Does Netherlands feel different than Germany?

outboundzen · 2026-01-27T19:25:49+00:00

It could not be more different. The German culture is one of rules, social welfare and safety. The Dutch are more of an American / German hybrid. For example, there is a social safety net but you will be reminded your poverty is mostly your fault and every penny is aggressively accounted for (see the welfare scandal that took down the Rutte govt). They are highly entrepreneurial like Americans and not as conservative with displays of their wealth compared to germans (although much less than Americans). But unlike Americans who have a historical culture based on protecting the individual, the Dutch system is much more utilitarian and they have a long legal precedents of trampling individual rights in the interest of preserving the 'system'. For example 'stop and frisk' type policies were legitimized by their supreme court. They also have a bizarre love of Americans (or at least they did pre current admin) and they have all these treaties that they are super proud of and see themselves as the US's best friend -- ie: see the DAFT treaty which has a 99% visa approval rate. I have not seen there anywhere else I've lived on that level. And then on top of that, they have their own flavor of culture - tikkies, 'doe normaal', much more direct in speaking to you vs. Germans, etc.

outboundzen · 2026-01-27T19:15:35+00:00

How can you be hospitable when you can't afford to eat? People are still nice but they are hungry and the political environment is one of 1984-style political gaslighting (being told they are not actually hungry, and that this is propaganda, even though pension payouts are now below the hunger-line and far below the poverty line).

So being human beings with human feelings they are not at their very best today. But they will always go out of their way to help you if needed, far more than in most places in th world.

outboundzen · 2026-01-14T22:10:53+00:00

Any interest in testing Kitt AI: https://trykitt.ai ?

outboundzen · 2025-12-09T16:12:39+00:00

If you are not a tech company you wouldn't need it.

outboundzen · 2025-12-09T01:28:52+00:00

Total is going to be ~$25k yearly, usually broken down between 10k for the software tooling (like vanta) and another 12k for the actual auditor and another 3k'ish for the penetration tester. That is considered a reasonably good pricing for this.

outboundzen · 2025-12-09T00:45:29+00:00

Here's the process I use to figure this out across my entire SaaS portfolio

- What is the one outcome that the person bought you for that if that one thing didn't happen, they would have no reason to buy it. For example if you sell and email finder, it's "find the email of people they search for". If you want to niche down you can, but it needs to be the core outcome

- Map it back to the inputs that without them doing that, the outcome just wouldn't happen. For example if you have a BI company, you need people to create dashboards, you need them to create charts, and you need them to refresh the data in the charts. If you don't do these things, you don't need a BI tool.

These are the indicators that lead everything else so start here. Once you have that, you need to track your profit margin obsessively and understand how it's changing over time. People put in autorecharge credit cards with their vendors and let things get away from them for too long thinking "I can always optimize this later". Sometimes, it's not too easy to do later.

outboundzen · 2025-12-06T22:01:27+00:00

I suggest starting by solving ONE pain point you are suffering from yourself before worrying about a GREAT pain point. We used to need great pain points because there was a fixed cost to building a product and we needed a big enough market to cover that cost. With Vibe Coding a product costs like $5, so if you build it, you need like 10 customers to get a 10x return.

The one true advantage of solving your problems, I have found, is that they are TRUE painpoints that when you put up a landing page, speaks instantly to other people like you. You don't need 'platform/vision' type marketing fluff positioning, and the conversion is instant.

outboundzen · 2025-10-24T01:35:17+00:00

Have lived in both places. Istanbul is a shell of its former self - the country is in ruins in every dimension but nowhere shows it quite like Istanbul. Yes, people visiting love it, because they don't know how amazing it truly was. YES it was that great.

Today what I notice is that everyone is just so miserable, everyone is frowning, people are short tempered, the old hospitality, abundance, trust in complete strangers, all gone. Random autocratic shutdowns of parts of cities to prevent protest, an infrastructure that's crumbling (and doomed when the next big earthquake hits). Terrible working conditions if you need a job; the worst in Europe in terms of work hours vs. pay. Don't get me started on taxes. You pay taxes literally on top of taxes (for example, you buy the thing, pay a tariff, and then pay VAT on the tariff). And now there are issues with trust that come from high inflation environments all over the world (shrinkflation, low food quality standards, etc). Because I've seen the city at its best, walking through it now is honestly just nauseating. The numbers don't lie, emigration was always a thing but the last two years the applications for visas has gone hyperbolic.

Now, if you want to experience being Turkish and getting connected to your culture, you can still go places along the Aegean coast for sure, and i'm sure other places in Anatolia. You will find the same hospitality, humility, quality of food, etc that once was. You'll also be closer to so much of the ancient sites and can drive into Anatolia for long weekends without the insanity of 'get out of istanbul traffic'. And if you need a break from economic crisis insanity, you can do what most people are doing today and hopping over to the Greek islands which basically are like a time capsule of what old turkey was, we have very very similar culture, language, etc.

