Some collaborations need years of blood, sweat and tears to even remotely find their shape. Others just click almost straight away.

Lucky for (Un)founders Maaike van der Linden and David Wagemaker, they had the second kind. Or at least, close enough. It started back in 2014, when Maaike was brought in to create a newspaper for Amsterdam Music Festival (AMF), where David was working at the time. On paper, it was just another project. There was a brief, a deadline, and a slightly ambitious amount of work to get done in not a lot of time. Standard stuff, as we would say in the bizz.

But somewhere in the middle of all that, it became pretty obvious this worked. Not only creatively, but in the way that actually matters once things get busy, multiple opinions start flying around, and the clock is suddenly moving twice as fast.

The very beginning

From the start, there was a shared way of working. Ideas had to be good, obviously, but they also had to hold up once timing changed, feedback rolled in, and plans became a little less… let’s say theoretical.

Over the years, Maaike and David kept ending up on the same productions, both in the Netherlands and far beyond. Different clients, different teams, different levels of chaos, but usually the same result. Maaike brought the creative instinct, the feel, and a strong sense of what something should be before everyone else could even get one word out of their mouths. David brought structure, calm, and the kind of overview that keeps a project moving without turning it into a spreadsheet with branding (if you know, you know).

The start of Unfound

By 2021, the idea of building something together had been floating around for a while. Never as some dramatic founder moment with a whiteboard and a strong coffee, let that be clear, but more as the logical next step after years of working side by side and seeing the same thing happen again and again: this combination simply worked.

So they built Unfound.

And it was clear that this wasn’t going to be a traditional agency with fixed teams, layered structures and meetings that could have been an email, but as something more flexible by design. Around them, they built a carefully selected network of senior specialists across branding, media, events and content. People they trust, people they have worked with before, and people who know how to step in, get going, and make themselves useful fast. Or as Maaike would say “gas erop!”.

The right team for every challenge

That setup means every project gets what it actually needs, not just whatever happens to be sitting on the bench. Unfound builds the right team for the challenge at hand, without the unnecessary layers added for the sake of looking impressive.

Because in the end, plenty of ideas sound good while they’re still being talked about. The more interesting question is whether they still hold up once they need to be made, launched, shared, built, or pulled together under pressure.

That is usually where Unfound feels right at home.

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