Michel Frissen - A Dutch kid with dreams
Born and raised in Gouda (1981, yes that place known for wonderful cheese) and later Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I've always been a dreamer. I remember in elementary School on a Sunny day, I occasionally wanted to finish my work fast so I could gaze outside the window of my classroom for some time and observe random stuff that happened outside. I would open up the window a bit to take a deep breath of spring fresh air and just by doing that experience true happiness for a moment. For a large part of my life I would be chasing this feeling, often in the wrong places finding the wrong answers. The wrong places and answers eventually became valuable lessons. So I guess it's true, growth often comes from friction.
Coming from a mixed family with a Surinamese dad and a Dutch mum, was often a challenge. As a young child you're really looking for a sense of belonging. For me at times it felt a bit as if I was in the middle of two worlds. These worlds weren't created by me, but they were obviously there or at least I thought they were. Since my dad wasn't around for a large part of my youth I had to learn about my culture on my own. I will go into more depth about my history further down the line, but for now let's just say navigating both sides of this spectrum enabled me to build quite a large network in both communities.
Through various side hustles, jobs, studies, fuckups and a music company that bankrupted in 2012, I've learned that if you do things for the wrong reasons you often get the wrong results. Since then I've tried to follow my heart and gut more while doing things that really drive me. With hard work and support from my wife and inner circle I've managed to build a life as a creative entrepreneur and designer which enables me to provide for me and my family. More important it has given me valuable time. Time to learn, discover and try new things. In recent years I've been involved in cool projects as a designer, started a toy brand with my business partner and two daughters and recently started an NFT project with several partners to build bridges for the Urban (inclusive!) community, called Quokka Life.
This last project is really dear to me, not only because it is bigger than myself, but also because I've seen up close that inequality is still very much around us. Looking at western society you see so much talent and joy coming from the Urban community, it's often painful that a lot of talent or good organizations don't come to fruition for various reasons. Looking outside of western societies is even more painful seeing that a lot of people from color lack all sorts of basic needs to even begin with. Me and my partners who have a similar background really believe that by facilitating the first group into achieving better results in life we can in solidarity help the second group and make this world a better place. To help you understand where we are coming from and how we will achieve the things we want to achieve I've decided to put the pen to paper. I kindly ask you to follow our journey as we learn, discover and build again while we never stop dreaming.
