Grand Opening Erasmus Recruitment Days

Toespraak | 02-02-2012

Ladies and gentlemen,

The organisers of these Erasmus Recruitment Days told me that seven out of ten people in this hall are studying in Rotterdam. So you’re using the same springboard as I did. I studied at the Erasmus University myself. And I stayed in Rotterdam after university. For people in this city, tradition isn’t such a big deal. They know how to get things done. And they’re never afraid to start something new. So I feel at home here.

I’m going to tell you my own story today. Of how I started my own business as a student in Rotterdam. And how I ended up in politics. I hope the story will inspire you to take action and shape your own careers. A springboard gives you a start, but after that there’s a lot of hard work to be done. You do need the nerve to take that leap. Not once, but over and over again. If you’re ready to roll your sleeves up and give it everything you’ve got, you can make a difference in your field.

How have I tackled things so far? When I was studying economics and law here in the early 1990s, the internet was just taking shape. Those were the years when the World Wide Web was born. The first search engines appeared. So did the first popular web browser, Mosaic. Now everyone could use the internet. And it had commercial potential.

When I saw, almost twenty years ago, how fast the internet was starting to grow, I couldn’t wait to join in. Amazon.com was a shining example for me. It was set up by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and is now one of the biggest online retailers in the world. Bezos and Amazon.com are based in Seattle, but he could easily have been from Rotterdam. One of his well-known sayings is, ‘A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well.’ There speaks a man with both feet firmly on the ground who knows you have to work hard to make it. Bezos is living proof of Edison’s statement that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Today Amazon is one of the uncontested leaders in the world of bits and bytes. Bezos didn’t achieve this by sitting at home and watching the world go by. He did it by seizing an opportunity when he saw it and working extremely hard to reach his goal.

I didn’t want to wait until I’d graduated to get started. You have to grab every opportunity. So while I was still at university, I got together with a friend and we set up our own IT company. We didn’t have a secretary, we didn’t have expensive company cars and we didn’t have a fancy office. All we had was two computers in an attic. We worked hard. I spent a lot of nights at the computer. That was good preparation for later life. And that’s how we set up the first Dutch online store for the Bruna book chain in 1994.

That launched our successful business: ISM eCompany. I was managing director until 2007. In that year I got a new job: State Secretary for Finance. It meant I had to stop running my own company. But the new job had many rewards. I saw new opportunities to make a difference, this time in politics instead of business. As a businessman I’d often been annoyed by the tax authorities. They were too restrictive. Now I could do something to change that.

When the government fell in February 2010 and the Labour ministers resigned, I became Minister of Finance. At first in a caretaker government. I got to work right away to put government finances in order, And after the elections I was asked to be finance minister in this government too. Which means I can carry on with the job I started then.

Was it always easy? Absolutely not! It was a big switch going into politics after being my own boss. I had been politically active before. At university I’d been the treasurer of the Christian Democratic youth group. And I’d worked for the youth group of the European People’s Party – the biggest political youth organisation in Europe. Now, in the European arena, I enjoy meeting old friends from back then. That shared past creates a bond, even if we have differences.

So politics wasn’t entirely new for me. But being a politician in charge of a ministry was entirely new. It sounds impressive, but at first it was a very strange world to me, full of unfamiliar, unwritten rules. For civil servants the rules are obvious, but for outsiders they’re a mystery.

You know, when you’re a state secretary or a minister you are given a big heavy bag full of documents to take home every evening. The kind that workmen carry their tools in. It’s like being back at school and getting a lot of homework. And somehow you’ve got to finish it all by the next day. I still remember my first day. A sunny day in February 2007. My driver walked to the car in front of me, carrying one of those big heavy bags. I asked him if he was going away for the weekend. He said, ‘This is your bag! Don’t ask me what’s in it. I'm just carrying it.’

But I have to say, since then, the ministry and I have got much better at working together. For example, that big heavy bag has been largely replaced by a neat little iPad. So we can be much more flexible. And that is an absolute necessity.

We now face an enormous challenge: the European debt crisis. So once again, I have a lot of work to do. And I’m more motivated than ever. Because I don’t want the euro to collapse on my watch while I’m Minister of Finance!

Ladies and gentlemen,

if you want to reach your goal, you have to seize every opportunity you get. If you sit about, you’ll miss the boat. You have to make your own luck. So do it the Rotterdam way. Don’t be afraid of new challenges. And make your career the way Jeff Bezos made his: ‘Always try to do hard things well.’

Thank you.