Episode #13: How Pieter van der Does made Adyen one of Europe’s largest fintech unicorns

1. Owning the stack makes quality and cost reinforce each other

• After selling Bibit to Royal Bank of Scotland, van der Does initially did not expect to return to payments. Two years later, the founders’ knowledge and the remaining opportunity drew them back. Adyen began with four engineers and three founders; he alone could not code. Rather than start with small customers, they aimed to build something that outperformed and target the high end directly.

• The architectural premise was that he sees quality and cost advantages as compatible in this model. Building everything internally and connecting directly to payment endpoints would remove intermediary platforms while preserving control over performance. Owning the code also meant being able to adapt it as it aged, rather than depending on a patchwork of systems.

• Transparency was a commercial strategy. In 2006, van der Does recalls payments companies charging 3% foreign-exchange rates while merchants negotiated over a cent elsewhere. Adyen wanted CFOs comparing prices to find differences understandable. His example: merchants receiving another currency could register a bank account in that currency and settle in it, avoiding foreign-exchange costs. He wants the company’s charges to be reasonable.

2. Volume broke the enterprise sales deadlock

• Adyen’s first live transaction came in summer 2007; by 2008, the team was visiting large Silicon Valley companies that would later become customers. Some sales cycles lasted six or seven years. Those were not necessarily years of fruitless persuasion: both parties understand that the supplier is not yet ready. An intriguing product still needed a track record to handle a major merchant’s volume.

• Payments created a circular problem: without volume, Adyen lacked relevance; without relevance, merchants were difficult to win. Around 2011, Groupon/MyCityDeal brought substantial transactions across countries, improving its position with partner banks. That was when success began to look likely. Founders’ money and networked angels had financed the earlier period; its first VC arrived in 2011, also the year Adyen reached breakeven.

• The sharpest entry point was a specific overseas failure. A large subscription batch in Australia could overwhelm the merchant’s bank—not Visa or Mastercard themselves. Adyen’s direct connections and internally built infrastructure offered a way around that bottleneck. Winning one foreign market gave a small provider a credible opening with an enormous company: The prospective customer needs evidence that the supplier can solve the problem.

• Expertise and relationships made the opening accessible. Adyen’s first US hire had worked at the previous company, while payment managers exchanged experiences over industry dinners. Van der Does acknowledges that Adyen was “totally underinvesting” in marketing; knowledgeable people nevertheless recommended looking beneath the presentation. The team was called “the Navy SEALs of payment.”

3. Expansion followed merchants and took years to mature

• Point of sale grew from noticing online merchants opening physical stores, with Coolblue as van der Does’s example. Adyen’s existing infrastructure suited both channels, particularly businesses combining them. During the pandemic, store volume fell away and payments migrated online; making that transition seamless vindicated the investment. Building a mature terminal offering nevertheless took years; he thinks it was in 2021 that Adyen became a domestic US player with terminals.

• Van der Does distinguishes serving US multinationals internationally from winning domestic US business, which took more than 10 years. Some business counted as European actually came from US-headquartered merchants. Adyen had pursued the US almost from inception, rather than arriving after establishing European success. At the time of the conversation, San Francisco was its second-largest office, alongside a New York presence.

• Japan illustrates the customer-led roadmap: Microsoft wanted to use Adyen in another market, but launch required three years of technical preparation. Japan was a market requiring a more complete product before launch; the product needed to be ready. An existing international merchant provided the initial entry point. Elsewhere, expansion could mean connecting payment methods and securing licences without opening an office.

4. Building to keep changed the acquisition calculus

• Selling Bibit taught van der Does what ownership meant: he stayed for two years under a larger company making decisions he would not have made. At Adyen, the intention to remain an owner changes the decisions a founder makes. His analogy is restoring a car for sale versus driving it another 200,000 miles: hidden defects eventually become your own problem.

• Acquisition approaches began with an offer to buy the founding team and continued on the road to IPO. Rejecting an offer of 500 million was difficult when a shareholder saw an attractive return. There had been no explicit agreement never to sell. Instead, offers were discussed, while new investors and secondaries allowed existing holders to realise some of their financial success.

• Liquidity brought diminishing relief: the first secondary bought approximately two years, the next one year, the third half a year. “The medicine became less powerful” as valuation rose. Van der Does said it might be good if, at a certain point, everybody could decide for themselves what to do with their shares. Adyen would not celebrate an IPO as a destination: it changed shareholders without changing the board, and wealth arriving in earlier tranches reduced the risk of “sudden wealth syndrome.”

5. Simple shareholder rights mattered more than headline valuation

• Simplicity connected Adyen’s operating and financing choices: no acquisitions, one system, and an investor structure where existing and new shareholders gained or lost together. Van der Does’s concern with liquidation preferences was practical. During a rough patch, a protected investor might favour a low acquisition offer that returned its money while producing a poor outcome for founders and other shareholders.

• Adyen therefore offered common shares and refused investor board seats. Van der Does’s argument was that a large company would eventually need an independent board: why appoint somebody knowing you would later have to remove them? Investors would bear more risk and could price it accordingly. He concedes that granting additional rights might have secured higher valuations, but believes aligned interests helped the company progress.

