He started out as a pioneer and now does work that contributes to a safer, more resilient society. In a challenging market, with just six people. “Some people think we do this with a staff of 50,” says Jeroen Steenbakkers (43) of Argaleo. “We most certainly don’t.” Argaleo is the cover story of Regio Business, the business magazine for the Brabant region. We are republishing the interview here in full, translated from Dutch.
“Our revenue model and our growth don’t scale linearly with headcount,” says the founder and director of the Dutch IT company with its own software house. “We believe in building once and building to scale, not building one-offs. We could take on three times as many clients tomorrow without a problem.”
Standing behind your models
That is what they have worked so hard on for the past seven years. It is not enough for the products to work well; according to Jeroen, you also need to understand where the responsibilities lie and be prepared to stand behind every calculation and model you produce. “You have to be able to explain it properly, too,” he adds. “A technical tool is still a model. It is not the system that makes the call; it is people who make the real decisions. But the system should support them as well as it possibly can. That is what we are here for.”
Solving it together
Argaleo supplies innovative systems to municipalities, safety regions and provinces, using the Digitwin platform to connect data and run analyses on it. It helps governments make better decisions about public space. Where do you build houses? Where do you put a cycle path? If a fire breaks out in a building, does it house a childcare centre? The platform also maps large-scale evacuations, for example during wildfires and floods. Argaleo is innovative, no-nonsense, and solves complex problems in a simple way. “Our strength is that we don’t sell, we think things through with our clients,” says the entrepreneur, who studied industrial engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. “We understand everyone has to make money, but in an ecosystem you solve problems together.”
Slow-moving government
The market is a challenging one. Argaleo runs into the speed, or rather the slowness, of government decision-making. And procurement rules do not always match their innovative product, for which no established process exists. That sometimes gets in the way of public-sector purchasing. “It usually works out, but it takes a lot of time,” says the engineer, who in a previous job advised UEFA and helped build Chelsea’s stadium in London. “We are growing very fast for an IT company in the government market, but in net terms that is still slow. The average lead time for a contract is eighteen months. AI, meanwhile, which lets you develop software much faster, is changing the playing field at high speed. So managing the timeline and the scale-up is challenging. Fortunately, governments increasingly realise that smart applications and data help them make better and faster decisions. They trust us and value our products. That is why I am moving to four-year contracts from now on. We need to start thinking differently. The time is right.”
Rivals at the gate
It is also time for a different attitude as an entrepreneur. A little more businesslike. “To win trust, you have to give. But I used to give a little too much. Responsible entrepreneurship demands that you toughen up, especially when your decisions affect someone else’s livelihood. I have really had to learn that. Safeguarding our success needs the same attention.” AI may open new doors, but it opens them for rivals too: the barrier to producing a new prototype is low. Jeroen: “Fortunately we have the trust of the market, we know the market, and we build unique models, algorithms and analyses. Nobody else can build this. We will stay ahead, but we have to stay sharp.”
Nationwide coverage
Of the 25 safety regions in the Netherlands, eight already use their software. So do ten of the country’s 40 largest municipalities, and three provinces. “Our ambition is nationwide coverage,” Jeroen concludes. “The conversations we are currently having with the ministry are about scaling up nationally and sharing knowledge, so that nobody reinvents the wheel and procurement gets smarter. How good would it be if every municipality chose our technology? That is exactly where we want to go.”
This interview appeared as the cover story of Regio Business, the Brabant business magazine, Oost-Brabant edition, September/October 2026. Text: Jeanette van Haasen. Photography: Kees Bennema. Translated from Dutch.
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