Bodi Kuypers

Why this persona fits the audience

He runs a 2-person startup in Amsterdam building a pickup basketball and futsal app for local courts. He codes most of the front end himself in Next.js and Tailwind CSS, tracks court partners in spreadsheets, and has never paid for a UI component library.

• Age: 28
• Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Occupation: Founder
• Income: €48k draw + equity
• Education: Bachelor's in Economics
• Company size: 2
• Years in role: 1.5

“I built this because I kept showing up to courts and seeing the same problem: no one knew who was playing when. Now I’m stuck building a company to solve a problem that didn’t need to exist.”

Bodi Kuypers grew up in Utrecht, where his love of pickup sports began in high school, playing basketball in the streets and futsal on tabletops. He studied economics at the University of Amsterdam, where he met his co-founder in a startup club, bonding over shared frustration with existing sports scheduling tools. After a brief stint at a fintech startup (where he hated the bureaucracy), he left to build his own app for pickup sports. His approach is deeply hands-on: he coded the frontend himself, preferring to learn Next.js and Tailwind CSS rather than hire a designer. He’s philosophically opposed to paying for UI component libraries, seeing them as wasteful for his bootstrapped budget. His most recent decision was to overhaul the app’s matchmaking algorithm after noticing users dropped off due to poor partner suggestions—now he’s stuck in a cycle of testing new versions at local courts. He’s thriftier than his co-founder, insisting on tracking every euro in a shared spreadsheet, even as it sprawls into hundreds of columns. His motto is ‘move fast and fix things later,’ which explains both his app’s rough edges and his ability to iterate quickly. He’s at his best on the court, where he’s a vocal but fair player, and at his worst when forced into investor pitches, where he’ll nervously crack jokes about his app’s humble goals. His biggest fear isn’t failure, but becoming the kind of founder who loses touch with the users.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Bodi starts at 6 AM with a 20km ride to a gym in Oud-Zuid, where he lifts and runs sprints before showering and grabbing a katzenjammer from a nearby bakery. By 8:30, he’s at Café de Klos, coding the app’s scheduling UI. At noon, he meets a potential beta tester at a court in Bos en Lommer to demo the app and play a pickup game. Back at his desk by 2 PM, he spends the afternoon fixing bugs and adding features, pausing to eat a bitten at his keyboard. Dinner is his last takeout meal of the week—this time, Indonesian rijsttafel—and he brings it back to his desk to tweak the app’s matchmaking algorithm. At 11 PM, he crashes on his futon, laptop half-open to debug logs.

Lifestyle

Bodi lives in a minimalist studio that doubles as his home office, with a fold-out futsal table as his desk when he’s not at a café. His routines revolve around early morning cycling to a public gym or outdoor court, often solo or with a rotating cast of playing partners he coordinates via old-school WhatsApp groups. He eats most meals from a rotating set of three local takeout spots, prioritizing convenience and affordability. His social life is a mix of sports buddies, occasional startup meetups, and family video calls with his parents in Utrecht. He’s healthy but neglects doctor visits until problems become urgent. His money habits are frugal by design: he’s philosophically opposed to SaaS subscriptions unless they directly pay for themselves, which colors everything from his startup expenses to his personal software choices. Weekends are split between coding marathons, scrimmages, and long bike rides along the Amstel.

Work life

Bodi’s days are a mix of coding, spreadsheet wrangling, and court-hopping to gather user feedback. He works from cafés with reliable Wi-Fi (currently his favorite is a Polish restaurant with strong coffee and few distractions) and stops at courts during lunch to play pickup or observe how people use his app. His co-founder handles the backend and business development, leaving Bodi to focus on the frontend and UX. The team tracks metrics in a shared Google Sheet, a system that’s become unwieldy but he’s reluctant to replace. His biggest pressures are balancing development speed with quality and managing the startup’s limited cash reserves. He spends evenings refining UI components in Tailwind, often staying up late to implement new features he test-drives during the next day’s games.

Relationships

Bodi’s closest relationships are with his co-founder (a former classmate from Rotterdam) and a loose-knit group of sports-loving devs he met at hackathons. His parents, both teachers, are supportive but gently mock his “unconventional” career path. His sister, a corporate lawyer, is his go-to for legal advice. He’s skeptical of networking events but maintains a few key connections in the local startup scene, including a few ex-Investors who’ve offered informal mentorship. He trusts feedback from fellow sports founders more than anyone.

How they decide

He’s a researcher who makes decisions quickly once he’s confident, often sacrificing polish for speed. He avoids asking for help until a problem is severe, and he’s distrustful of systems that require long-term commitments (subscriptions, contracts, etc.).

How they sound

He speaks quickly, with a mix of Dutch-inflected English and startup jargon (“MVP,” “pivot”), but avoids buzzwords when talking to non-tech people. His humor is sarcastic but not mean, and he’ll deadpan about his own mistakes (“Yeah, the spreadsheet’s a disaster, but it’s fine until it’s not”). He avoids saying anything overly sentimental or hyperbolic—“I don’t do passion,” he’ll say when pressed about his startup.