Robbert Korthals

Go big or go home

Individually or as a team, I have always been pulled to games, sports, and competition. As a kid I spent hours on tennis courts and football fields, learning to set a goal and push until it sticks. That is where I picked up a simple rule: do it well, or don’t do it at all. It still anchors me today, whether I’m in a workshop or playing padel, and the mentality makes me dig deeper when things get challenging.

Strong convictions, loosely held

After studying Finance and Political-Economy, I started my career at Monitor Deloitte in Amsterdam. A very fortunate start of my career, as I learned powerful problem-solving frameworks and was given the opportunity to turn a consulting project into a last-mile delivery startup in Brazil. Living there for three years, this experience taught me some hard truths about entrepreneurship: No matter how good things look on paper, reality has a way of humbling even the best plans. After my MBA, I joined BCG Digital Ventures to put my hard-earned heuristics to the test.

What I learned first-hand in Brazil proved even more true at BCG DV: successfully launching and scaling companies is hard. Product, tech, economics, competition, talent - they all need to fall in place. But I also saw clearer patterns separating the winners, particularly the importance of having an integrated strategy. Focus, making choices, and validating key assumptions fast - these fundamentals separate success from failure.

Time for a new consulting model

My time as consultant, operator, and venture builder taught me the craft of business building, but also made me realize the limits of traditional consulting. Founders are best served by people who have been in their shoes, have scar tissue, and know how to leverage AI to sharpen judgment and boost creativity. That is the agentic capability we are building at Northlane for our clients; not to short-circuit answers, but to fundamentally raise the bar of consulting output.