There’s this Silicon Valley myth, isn't there? The one about a lone genius in a garage, living on instant noodles and big ideas, who suddenly creates something world-changing.  This is NOT one of those stories.  Or at least wasn’t initially.

This story starts with Patrick van der Mijl and Erwin van der Vlist — and it doesn’t begin in a garage. It begins in a Dutch supermarket, probably somewhere near the produce section, with the quiet hum of fridges in the background and the constant rhythm of customers coming and going. And a growing frustration with how hard it was to keep their teams on the same page.

Where it all started: frontline communication wasn’t working

Their story, or rather the story of Speakap, a frontline employee experience platform, doesn’t start with a grand vision to change the world. It starts with a much smaller, far more relatable goal: fixing a daily frustration that was making work harder than it needed to be. Back then, Patrick and Erwin weren’t founders; they were supermarket managers. And the internal communication within the supermarket — like for so many other frontline teams — was running on outdated tools, scattered updates, and the faint hope that important information would somehow reach the people who needed it most.

"Every day was just another round of playing catch-up," Patrick says, not dramatically, just stating the obvious. "We weren’t improving store comms — we were just trying to stop things from falling apart."

Schedules were a mess, updates were missed, and sick-day replacements were an endless string of phone calls. The frontline—the people serving customers, keeping the store running—were sadly somehow always the last to know what’s going on. Patrick and Erwin were living this exact reality. And one day, they had the thought that would change everything: “Why isn’t there a tool for this?”.

So they did what any reasonable, deeply annoyed person would do: they decided to build a fix themselves.

Turning an idea into something real 

Their first version wasn't some sleek, venture-backed masterpiece. It was called—and you have to appreciate the glorious lack of marketing spin here—"Supermarket Central." It did exactly what they needed it to do: it made accessing schedules easier, made it simple to share news and updates, and allowed employees to actually talk to each other without having to decipher a stained memo. 

And because it solved a real, tangible problem, it spread. Not through a "synergistic growth-hacking strategy", but through other supermarket managers hearing about it and saying, "Oh, I need that. I desperately need that." They got 50 clients in a year, basically through word-of-mouth. 

Then things got serious. An angel investor showed up. This is the turning point in every one of these stories, isn’t it? The moment the clever side project has to decide if it wants to be a real company when it grows up. 

For Patrick and Erwin the choice was clear and that choice meant quitting their jobs, pooling their money, and renaming the thing. ("Supermarket Central" is great, but it has its limits.) They rebranded as Speakap and took the leap. It wasn’t easy. Startups weren’t “a thing” yet, and resources were tight. But their belief in solving real-world communication problems kept them going. 

The truth is, communication alone wasn’t enough anymore 

For years, Speakap made a name for itself in retail, hospitality, manufacturing, and other frontline industries by delivering on what companies actually needed: clear, timely communication; simplified scheduling access and engagement that didn’t feel forced. 

However, 2020 marked the tipping point. If you’ve tracked workplace trends, you know what happened. The world of work got… complicated to say the least. 

The pandemic happened, and suddenly every company on earth discovered "digital transformation." For office workers, that meant Zoom calls and Slack channels. For the frontline, it meant something else entirely: an explosion of disconnected tools. 

One app for chatting. One for HR. One for training. One for safety updates. Another for onboarding. And so forth. The chaos hadn’t disappeared—it had just gone digital. 

"We saw it shifting from a communication problem to an experience problem," Patrick explains. And he was right. The problem wasn’t just a lack of information anymore, it was digital whiplash.

From internal comms to employee experience 

So Speakap evolved. It became more than a messaging tool—it became a full employee experience platform. Not because "employee experience platform" was the hot new buzzword, but because it was just the logical next step. It was, again, about fixing a real, annoying problem: making the digital side of the frontline work less of a mess. 

Now, Speakap brings it all into one easy-to-use employee experience platform. 

It’s a single hub where new hires are guided through personalized employee journeys. Where a built-in knowledge base means answers are always one tap away — whether it’s the latest safety procedure or the new seasonal promotion. Where task management is part of the same space frontline employees use to read updates, recognise colleagues, and check their schedules. And with workforce analytics, comms leaders can finally see what’s working, spot gaps before they become problems, and understand how frontline engagement connects to performance on the ground. 

The heart of the story? It’s a marathon, not a sprint 

With offices from Amsterdam to New York, Speakap is helping many organizations globally (such as Rank Group, Nike, Penn Entertainment, Basic-Fit, GEODIS, Domino’s, de Bijenkorf, Eiffage, Gamma, G-Star Raw and many more) that you’ve definitely heard of, in more than 100 countries. Which is pretty wild for a concept that started because two guys were tired of the inefficiency of internal comms in a supermarket. 

While the past 15 years have brought incredible growth, we’re just getting started. Our mission isn’t to coast. It’s to keep building, solving, and redefining what it means to work. 

As our CEO & Founder Patrick always says “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” So, here’s to creating frontline employee experiences that inspire. 

Anyway, that’s the story. It’s about two guys who weren’t trying to change the world.  They were simply trying to figure out who was working the Tuesday closing shift. 

And in doing so, they built something that's actually, genuinely useful. Funny how that works, right?

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