Why Vellum exists
Most software for editorial teams was built for large newsrooms with separate platforms for writing, reviewing, scheduling, analytics, and newsletter. The result, for any team of fewer than fifty people, is a chaotic stack of half-integrated tools that no one is happy with and everyone resents on Monday mornings.
Vellum started in 2023 as a side project by two co-founders who had been part of that chaos for the better part of a decade. We wanted a single coherent tool — calm, focused, opinionated where it needed to be, flexible where it didn't. We left our previous jobs to build it full time in early 2024.
What we believe
Software should be quiet. It should respect the rhythm of editorial work. It shouldn't try to optimise the parts of writing that don't need optimising — and the parts that do, it should treat with care. We believe in writing well, reading carefully, and shipping software at the pace of a working publication, not a venture-backed sprint.
We also believe in being a sustainable, profitable, modestly sized company. We don't intend to raise venture funding. Our growth target is "enough to keep building the product we want to build". We've turned down acquisition discussions twice. We expect to be doing this for a long time.
The team
Anneke de Wit — Co-founder, product. Former editor at a Dutch national magazine.
Luuk Hoekstra — Co-founder, engineering. Built editorial tools at a major European broadcaster for six years.
Hannah Sørensen — Designer. Worked at three different startups whose names you'd recognise. Joined us because she wanted to design something that didn't have a chatbot.
Vincent Aalders — Engineer. Quiet, careful, and the reason our database is in good shape.
Marta Kowalski — Customer engagement and onboarding. Used to teach journalism in Warsaw.
Where to find us
We're based in Amsterdam-Noord, on the top floor of a building that used to be a printing shop. We work in person three days a week. We answer email. We don't have a Slack community. We're trying to build a quiet company.