Twenty-five years ago, this UvA professor created Startpagina — and became a millionaire
A quarter of a century ago, UvA teacher and student Durk Jan de Bruin sold his immensely popular website Startpagina.nl and became a millionaire. But stop working? That’s not for this internet pioneer. “Retirement is the worst word there is.”
The name “Startpagina” (Homepage) will evoke nostalgia in many people over the age of thirty. Around the turn of the century, the website with small boxes full of links to all kinds of news pages and web shops, but without images, attracted millions of visitors.
Founder Durk Jan de Bruin, now a subject didactics lecturer and educational master’s student at the University of Amsterdam, filled a gap that had not yet been filled by search engines like Google. It made him one of the first internet entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and a millionaire when he sold it twenty-five years ago this month.
The adventure began when he took evening classes in computer science in the early 90s, he says: “At the time, it was still at the faculty of mathematics in Leiden, one of the first universities where it was possible. That’s where I encountered web browsers and HTML, which you could use to view and create websites. Nobody outside the university had that at the time, but I immediately saw the potential in it.”
Online maze
The internet later became available at home too, “but you had to pay by the minute, and downloading something took hours,” says de Bruin. There was no Google yet, which made the internet chaotic, he says: “a library where an earthquake had taken place. People read ‘top 10 best websites’ lists in magazines to find their way online.”
When his father got internet, he therefore built him a “remote control for the web”. According to De Bruin, it was a “simple page with some links” so that he could look up “what the weather would be like and what was on TV. That eventually became Startpagina.nl.”
After secondary school, Durk Jan de Bruin (1963) studied mechanical engineering at a technical college and worked for the aircraft manufacturer Fokker when he started an evening course in computer science at Leiden University in 1990. After completing his studies in 1997, he founded Startpagina.nl in September 1998. He sold the website in April 2000 for an estimated 30 million guilders to the publishing group VNU. After selling Startpagina.nl, he founded MijnWinkel.nl, which allowed individuals and entrepreneurs to set up their own webshop or payment system.
In 2008, De Bruin and journalist Huib van der Stam published the book “Van zolderkamer tot miljoenenbusiness” (From a spare room to a million-dollar business) about his formula for success and that of other internet entrepreneurs. He sold MijnWinkel.nl in December 2012.
In 2016, he started an Educational Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam. He has since completed that master's degree and the Educational Master’s in Mathematics. He will complete the Educational Master’s in Physics in the summer of 2025. De Bruin lives with his wife in Haarlem and, in addition to his work at the University of Amsterdam, is a teacher at a secondary school in Alkmaar and captain of a ferry across the Spaarne.
Scoring a hit
De Bruin then built up his company like tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook did, without a “business plan or premises on the Keizersgracht”, he says: “In the beginning, I secretly set Startpagina up on my secretary’s computer at work. And on computers in shops, while pretending I wanted to buy them. Startpagina only had nine visitors at the time. But I was just fooling around, and suddenly I was a success. Like an artist who suddenly has a hit song. Later we added discussion forums, so that you could also ask questions about your broken exhaust on the BMW homepage. Once a year we got together, and then I would give a speech in front of three hundred people.”
According to Durk-Jan, all of them earned extra money as volunteers through advertisements. “Some pages generated a lot of money, such as the mortgage homepage. We were number one in the Netherlands, so I started selling the order of links in the blocks. According to him, companies like Bol.com even negotiated who would be “at the top”.
De Bruin was “busy day and night with the website” and cleverly responded to current events. “When I was in Portugal with friends and heard about the fireworks disaster in Enschede, we created a Startpage forum about it like crazy. People went there to look for each other after the disaster. Only then did I see how big and important it had become. At its peak, we had five million visitors a day, which is absolutely enormous.”
No early retirement
The downside of the success was that people started stealing his website design, De Bruin says. “I had to deal with lawyers, while I would rather have been creative. Then I read that VNU wanted to invest in internet sales. I emailed them with the idea of working for them, but when they heard that I had Startpagina, things started to happen. At a certain point, it's about amounts that make you think: if I sell this now, I won’t have to work for the rest of my life.”
But stop working? “After I set up an e-commerce company after Startpagina and sold it again, I had a little ‘pre-retirement’, but it wasn't for me.” Unlike Zuckerberg, he has no interest in sports cars, he says matter-of-factly: “My father set up Amnesty International Netherlands, so I wasn't raised to drive Lamborghinis.” He adds with a laugh: “he would have been terribly embarrassed if I had done so.”
Around 2016, he was impressed during a course by how well his teachers “could ask questions and listen, and had built up skills over the years”. So after attending an open day at a secondary school, Durk Jan had found a new goal: to become a teacher. “I discovered that a new program to become a computer science teacher would be starting at the University of Amsterdam and I had one week left to apply. I thought: this is a sign from the universe. I called, told them my story and was accepted on the spot.”
AI tutors
De Bruin has now almost completed his third Educational Master’s degree and teaches trainee teachers at the University of Amsterdam two days a week.
When he starts talking about his vision of Artificial Intelligence in (UvA) education, the passionate internet pioneer of the 90s comes out in him. “I always find new developments super interesting and my gut feeling tells me that AI is going to change education enormously.” He talks about ‘AI tutors’, systems that can give students one-on-one instruction. “Sooner or later, they will become very good and have a talent for teaching. I can imagine sitting in the car, telling one of these tutors that I want to practice Spanish, and that they will know exactly how to teach me using questions and answers while I'm driving somewhere.”
He therefore hopes for a change of thinking in education. “When I discuss AI with other teachers, they sometimes complain that nothing is learned anymore because of AI. Then I think: as a teacher, consider how many opportunities there are to take your lessons to the next level with the help of AI.”
In a flow
De Bruin is now over sixty. Does that mean retirement is on the horizon? “Retirement is the worst word there is,” he says firmly. “Look, I did Startpage on top of a full-time job. Then you’re in a flow, you come home energized and you just feel good.”
Even when he comes home from his internship or UvA days? De Bruin’s eyes begin to twinkle: “When I come home from teaching, I sometimes have more energy than when I left.” What is the reason for that? “It’s because of all the people you meet on a day like that. If you sit behind a computer all day, you might be exhausted, but at a school...”
He makes a “sideways leap” to when he trained for a marathon, of which he has now run 200: “I didn’t get anywhere, but when I ran into an old friend and had a chat with him, I was bursting with energy. So I get energy from the people around me, especially from the students and colleagues in education.” So for the time being, he is not thinking about slowing down. “I'm busier now than ever!”
