Rick Pastoor

Working on Rise: a calendar that gives you clarity, direction and peace of mind. Author of GRIP.

Rick Pastoor is a Dutch entrepreneur and author who co-founded Rise Technologies in May 2021.4 He is known for his work in productivity and time management, having authored the bestselling book "Grip" in 2019.1

Career Background

Rick's entrepreneurial journey began early, starting a comic book production in primary school.1 He later co-founded a web development company while studying at Christelijke Hogeschool Windesheim, where he earned his bachelor's degree between 2005 and 2010.5

Experience at Blendle

Prior to co-founding Rise Technologies, Rick was one of the first employees at Blendle, a New York Times-backed journalism startup.2 At Blendle, he served as the Head of Product, where he developed his ideas on productivity and time management.

Author of "Grip"

In 2019, Rick self-published "Grip" in Dutch, which became an overnight bestseller in the Netherlands.1 The book offers a flexible collection of tools and insights to help people make smarter decisions about their time, drawing from his experiences at Blendle.

Rise Technologies

As co-founder of Rise Technologies, Rick has been involved in developing productivity tools, including the Rise Calendar Application.6 However, on January 22, 2024, Rick announced that he was stepping down from his role as co-founder and designer at Rise Technologies after a three-year journey.3

Current Focus

Rick currently divides his time between his young family in Amsterdam, giving talks on "Grip," writing a weekly newsletter titled "Work in Progress," and exploring new startup opportunities.1

Highlights

Nov 18 · twitter

This single feature saves my face multiple times per day

Oct 17 · twitter

I find it fascinating how much we focus on personal productivity and completely ignore how we organize things in our teams. Questions like 'who is focusing on what? What are our biggest priorities right now? Where in the team do we have the biggest bottleneck in achieving those priorities?' are almost always based on whatever one leader has heard. Anecdotal stuff.

And all of this becomes even more important when AI agents enter the mix: it's crucial for those systems to be able what everyone is working towards. I loved how Toby Lütke said it in the Conversations with Tyler podcast: our tools need to become much more goal-oriented, since that will give our AI assistants and agents the opportunity to follow along and help us out.

We've been spending time on some of these larger themes at Rise and I've never been more excited about that direction, but also in small ways we are already contributing to this problem: having the ability to see all ongoing projects, their milestones and tasks in calendars of everyone in the team is such a no-brainer when you see it. I'd feel I'm flying blind without it at this point :)

How are you currently organizing this higher level perspective of direction at work? Would love to see some good examples!