Summer Launchpad 2026 · Founder Spotlight
Yannick Bierens (Courant '25) grew up in the Netherlands and moved to New York two years ago to keep building companies. At 27, he's already a three-time founder; he's been at it since he was 19, when he started Urban Journalist and Inside Membership, two platforms built on the same idea: connecting people to each other and to the places around them. Both are still thriving back in Amsterdam, and that throughline, connection, is what he carried with him to New York. He came to NYU to keep going, and after his first venture at the Leslie Institute got him hooked on customer discovery, he landed on Binder: an AI agent for commercial insurance brokers.
Three startups, one ocean crossed, and a surprising love of insurance later — here's Yannick in his own words.
In one line, what does Binder do — and who is it for?
Binder is an AI agent for commercial insurance brokers. Brokers reach out to something like 100 prospects a week, but they don't have time to research each one, so every call is a shot in the dark. Binder does the research for them, so they land more clients and earn more commissions.
Where did it come from? What's the origin story?
Before Binder, brokers didn't have a structured or efficient way to do outreach. They were working huge contact lists mostly by hand and betting on luck that eventually someone would pick up or become a customer, and these are very high-value calls. Binder essentially lets them do that same work three to four times faster.
Getting here took a detour. My first company at the Institute was an AI developer tool that visualized code for engineering teams. When AI can write thousands of lines of code fast, it gets hard to see the structure or understand how everything connects. I took it into the Startup Sprint as a solo founder and put my head down and built. I got early feedback, and a lot of it was polite — "yeah, this is good." Then one friend told me flat out: this isn't going to work. That stung, but it's also where I fell in love with the customer discovery framework, the idea that I could just keep talking to people and find real problems. That's how I found commercial insurance brokerage. On paper it may sound boring, but I'm an obsessive person, and now that I'm in it every day I find it genuinely fascinating.
What did Summer Launchpad change for you?
Honestly, the biggest thing wasn't about the company — it was about me as a founder. Going in, I already had real doubts about that AI dev tool. But SLP is built on customer discovery, so I pushed through the sprint and shipped the prototype fast anyway — not to win, but to keep learning from real conversations. A company lives or dies on how honest its founder can be with themselves. I walked away having learned far more about being a founder than about that one product. I carried those skills straight into Binder.
What's next after Summer Launchpad?
Keep going on Binder. I really believe your twenties are the time to take the risk. You're never going to have a window like this again. And it's an incredible moment to build: everything in tech is exploding right now, so you can build, and build fast. In a few years a lot of what's open today might already be figured out. It might stay Binder, it might become something else, but either way I want to keep hustling and grinding as a founder and keep making something. I'm also a Founder in Residence at Antler right now, which keeps me surrounded by other people building at full speed.
What's one piece of advice for a student thinking about starting something?
Be flexible, and be able to pivot fast. The hard part is that when you're deep in a startup it becomes part of your identity. Feedback that questions that idea feels like it's questioning you, and you get defensive. If you can drop that defense and actually run with the feedback, you learn way faster. Try ten things, fail fast, and you massively raise your odds in a game where most attempts don't work out.
Anything outside the business? Something that carries over into how you run the company?
Hanging out with friends and being social — that connects a lot to sales. I love meeting people, and I think human connection really matters. Getting better at communicating and understanding people is exactly what's been so rewarding about customer discovery. I realized I can get obsessed with something and really start to understand it.
The other one is working out, which I hate; it's my least favorite thing to do. But I show up and do it anyway, and that discipline is the part that carries over. Building a startup is incredibly hard, but I love it, so grinding through the hard parts doesn't feel like a chore. Working out is the opposite: I don't love it at all, I just make myself do it. Being able to do the thing you don't want to do, over and over, is the muscle that matters either way.
Anything you love about being here in New York?
The people. It's so easy to meet people here, and everyone's excited to connect. I feel like I can make friends wherever I go, and everyone's trying to do something. So why not take the risk and go do something a little crazy?
