This morning's team scan session with start-up and investors will take place over lunch. I decide to get myself some refreshments. When I walk out of the supermarket with a full bag, I am just in time to jump aside for a huge splash of water, which clatters to the ground next to me. I look up. High up in the distance, a tray of industrious window cleaners is swinging, they are clearly in the mood for it.

My thoughts wander to my student days. For two years, I lived with three other rowers in a so-called 'rowing flat' in Buitenveldert. The flat had been rented for sportsmen not long before and we came to live there at the same time. Sports students were an exception in the flat, which was otherwise inhabited by expat families and the so-called 'better-off'.

In the first month, we were having breakfast together in the kitchen, when we suddenly noticed that we were being watched from outside. That was strange, on the third floor. It turned out to be window cleaner Fred passing by in a gondola. We opened the window and offered him a cup of coffee and whether he would like a fried egg. Fred almost rolled out of his tray in surprise. He had worked in Buitenveldert for 20 years. Thousands of windows he had cleaned there, while behind them the people sat in their houses. This was the first time he was offered a cup of coffee. He said something in unadulterated Amsterdam language that I have never forgotten: "You know what it is here: they have enough money, but they are sitting on it. In Oost, where people don't have a nail to scratch their arse, I can always join them for dinner, you lot are much more generous. Believe me girls, the real poverty is where the money is".

Our cup of coffee created friendship. We were occasionally allowed in the gondola, which Fred stopped on the 9th floor, grinning, while the winch continued upstairs, making us swing along the facade like some kind of fairground attraction. Completely irresponsible at work and great fun.

On Monday mornings, the only day we didn't have to train at 7 a.m., if we were still asleep when Fred came to do the laundry, he would pull open the windows and shout that we were lazy rowers and that the coffee was ready. It was a good time.

While I am setting up the room where we will sit together with start-ups and investors, I think about all those founders who will one day sell their company. That moment when all the hard work, the investments, the uncertainties and the perseverance are rewarded with a nice exit. I don't know if they will be happier than Fred. I do hope they will be more generous than Fred's customers in Buitenveldert.