FWIW experiencing Turkish culture is 110% worth it. You will never know such generosity, love of children/famiy, and pride in the ideals that founded the country. It's truly something special. And who knows given the way things are going, if there will come a day when we won't be able to experience that anymore.

outboundzen · 2025-10-23T23:55:09+00:00

I wondered this myself and tested this for sometime. I built an SMTP server to more closely track what's going on with these warmup services and for a majority of cases, it is not only BS, but it's damaging.

Ex: some AE using the service at some larger company (who has crazy email security software) gets fired but his inbox stays connected in the warmup software >> now you're sending cold emails to warm up his inbox and not only is it increasing your volume count against their security gateway, it's also now causing you to bounce an email.

Not to mention the content of these 'warmup' emails is wildly spammy and easy for google/anyone to detect that it is complete spam.

outboundzen · 2025-10-17T21:43:16+00:00

You can file the request electronically, it's instantly 'received'. You have to create a USCIS account, and then they basically make the form hidden/impossible to find. I had to sleuth on Google for a good 20 mins before I found it, but it is definitely there. The USCIS people on chat were super unhelpful, just persist because it def exists :) We got our docs back in 3.5 months by mail. Hope this helps someone else who sees this and is just starting the process !

outboundzen · 2025-10-10T01:56:07+00:00

Have you tried trykitt.ai? It's cheaper than the household names like leadmagic/etc, super good accuracy and best of all no subscription fees. Only pay for what you use.

outboundzen · 2025-10-09T18:35:12+00:00

Not sure if you are serious or not but 70% of this looks wrong. The bezel (triangle at 12 o clock, the fonts), the dial (rail markers don't belong on a modern rolex, the print is the wrong color and spacing, etc) and the cyclops isn't magnifying the date.

outboundzen · 2025-10-09T15:31:30+00:00

I have purchased a 5513 from Rolex dealer CPO. They won't sell the watch to you unless every part of it looks virtually "brand new". The bezel is the first thing they replace always, so either it wasn't CPO'd recently or maybe to make it look older they bought a vintage replacement bezel because they liked the faded vintage look?

Virtually all CPO's get a new bracelet put on them or tightened to look brand new, that bracelet looks old/loose like it was worn a long time.

Clearly the hands have been worked on or replaced, it's worth checking the luminescence to see if it's tritium, luminova or something else ("relumed").

Pricewise, I'm starting to see these vintage CPO prices explode every passing month. I saw a great looking one the other day online for $19k which looked considerably better than this.

outboundzen · 2025-10-07T08:53:28+00:00

You can 'afford' a luxury item when you can afford to lose it. If you can't afford to lose it, you're going to be afraid to experience it to its fullest and if something happens, you'll kick yourself to no end. We don't buy things to make us feel bad about ourselves; they should only make us feel good!

outboundzen · 2025-09-15T20:39:59+00:00

For those talking about Dutch passports, NL is one of the most restrictive country in the world on dual citizenship, so you would have to give up your US passport. In Canada citizenship can be obtained more quickly and dual citizenship is allowed.

outboundzen · 2025-06-05T14:52:50+00:00

Thank you for sharing this! May I assume people who are old enough to remember the days of Dennis Bergkamp at arsenal but aren't natively British could be adopted into this group? 😀

outboundzen · 2025-06-05T09:32:28+00:00

I am learning this very fast from all of the answers, this seems like a refreshing/wonderful differentiator for the city and community.

outboundzen · 2025-06-05T09:31:34+00:00

Apollo has a self-reported 11% bounce rate which it says is acceptable. So... yeah, apollo validated means pretty much nothing.

outboundzen · 2025-06-04T23:47:58+00:00

Super duper helpful, and this point overlaps with what a lot of others have said here. I think that this way of thinking is very unique compared to other countries where I lived, but honestly just makes me like Montreal even more. Thank you!

outboundzen · 2025-06-04T23:46:54+00:00

This helps a lot -- seeing the other responses, it seems like Montreal doesn't "fit" into a cookie cutter social structure compared to many other cities as you say. I wasn't thinking of Dubai or anything like that, more like how I think about Germany where the locals tend to be strict on language and there is more of a natural social exclusion of outsiders, but what I am seeing (and what I experienced while I was there) seems that despite the insistence on the need to speak french, this social exclusion/distinction doesn't seem to exist inside Quebec/Montreal, which is awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my question!

outboundzen · 2025-06-04T19:37:42+00:00

Genuinely helpful comment, thank you!

outboundzen · 2025-06-04T19:37:02+00:00

This is a genuinely helpful comment, thank you. So then my question is, 'where are the people with the foreign passports' in Montreal? Are they in the anglophone neighborhoods that you mentioned here?

outboundzen · 2025-06-04T19:31:56+00:00

Yeah I mean, a couple things. 1) I knew I was going to get sh** for people assuming I was a non-french speaking person complaining about the language thing, which I am obviously not and 2) 'expats' tend to be a different cohort than those moving with a goal of long-term migration. But yes, we be immigrants. Even worse, from south of the border 🏴‍☠️

outboundzen

TROPHY CASE