Same playbook, new market

Experienced founders with a niche they know well, real ownership in their own hands, and our capital, expertise, and network of more than 45 companies behind them. That is how co-founding has worked since the beginning, and we’re running it the same way in the Netherlands. The model traveled to Amsterdam as it stands, pointed at a new market.

“I’m happy to see the co-founding model working in the Netherlands exactly like in earlier markets”, says Samuli Savo, Chief Ventures Officer at Reaktor. “Experienced founders with real ownership, backed by capital and knowledge.”

Two experts who reached the same conclusion at the same time

Mark and Erik came to the same market from different sides, across sales leadership and building new business from scratch. They knew the buyers, the delivery problems, and the distance between what enterprises get sold and what they can actually run. The conversation with us turned a long-held dream into a company with a name.

As Erik and Mark both put it:

“It has been a long standing dream to own a consultancy company. A company where quality, knowledge sharing, the team and customers are all key ingredients to create meaningful success. In the era of AI we both thought it was the right time to go all in with our own company.”

Three layers of technology under one roof

Enterprise AI programs usually arrive split up. A platform partner runs the cloud, a software partner builds the application, a data partner handles the models, and the client is left holding the seams together. GAIA Technology Systems carries all three in one team, under one roof, so the infrastructure decision, the software, and the models get made by the same people.

What that team gets asked to build is the question Mark and Erik put first.

“Our vision for GAIA is Intelligence with a purpose. We want to build AI that makes a real difference for an organization, which means being deliberate about what gets built and how. That only works if excellence is the starting point: sharing knowledge inside the team and with clients, keeping the customer at the center, standing behind the quality of the work, and playing as a team.”

From left: Mark Booster, Erik Meijer

Ownership without going it alone

An experienced Dutch consultant has really only had two routes. Stay inside a large firm and build value on someone else’s balance sheet, or go it alone and carry every risk personally. A third route exists elsewhere, where a partner who puts in capital, takes a minority stake, and leaves control with the founders. Elsewhere, however, that route has already produced more than 45 companies together with Reaktor Ecosystem.

In practice the model covers the unglamorous half of starting a company. Structure, governance, finance, and legal work are in place before the first client conversation, so the founders spend their own time on clients and delivery.

“Reaktor Ecosystem lets us make the leap without building every framework, process, and governance structure ourselves, which is a huge jump start,” says Erik. “From the first conversation to the incorporation of the company, Reaktor Ecosystem stood side by side with us to create the best possible foundation for a new consultancy.”

Why the Netherlands is interesting for the ecosystem

The Dutch market is full of senior professionals with deep niches, but investors rarely walk in as a co-founding partner, which makes it an open field for the Reaktor Ecosystem model.

There is no shortage of capital here. The Netherlands is one of Europe’s largest venture markets, and Amsterdam and Rotterdam both have an active venture studio scene that co-founds companies from scratch. Nearly all of that money and structure points at product companies, SaaS, fintech, marketplaces, and deep tech, where the return arrives from something that scales without adding people. An expert services company has sat outside that thesis, and few investors in the Netherlands put capital into professional services. The route that almost 2 million registered self-employed professionals in this country already know is doing it alone.

The hub also puts capability where Reaktor’s own clients in the region need it.

“This is a great day for Reaktor’s ecosystem venture business and its international expansion. Our model travels, and this is a great proof. GAIA Technology Systems adds Netherlands-based AI-native delivery capabilities to support Reaktor locally as well,” says Pekka Horo, CEO of Reaktor Group.

Amsterdam is where we build next

Company number one in the Netherlands is live, and the hub exists to build more. Helsinki and Amsterdam are both open, and the ecosystem now spans more than 45 companies in over ten countries.

“We were familiar with co-founding as a model, though not with Reaktor Ecosystem,” says Mark. “As the first Dutch company in the ecosystem, we can hopefully pave the way for the ones that follow. The Finnish culture clicks fantastically with the Dutch culture, and we’re proud to be the first Dutch company in the ecosystem.”

That said, if you’re a founder in the Netherlands weighing whether to build your own consultancy, talk to us.

From left: Samuli Savo, Riikka Uimonen

About GAIA Technology Systems

GAIA Technology Systems is an AI-native software development consultancy based in Amsterdam, bringing cloud infrastructure, software engineering, and data and AI under one delivery model. It was co-founded in 2026 by Mark Booster and Erik Meijer together with Reaktor Ecosystem, and is the first company co-founded out of the Amsterdam hub.

Mark Booster, CEO, GAIA Technology Systems BV

+31 6 10779001

[email protected]