that bin."
Orbisk was AI-first from the start. "We were fortunate enough to be in the early days of when AI really started to become capable of what we do today," Olaf notes.
They launched just as computer vision became capable enough to identify food waste accurately. Their timing was perfect: AI was becoming powerful enough to turn a bin into a smart device.
Orbisk's solution starts with elegant hardware:
A smart waste bin equipped with:
A weighing scale underneath
A camera unit (the "waste eye")
AI-powered food recognition
The system automatically identifies and tracks everything that enters the bin.
But the magic happens after the data collection.
Orbisk turns raw data into actionable insights through:
Real-time analytics dashboards
Pattern identification across kitchen operations
Staff coaching and optimisation recommendations
Continuous feedback loops to improve efficiency
Think of it like having a master chef and data scientist watching every step of your kitchen operations, then helping turn those insights into real impact on both sustainability and your restaurant’s bottom line.
From Utrecht to Everywhere 🌎
It's working. Orbisk is already in 42 countries across five continents, working with major hospitality chains like Hyatt and Marriott.
“Our international expansion happened naturally," Olaf explains, "because solving food waste for major hospitality chains means being able to serve them wherever they operate. You can't optimise half a hotel chain's operations - it needs to work at global scale.”
🇪🇺 The T.R.A.G.I.C. Truth About Building in Europe
(or why our "weaknesses" might actually be superpowers)
Through my conversation with Olaf, a case emerged for why Europe might be the best place to build this kind of world-changing tech.
Talent 🧠
You know those European social safety nets critics love to bash? They might be our secret weapon in the war for talent.
"The social welfare schemes we have throughout Europe, the safety that provides us as citizens of this continent, has an impact on all of society," Olaf reflects. Because, "people get to choose the things that they believe in versus the things they need to do to survive."
This means that when you're building technology to save the planet, you can attract people who are driven by purpose, not just paycheck."That fundamental safety allows us to have the kind of purpose we have."
Regulation ⚖️
"European regulation stifles innovation." It depends on what you're building.
In food and hospitality, regulation is a fact of life - and for good reason. But Orbisk found an interesting sweet spot. "For a food producer, it's a hard place to be," Olaf notes, "but we're not a food company. We're very much correlated to food, but the regulations don't hit us much."
Sometimes the best opportunities live in these in-between spaces - where you can help regulated industries become more efficient without taking on their regulatory burden.
Ambition 🚀
Olaf pushes back against the "Europe is not ambitious enough" narrative. "Sure, we value our personal time and our work-life balance a bit more in Europe... US entrepreneurs tend to go in harder, which is why the few that succeed, succeed harder, but those that fail, also fail harder."
This balanced approach might be exactly what we need for deeptech and climatetech that requires sustained, long-term effort.
"I am in favour of a world that works that way," Olaf reflects. "That does mean we have less of the unicorn type of breakthroughs... but that's just a result of the system here."
Government 🏛️
Time for some Dutch directness: government support for startups “could be better”.
"I'm not counting much on government support at this point in time," Olaf admits. While Orbisk engages with policymakers to influence sector-wide changes, the real progress comes from the private sector.
But maybe that's not such a bad thing. While the US and China's governments actively back their winners, European startups learn to succeed despite limited government support.
This makes us scrappy, resourceful and focused on real customer problems rather than government contracts and subsidies.
Innovation 💡
Sometimes the biggest innovations don't make headlines.
Olaf shared an example: "One of the biggest policy changes recently was that vacuum cleaners throughout Europe can only be 900 watts. Science had proven that any watt you add over 900 will only be sound and warmth. It will not increase the sucking capacity."
"This is the most boring subject ever," he admits, "but this is the type of stuff that can be very impactful too. I think a lot of things that are pretty boring go unrecognised at this moment, because they're just not sexy enough. They're not AI, or whatever."
Capital 💶
Let's be real: raising money in Europe is hard. Orbisk recently closed an oversubscribed round with a mix of European and US investors - but it wasn't a smooth ride at all.
"It's been the most draining experience of my life," Olaf admits. "I basically spent almost a year of my life not working on the problem that I'm trying to solve."
But Olaf sees an upside to capital efficiency in Europe:
"When I took an accelerator program in the US, people almost laughed at me when there was an arrow in my financial slide saying 'point of profitability,'" Olaf recalls. "In Europe, the point of profitability has always been asked from round one."
In today's market, that early focus on sustainable business models doesn't look so funny anymore.
Overall
Add it all up and you get something interesting: an ecosystem that might be uniquely suited for building world-changing sustainability tech.
The very things critics point to as weaknesses - our social systems, balanced lifestyles, regulatory frameworks - create an environment where:
Talent can pursue purpose over paycheck
Companies can focus on long-term impact over short-term growth
Innovation happens systematically, not just spectacularly
"I am optimistic about Europe's future in tech, especially sustainability tech," Olaf reflects. "We’ve got the headspace, safety and foundation to work on the big and hairy topics."
"The Netherlands has a long history of punching above its weight globally. Now it's time to do that in tech." Olaf says, adding that he wants “Europe to be a leading authority and guiding light in sustainability innovation.”
The Future 🔮
Olaf's vision extends far beyond what they’re doing now: "From day one, I've dreamed of being able to outfit every single restaurant with our technology. So everyone, every Mom and Pop restaurant, is able to join the fight against food waste."
They're already expanding into new frontiers - parallel industries, from cruise ships to aviation. Any place where food meets efficiency is in their sights.
But perhaps most exciting is their work on what Olaf calls "the holy grail": demand forecasting. Predicting tomorrow's waste today. "What's most lacking is proper demand forecasting," he explains. "It means combining your waste data with your operational data - guest numbers, procurement and sales. Then, you can help them see what their guests will be eating tomorrow."
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The next wave of European innovation might not look like Silicon Valley's. And maybe that’s for the best?
Learn more about Orbisk.
And until next time, stay optimistic,
Dan