After studying Physics at Leiden University, Menno van Dijk was a senior partner at McKinsey for over 20 years. He specialized in innovation and growth, working with companies in Europe, South Africa, Australia, and everywhere in between. He then returned to Amsterdam, where he co-founded THNK, the School of Creative Leadership. After some years, he was ready for the next big thing: founding ScaleUpNation. His company came alive with two assumptions in his mind: “Large societal challenges in the world are also large entrepreneurial opportunities. And only the companies that scale can move the needle in terms of impact, value creation and employment”.

Menno and the ScaleUpNation research team analysed a database of 500.000 companies, and confirmed that only very few manage to scale. He asked himself “Why do we focus so much on start-ups? We should create more scale-ups!”. To achieve this high-flying goal, he will join the Masterclass faculty in guiding ambitious leadership teams with his scaling expertise. “I got a deep knowledge on what makes a start-up scale or stall. I can provide you clarity – on your vision, your strategy and your priorities”.

Anieke holds 20+ years of experience in innovation and strategy departments across different food & agriculture corporates (Corbion, Unilever). Her background made her the perfect candidate to lead the ScaleUpFood program, which she started doing in 2019. During that time she worked directly with dozens of scaling food&agri ventures in the Netherlands and abroad, witnessing first hand what the best practices for scaling an innovative venture are. In 2021 she stepped up to the role of CEO at ScaleUpNation.

She always looks forward to helping ambitious teams with innovative solutions to achieve success, which is why she is joining the Art of Scaling Masterclass as faculty. Her focus will be on helping teams identify their strengths and weaknesses, define scaling challenges, and design a first strategic plan for scaling.

Francesca’s main talent lies in leading operations teams, particularly in scale-ups. She has been coaching companies to scale their teams, daily operations and processes for more than two decades. As the years rolled by, she understood how to manage the counter-intuitive aspects of scaling, and how to develop the mindset of leadership teams accordingly.

In the Masterclass, Francesca will offer her expertise in scaling up operations. Teams need to work together to a particular business beat when they want to scale a company, and she knows how to reach it. “My mantra in operations is: ideas are easy, execution is everything. And discipline will set you free.” You really need discipline to scale, and that’s something you can start working on at The Art of Scaling Masterclass.

Afroditi Terzi is a senior researcher at ScaleUpNation. She is the driving force behind The Art of Scaling report, the biggest and most well documented research on what makes companies scale. Afroditi started her research career in cognitive and behavioural development and education research at University of Amsterdam. In the past 4 years, she has been researching what it takes to scale, with a focus on leadership and business development.

In the Masterclass she shares the key research findings from The Art of Scaling. She also supports teams in filling out their Scaling Canvas, a crucial step in kick-starting their scaling journey.