Brend Kouwenhoven is the founder and CEO of Travis, a service which offers smart pocket translators powered by AI. It allows travelers and international professionals to communicate to anyone, anywhere.
Early life and education
Brend Kouwenhoven was born in 1978 and raised in a small town of Zevenhuizen, The Netherlands. Kouwenhoven’s mother was a teacher, and being a teacher, she taught Kouwenhoven from early on to collaborate with anyone, regardless of their background or beliefs.
Kouwenhoven earned a degree in economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 2002.
Early career
Brend Kouwenhoven was a student assistant at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1997. As a student, Kouwenhoven had the challenge and the privilege to design and implement the integrative trimester for Business Economics for the entire propaedeutic phase. Kouwenhoven wrote syllabi, coordinating business economics teachers, organizing lectures, and involving external speakers. Kouwenhoven left in 1999.
In October 1999, after serving at EUR, Kouwenhoven became a sales consultant and trainer at IFK. Kouwenhoven developed new sorts of training and information support systems. Selling them and training users. Kouwenhoven left IFK in October 2002 and became a Political Advisor of State Secretary of Finance Netherlands at Ministry of Finance. Kouwenhoven worked the liaison between parliament and State Secretary. Kouwenhoven left the Ministry of Finance in August 2003.
In August 2003, Kouwenhoven worked as sales and development manager at IFK. Kouwenhoven searched new markets for our content within the financial services sector, which is provided via training, workshops, publications, and eLearning. The process is primarily focused on using ICT for better information and knowledge transfer. Kouwenhoven remained the company until June 2006.
In January 2004, Kouwenhoven became a project manager at Project Bureau Operatie Jong. This project is created to get a better youth policy through the cooperation of six ministries related to youth policy, and above all defining a new structure for long term security of good youth policy and the optimal governmental structure supporting the youth. Within this theme, Kouwenhoven managed several projects, mainly with a focus on information transfer and cooperation until February 2006.
In December 2005, Kouwenhoven was also a managing partner at Personele Diensten Groep. Kouwenhoven advised on and creation of innovative HR-solutions and making them happen, from new initiatives to change projects for big existing companies until October 2007. In November 2006, Kouwenhoven became a Senior Consultant at Antartic Real Estate, a specialist in structuring your real estate, plan development, rural estate, and creating solutions in complex situations. Kouwenhoven remained the company until January 2010.
In December of the same year, Kouwenhoven also worked as a Business Partner and Senior Consultant at Etude Services, a business facilitator until January 2010. In stuck circumstances, his team search for non-conventional solutions and make them happen or support new ideas to get started and financed. In February 2007, Kouwenhoven became Etude Service BV’s Business Partner until December 2011. In 2008, Kouwenhoven was a Program Advice Team and Account Manager at Your World until 2009. As a Program Advice Team, Kouwenhoven supported and advised on realizing the program for Your World. Kouwenhoven was also a partner and project leader at Alfa Film Services until 2012.
In June 2010, Kouwenhoven worked at The Greenery in various roles until December 2013. In July 2014, Kouwenhoven became a Project Manager at Golden Gate Ventures in The Netherlands until 2015. Kouwenhoven served as Programming Leader at CIC NL / Venture Café Rotterdam. In February 2016, Kouwenhoven was a founding partner of Connect.Rotterdam, a digital community which aims to help realize the ambitions of foreign and Dutch SME’s (3-250 employees), potential and already established businesses in the Rotterdam area by offering information, connections, services, and exposure 24 hours a day.
Travis the Translator
The idea came up in December 2016, where they were having drinks in Rotterdam. They were brainstorming ideas for new companies. They talked about the international contexts they were running in, where many people use English as the standard language. At some point, they understood that the better you’re at speaking a global language like English or Spanish, the more opportunities you have. Then one of them asked: “What if there would be no language barriers? What if everyone could understand everyone?” That idea knocked them from their feet.
In early 2017, Kouwenhoven, Lennart van der Ziel, and Nick N.M. Yap launched Travis the Translator project on Indiegogo: a portable translation device provided with the best translation engines as to ensure the best translation on the spot. At this time, they only had some designs and a simple website. They only wanted to test whether people wanted to buy a device, or if we were complete fools thinking they might.
Within 72 hours, they had hit their target of $80,000. In the following nine months, they managed to get pre-orders for over $1.8 million. From then on, they focused on producing a great product into their backers’ hands, which meant making 13,000 devices and shipping them to every corner of the world within five months.
Travis has managed to sell 630,000 euros worth of products through Indiegogo in a month. That amount amounted to 1.9 million during the entire campaign. Travis also has accomplished four software update, shipped to over 100 countries, 300 devices donated by their community for aid organizations OLE and MotG, $300,000 donated to Travis Foundation, and launched to digitize lesser resource languages for Travis Foundation.
Kouwenhoven served as the company’s COO until December 2017 and became the CEO until November 2018. Since November 2017, Kouwenhoven has been Travis’ Chairman of the Board, Lennart van der Ziel as the CEO and Nick N.M. Yap as the VP innovation.
Other Ventures
Brend Kouwenhoven is currently a founding partner of Heptagon Square in Rotterdam Area, the Netherlands since November 2018, and owner of BK360° since 2014.