Our team and a sixth seat at the table.

René has more than thirty years of experience building, accelerating and course correcting organizations. As the former CEO of McDonald’s Netherlands he learned what it takes to keep hundreds of locations, thousands of employees and an entire chain of suppliers aligned, every single day. Not with a polished strategy on paper, but with agreements that work just as well in a kitchen at six in the morning as they do in the boardroom.

After that he built companies of his own, guided entrepreneurs through their growth phases and wrote about what makes growth stall in practice. It is rarely the market and almost never the idea. It is the things nobody writes down: unclear priorities, a leadership team that talks about numbers instead of choices, and decisions that keep hanging because one more piece of information is always missing.

At our table René guards the human side. A system changes nothing as long as people do not change their behavior. He looks at the meeting, at who owns what, at what a team genuinely dares to do in the first week. His experience shapes how we set up a pilot: start small, show something that works quickly, and only expand once the trust is there.

In every first conversation he asks the same question. Not which technology you want, but what has to go differently on Monday morning. If there is no answer to that, it is not a project yet.

A lot of judgment about AI comes from people who never took it further than a chat window. I understand the skepticism, that comes with any new technology. But AI only gets interesting once it is connected to your systems, looking at your numbers and taking work off your hands. You can only judge something once you understand it, and understanding starts with doing.

I was already building agents and working applications for entrepreneurs when most companies were still mainly talking about it. Not in a demo environment, but where it is hardest: inside existing companies, with existing systems, existing habits and data that is rarely as tidy as it looks in a presentation.

My conviction goes against the common story. Not adopting AI is not cautious, it is more expensive. Put it off, and in two years you will be hiring people for work an agent could have done long ago. This is not about replacing people, it is about handling more with the same people. And about making work enjoyable again: once the repetitive part is gone, what is left is the work someone was hired for in the first place.

That is why I would rather build than buy tools. A stack of separate subscriptions makes you dependent on choices other people make. Every agent, every integration and every dashboard I build adds something to the same foundation. That foundation is yours, and it becomes more valuable with every step.

Within The Sixth Seat I am responsible for the platform and for the security of everything we build and host for clients.

At The Sixth Seat I am responsible for product development and for everything that actually has to run. I would rather build something small that works today than something big that might be finished six months from now. And I guard three things: that company information stays secure, that an application is understandable to more than the person who built it, and that an agent fits the rhythm of the team.

A management team only trusts an agent when the screen explains itself. Not because it looks good, but because you can see at a glance where things pinch, what is going on and which choice is on the table. That is not decoration added afterwards, that is design as part of the product.

Kosta started as a graphic designer and grew into web design and user experience. As an independent designer he helps small and mid-sized businesses build a stronger online presence, from visual design and interaction design to complete websites.

At The Sixth Seat he designs the screens a management team looks at every week: the dashboards, the reports and the site. His standard is strict and simple: a controller, a planner and a director must all three see what it says without explanation.

Storm combines high-end video production with a sharp eye for commercial results. As founder and strategist of Storm Productions he translates brand stories into convincing commercials, product videos and advertising content. He connects creativity and editing craftsmanship with insight into audiences and buying behaviour.

Innovation plays a major role in his approach. Storm uses AI for new content variants, multilingual videos and more efficient production. That is how he helps organizations test their communication, sharpen it and expand it internationally.

Within the partner network of The Sixth Seat, Storm brings together expertise in visual communication and results-driven marketing. His focus: strong content that draws attention, builds trust and contributes to more leads and sales.