Niels Van Damme

Niels Van Damme's thinking centers on a single conviction: rail automation is not a distant moonshot but a staged, sellable business that can be built profitably today. He traces OTIV's origin to its barest form, recalling "we didn't have a company yet, we were two people, which was Sam and myself, two co-founders in my bedroom, working on the idea of bringing autonomous rail to the market" ¹. That founding image matters because it frames everything else he says about scaling: OTIV did not start with capital or infrastructure, it started with an idea and two people willing to work on it in cramped, unglamorous conditions.

A recurring theme is deliberate sequencing. Van Damme describes slicing OTIV's ambition into steps that conservative rail operators can actually buy: assisted driving first, then remote control, with full autonomy positioned as "the cherry on top" ¹. This is not just a sales tactic but a business model, since assisted systems and remote control generate revenue and profitability long before autonomy is viable, letting the company fund itself while working toward the larger vision. He is explicit about where that vision points, saying "what I would like is that every vehicle that is on the tracks has like OTIV technologies inside" ¹, showing that the incremental approach is a means to a maximalist end, not a retreat from it.

Van Damme is equally clear about why rail was chosen over automotive: OTIV could not compete with the billions poured into autonomous cars in the US, and rail offered a technically simpler problem since vehicles on tracks can only brake or accelerate ¹. This pragmatic reasoning about competitive positioning recurs alongside a claim of data advantage, that OTIV has "arguably the biggest rail data set in the world" ¹, suggesting his view that domain-specific data moats can substitute for the capital advantages larger, more crowded markets enjoy.

On scaling itself, Van Damme voices a caution that distinguishes hardware from software ventures: "if your system is not on point and you start scaling, your issues will scale with it" ¹. This is not abstract risk-aversion but a lesson drawn from the physical reality that faults across vehicles spread over Europe require physical fixes, unlike software bugs that can be patched remotely. He extends this thinking to internationalization, describing how a France rollout was upended when the country began phasing out 4G in favor of 5G bands OTIV's system couldn't connect to, a concrete misstep that hardened his instinct to always pilot before scaling into a new market ¹.

Beyond product and market strategy, Van Damme reflects on team-building and funding discipline. He credits an investor's advice to hire an American within the first ten employees because "they think differently and bigger," and says OTIV followed through with a technical hire on that basis ¹. He also describes consulting work, specifically a sensor study for a rail operator, as a way to fund the early-stage company without distraction, provided the work aligns with the product roadmap; that study still informs OTIV's product today ¹. This reveals a broader belief that scrappy, adjacent revenue streams can be assets rather than distractions if chosen carefully.

Finally, Van Damme situates OTIV within a larger structural narrative and a statement of geographic confidence. He points to a global shortage of train, tram and bus drivers, and even ship captains, as the underlying market force that makes assisted and remotely controlled vehicles necessary before full autonomy arrives ¹. And he pushes back directly on the assumption that ambitious technology companies must be built in major hubs, insisting "you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to start a startup, you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to become big, you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to put a stamp on the world" ¹. Taken together, his remarks describe a founder who treats constraints, being outgunned on capital, operating in a conservative industry, building hardware that must work in the physical world, not as obstacles to route around but as the actual shape of the problem to be solved.