Employee Spotlight: Nic van Vliet
Meet Nic van Vliet, AI Project Lead at KickstartAI. With a background in startups, product operations at Google, and his own AI agency, he now focuses on moving AI projects move from idea to adoption. We spoke with Nic about his path into AI, what motivates him in his work, and where he sees the technology making the biggest difference.
What’s your role at KickstartAI?
I’m an AI Project Lead. My role is about helping move projects forward together with our tech team, our partners, and everyone else involved. So it’s a mix of making sure things keep progressing, aligning the right people, and turning ideas into working products.
Right now, I’m leading three projects: one with ING focused on using GenAI to support financial health, and with NS I’m working on detecting unattended objects at train stations, as well as exploring how AI can help improve train energy consumption.
What’s your background?
My background is quite diverse. I studied organization and venture management in the US, and began my career working with early-stage startups. I returned to grad school to study international development and economics, before eventually joining Google, where I spent several years in product operations. In 2024, I moved back into the startup world and, more recently, ventured into AI and built my own AI agency, before joining KickstartAI.
What drives you in your work?
I think we’re at the beginning of a major technological transition that will impact everyone. What drives me is making sure people are as informed as possible about it, understanding both the strengths and the limitations of AI. Not just to use it in their own work, but also to be able to ask the right questions, whether that’s within their organization, or more broadly in society.
For me, a big part of the work is helping bring that understanding into projects and conversations with partners, so that we adopt the technology in a thoughtful and responsible way, rather than just letting it happen to us.
What has stood out to you most about working at KickstartAI so far?
Definitely the people and the shared sense of purpose! And another thing I really enjoy is our way of working. A good example of that for me is the ING Challenge, which I’m really proud of. We brought together 15 participants from the partner companies and worked together to build a generative AI chatbot prototype for ING focused on financial health – all in just two weeks!
Where do you see AI making the biggest difference in the future?
Climate change is definitely one area where AI can have a real impact. It’s fascinating how much it can speed up material discovery, for example. And it’s not hard to imagine how new materials could prove useful for fields like energy, conductivity, or carbon capture. Of course, humans still need to test and apply those in the real world, but the fact that AI can uncover those kinds of possibilities at an unprecedented scale makes a big difference.
What’s your advice to people considering a career in AI?
My biggest advice would be to just jump in and start using it. And by that, I don’t just mean ChatGPT – I mean trying different tools, experimenting with different LLMs, building small things yourself, and seeing how they actually work in practice. For me, that hands-on experimentation made AI feel much less abstract and helped me understand it a lot better. If you’re considering a career in AI, I think the best thing you can do is not just consume it, but actually create with it.
And as for project managers in the field, I think an important quality is being able to see a few steps ahead. The more you collaborate, the more you talk to different people, and the more perspectives you bring together, the better you get at anticipating what’s coming next – and in AI especially, that’s really important.
Fun fact about you?
I used to perform in musicals in high school – I even played Tony in West Side Story!
💡 Want to learn more about KickstartAI and our mission to accelerate AI adoption in the Netherlands? Check out our website, explore our open positions, or connect with Anouk on LinkedIn!