• Asked whether Adyen had leverage because it did not need the money, van der Does recalls repeated refusals. The eventual investor reconsidered after being teased for failing Adyen’s sales principle, “Always be closing”: perhaps there was a price at which the terms would be acceptable. A closing gift of Au Bon Climat wine referenced ABC. He acknowledges that the financing agreement might never have come together.

• His negotiating order reverses founders who fixate on valuation and accept accompanying terms: he puts contractual terms first, then seek an acceptable price. A 90 million valuation could beat 100 million with different rights. The advice is to model scenarios and understand the consequences, rather than reject preferences categorically: “I’m not saying it’s wrong.”

6. Hiring discipline includes recognising when a leader cannot scale

• Every recruit, regardless of role, must speak with one of six board members—even an assistant in Brazil. The final interview helps prevent workload pressure from lowering the hiring bar, because weaker hires make subsequent recruitment harder. It also creates access: employees often approach the board member who interviewed them at company events because an initial relationship already exists.

• Asked whether cultural consistency risks producing sameness, van der Does points to more than 100 nationalities among more than 2,000 employees. The principle is “high acceptance of quirky people,” judged on their contribution. Adyen wants talented people with many alternatives to choose an environment they do not find frustrating.

• That environment requires managers who understand the work. A sales leader should have completed substantial deals; an engineering manager should recognise a smart technical solution. The employee may be better than the manager, but generic management expertise is insufficient. A manager needs practical competence in the work before managing the team.

• Promoting internally is a preference, not a rule; the CFO hired externally in 2011 remained on the board. Van der Does explicitly hesitates to prescribe one approach. Responsibilities sometimes outgrow a person, and waiting makes the problem bigger. Adyen tries to retain those colleagues elsewhere: a lower hierarchical position can still mean a similar remit as the company expands, and people often enjoy staying.

7. Engineers shape decisions before specifications harden

• The Adyen formula, written down in 2011, codified operating lessons rather than an inspirational mission statement engineers might immediately parody. One instruction is “pick up the phone”: email can escalate a disagreement or explain a position, but He prefers direct conversation when a problem needs resolving. Rehearsing those principles matters as much as writing them down.

• Adyen counted engineers versus commercial people in its boardroom and found too few engineers, so it invited three engineers around the CTO into discussions. The room has no door and sits beside the cafeteria. Immediate technical feedback helps avoid non-technical people deciding what technical teams should build when the demand could have been framed differently. Asked about bringing customer insight into decisions, van der Does says that is more the chief commercial officer’s and commercial team’s role.

• Engineering habits extend to management training. Rather than design and launch a complete programme, Adyen starts with a few participants whose feedback it values, then revises the content. Participants should help improve weak material rather than dismiss the course. Van der Does’s characteristic prompt is He favors beginning promptly with a small experiment.—an approach he thinks can remain viable as the company grows, though Adyen still has to prove it can avoid becoming slow and political.

8. Criticism carries an obligation to improve the company

• Van der Does told a story about stewards who were dressed as hooligans and instructed to make negative remarks, reducing the energy at a football match. He uses it to explain how someone saying “we’re no longer a startup” can dull a workforce. His practical example is a printer bearing a sticker saying it is broken again. Nobody had told the technical team, so it might have stayed broken. Posting the complaint without reporting the fault obstructed improvement; the expected contribution was to help get it repaired.

• That does not mean severe repercussions for complaining. He would explain the action’s result and ask the person to consider their contribution. Criticism is welcome when accompanied by an ambition to improve things. Employees should not stand aside as if the institution of Adyen will solve problems on its own; agreement across the group should make the behavior self-correcting.

• When less experienced people reported to him, van der Does set three options: do the task, return with a problem and ask for help, or say you will not accept it. There was no silent fourth option. Delegated tasks become the recipient’s responsibility. He does not maintain a second list tracking everything delegated; explicit ownership allowed him to stop checking.

• His dyslexia helped produce a collaborative boardroom habit: asking colleagues, including commercial or legal leaders, to check important emails. Reviewing the writing also informs them about the underlying work and improves the thinking. Adyen employees “play their cards very openly,” which requires enough comfort to accept criticism of something into which they have already put substantial effort.

9. Small experiments protect a business built for longevity

• Van der Does has “a great aversion” to uncalculated risks; entrepreneurs, he argues, take calculated ones and usually have more time than they think. Asked for convictions that proved completely wrong, he says unsuccessful trials stayed small enough to forget. Card issuing began as a test with one merchant, then reached 30,000 cards. He believes this method insulates Adyen from large failures.

• His model for enduring relevance is windsurfer Robby Naish, whom he credits with 28 world championships and reinvention across windsurfing, kitesurfing, stand-up paddleboarding and foiling. Naish admitted being late to foiling but became fantastic at it. What van der Does admires is remaining relevant over a lifetime, rather than being exceptional for one brief period.

• Longevity also includes family time, regular sport and flexible working days; colleagues might leave early and reconnect after dinner. He is relaxed about mistakes that had to be experienced to be understood. His closing advice centres on finding and accepting people who challenge you: He encourages colleagues to improve their thinking through mutual challenge.