About
Who I am
I'm Ewoud Mogendorff. I work with founders and SMB owners who get stuck on money, structure, or the combination. Most of us meet each other at the moment when the business still works on paper, but the numbers, the bank, or the stakeholders no longer cooperate. I know that moment from both sides.
I've raised more than €8 million across multiple engagements, €3M for Cley Distillery, roughly €5M for Buyproxy, plus public-private structures and impact financing. But what I've actually built isn't just the raising, it's the discipline to look at what's really there before deciding what shape the financing needs to take.
Why you should know the Buyproxy story
In 2024 I filed voluntary bankruptcy for Buyproxy. A fintech I'd built from zero, a payment institution licence from De Nederlandsche Bank, patented IP, a working POC with around 1,000 users, charity funds, municipalities, and 100 retailers, and close to €5M raised in loans, grants, and subsidies.
The political window closed. The next step needed to make the structure work didn't materialise. At that point there was a choice: keep going on creditors' money hoping it would turn, or pull the plug myself before burning more of their money.
I chose the second. Not the comfortable call. The right one.
I don't tell this story for sympathy or to spin it. I tell it because it shows what I do under pressure. If your business gets into rough water and I'm in there with you, I'll act the same way, facts on the table, decision made, accountability taken. That's why you can hire me for a situation that's already hard.
How I learned this work
Not from a book. Not from an MBA. By building and financing companies myself, and in a few cases watching them hit walls nobody had modelled in a spreadsheet.
A few things I picked up along the way:
- Cley Distillery (€3M). A distillery with a fundamental problem banks couldn't price, your value lives in casks that mature for years, your cashflow doesn't have those years. I redesigned the financing around asset-backed value. Investors could price it. Three years, three million.
- Buyproxy (~€5M). Described above. What I learned there about stacked financing, loans, grants, subsidies in one architecture, I still apply every week.
- MKBR methodology. A framework I developed to make societal value translatable into fundable structures. Intended for businesses where impact isn't a marketing layer but lives in the business model.
- Public-private SPVs. YesandMore, with Dennis Kerkhoven and André Knol. Designing compliance and payment structures for programmes where public and private parties need to fund something together.
- Food security and livelihood security. Engagements with Nico van Splunter, Jan de Geus, Jur Marringa. Three of my engagements were stopped by political implementation resistance, not by design failure. I name that here the way I'd name it in a first conversation.
What I believe
Three things, plainly.
Truth first. Not the version that's comfortable. The version you can make a good decision on. I don't validate a story that doesn't hold, not even to keep the room calm. Sometimes that loses me a client on the first call. That's fine.
Most business problems aren't just business problems. They're a mix of cashflow, assumptions, pressure, and behaviour. Ignoring that solves the wrong problem.
Real value is built in how you handle the things that don't go right. That's why I stay, take responsibility, and help people move forward at the moment when it actually matters.
Personal
Based in the Netherlands. Working in NL and EN, internationally where needed. Reachable on +31 6 14699752 and [email protected]. No reception, no intermediary, when you call, you get me.