Most companies treat customer experience like a relay race. Pass the customer from onboarding to support to success and hope nothing breaks.
I build the operating system that connects them—with roadmaps, not wishlists.
Where each interaction doesn’t just solve today’s problem. It prevents tomorrow’s.
You don’t rise to the level of your growth goals. You fall to the level of your experience systems.
The Problem With Relay Races
Your current customer journey looks like this: Marketing hands off to Sales. Sales hands off to Onboarding. Onboarding hands off to Support. Support hands off to Success. Success hands off to… more Support.
Each handoff creates friction. Each team optimizes for their own metrics. The customer gets lost in the gaps.
The result? You’re constantly fighting fires instead of preventing them.
How Flywheels Actually Work
Here’s what I learned building my own: Each component should feed the others.
Momentum compounds.
My flywheel in action:
- I started curating security research for myself (Intelligence).
- Shared the best finds on X (Community).
- Readers asked questions, so I wrote better explanations (Education).
- That became searchable content (Knowledge).
- Happy subscribers brought friends (Customer Marketing).
- Better content improved onboarding for new readers (Activation).
Now Hive Five runs itself while growing monthly with 4,500+ subscribers.
Your flywheel should work the same way:
- Great onboarding creates confident users who engage in community
- Active community members become your best educators
- Good education reduces support tickets
- Self-service knowledge improves onboarding
- Customer marketing amplifies what’s working
- Intelligence orchestrates it all
Each fix improves everything else.
How This Actually Works
I don’t just map your flywheel and wish you luck. I operate like a PM for your CX:
Strategy:
- 90-day prevention roadmap with experiments, not hunches
- Channel ownership matrix showing who fixes what
- Shared KPIs that ladder to company goals
Execution:
- Cross-functional pod with decision frameworks
- Weekly operating rhythm that actually ships fixes
- Monthly prevention drops, not “ongoing improvements”
Handoff:
- Your team runs the pod without me
- Full knowledge transfer and documentation
- I’m available for strategic guidance
One improvement lifts everything. That’s the operating system in action.
My Origin Story (Or: How I Learned Systems Thinking)
Born in the 80s in a small Dutch village. Part Dutch, part Indonesian. Always wanted to help people, just didn’t know how.
My dad was an early digital pioneer. Once we had a computer, I was hooked. It felt like an extension of my being.
My brother and I learned DOS and Windows 3.11.
Then the web came along and I dove into Dreamweaver, HTML tables, inline CSS.
What I discovered: The best systems anticipate problems instead of reacting to them.
Whether it’s hitting every green light on your commute, debugging code before it breaks production, or finding security holes before hackers do—prevention beats reaction every time.
This became my obsession—and my operating model.
Whether I’m architecting a community for 100,000+ members, fixing onboarding that makes customers confident instead of confused, or standing up a cross-functional pod to route problems upstream, the pattern is the same:
Build systems that prevent problems before they become tickets.
Why My Perspective Is Different
I’ve been on both sides of every handoff that usually fails:
- Built front-ends that users actually enjoyed → I understand Onboarding & Activation
- Fixed back-ends breaking at 2 AM → I know how Intelligence & Orchestration should work
- Broke into systems by thinking like a hacker → I see where Knowledge & Self-Service gaps create vulnerabilities
- Designed flows that felt intuitive → I architect Customer Marketing & Lifecycle journeys
- Managed communities from 100 to 100,000+ members → I build Community & Peer Support that scales
- Launched features with proper documentation → I create Education & Enablement that sticks
- Led cross-functional pods from concept to execution → I build operating systems with clear ownership, not org charts
The difference: I don’t just understand customer experience. I understand the technical systems that make it possible, and the human psychology that makes it work.
The CX Flywheel Framework
Most companies optimize for the wrong metrics: more features, faster responses, shinier interfaces.
What if we optimized for momentum instead?
Here’s my 6-component flywheel:
- Onboarding & Activation → Get users to their first success moment
- Community & Peer Support → Let customers help each other (and you learn from their questions)
- Education & Enablement → Turn common questions into scalable content
- Knowledge & Self-Service → Make answers findable when people need them
- Customer Marketing & Lifecycle → Amplify what’s working, guide what’s next
- Intelligence & Orchestration → Connect the dots, route problems upstream
The magic: Each component feeds the others. Fix onboarding, and you get better community questions. Improve education, and self-service gets smarter. Optimize lifecycle messaging, and onboarding converts better.
One improvement lifts everything.
The Work That Matters
I’ve architected these flywheels for massive live hacking events, 100,000+ member communities, and companies from lean startups to tech unicorns.
But here’s what I’m most proud of:
- Onboarding flows that create confident users instead of confused ones
- Communities that solve problems before they become tickets
- Education that prevents issues instead of just explaining them
- Self-service that empowers instead of frustrates
- Customer marketing that guides instead of just promotes
- Intelligence systems that route problems to prevention, not just resolution
The Real Cost of Broken Systems
People don’t just buy or use software. They hire it to do a job.
Your customer hired your product to help them look smart in Monday’s meeting. To ship their project on time. To not get woken up at 3 AM by alerts. To feel confident they made the right choice.
When your experience gets in the way of their job, you’re not creating friction. You’re preventing their success.
Every broken flow is someone staying late to fix what should have worked.
Every confusing interface is someone second-guessing themselves in front of their team.
Every missing piece of documentation is someone feeling incompetent when they’re actually capable.
Great customer experience isn’t just about delight. It’s about empowerment.
Why Prevention Beats Reaction
Think about scanning items with your phone and walking straight out of the store—no receipt check because the system knows you paid. Or Domino’s pizza tracker turning waiting into anticipation. Or error messages that connect you to helpful communities instead of dead ends.
These aren’t accidents. They’re systems designed around what people actually need to feel capable and confident.
The math is simple: Remove friction, add momentum, watch everything else compound.
Building Your Flywheel
I don’t just fix broken customer experiences. I engineer systems where fixing one thing improves everything else.
Where your community becomes an extension of your support team.
Where your documentation writes itself from real questions.
Where your onboarding improves because your lifecycle messaging gets smarter.
Where your customers succeed so consistently that they can’t imagine using anything else.
Ready to turn your customer experience challenges into competitive advantages?
I operate like a PM for your CX—with roadmaps, experiments, and ownership matrices.
I specialize in problems that seem obvious in hindsight but somehow keep happening anyway.
Let’s build your operating system.
P.S. - I also run Hive Five, a weekly newsletter connecting security research, AI developments, and tools with the human side of tech. 4,500+ subscribers from companies like AWS, Google, and Microsoft look forward to it every week. It’s my flywheel in action—and proof that these systems work.
