Esther Gons is the founder and managing partner of NEXT Amsterdam. She is the author of The Corporate Startup; How established companies can develop successful innovation ecosystems. Winner of the 2019 Golden Axiom Business Book Award and the 2018 Management Book Of The Year Award. Published world-wide and translated in Dutch, Indonesian and Japanese.
Esther is an international speaker on topics of corporate innovation, innovation accounting, entrepreneurship, startups, lean methodology, business models and customer development. She has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and mentored over several hundred startups so far, e.g. as lead mentor in the Rockstart Accelerator programmes, Lean Startup Machine and Evolv weekends.
Together with Timan Rebel, she is also an investor in several startups such as Cocoon, Studycredits and Butleroy where she invests with cash and access to her custom made 2-year accelerator program for startups.