About the founders

The beginning

a crew of 2 with all the qualities in-house

Breakout Bandits started very small in 2022. We developed a number of team building games, did the marketing and sales ourselves and provided game support for more than 3000 players, until something wonderful happened in early 2024.

Growth: a building, 3 young people and 3000 players

In a period of a few weeks, 3 young people knocked on the door. Their message was all the same: “Things aren’t going so well with me… Can I just help out a bit…”. At the same time, a squat passed by. We decided to rent it and told the young people that they were welcome.

Everything comes together: work experience and life experience

Everything came together at that moment. We used our experience as youth workers, but also Wouter’s 20 years of experience in Marketing and IT, Esther’s entrepreneurial experience, but perhaps most importantly: the experience of our own pain. We can talk about getting stuck. We can identify with the young people who come to us. We have our scars, but in the meantime they give us the strength to help others to get up again and continue.

Wouter van der Zeijden

Wouter has been organizing games since he was young. As a teenager, he organized large-scale game weekends for his teenage group, later they became bachelor weekends where friends had a great adventure throughout Europe. Creative thinking is in Wouter’s genes.

Wouter studied Computer Science and Information Science and worked for 20 years at a large corporate. There he did software development and later online marketing. He learned software development skills, marketing skills and learned to work with Scrum and Design Thinking.

15 years ago, a new passion emerged: youth work. He followed a youth worker study and combined the corporate job with a part-time “passion job” as a youth worker. In this job he was responsible for large national events. He organized the events together with young people, often also young people with a backpack. He learned to guide young people, learned to recognize hidden talents in young people and how to create a good product together with young people.

The blow of life came to Wouter in the form of caregiving for Esther and caring for a young family, resulting in exhaustion and stress. He learned to guard his boundaries, but especially how to deal with disappointment when something doesn’t work out, to adjust expectations and, no matter how difficult the situation, to always see opportunities.

Esther van der Zeijden – Jansen

Esther grew up in an entrepreneurial family. She was exposed to the entrepreneurial life from an early age. She studied HBO Food Technology and worked in various large food companies.

As a student, she discovered a passion: making cheese. Many years later, after a number of disappointing work experiences, she decided to set up her own company: she gives cheese workshops for private individuals and gives cheese consultancy and training to companies. Here she learned to be an entrepreneur and developed a vision on customer focus, resulting in unanimous 9+ experiences from customers. She now does this 50% in addition to her work for Breakout Bandits.

During her student days, she also developed a passion for guiding and coaching students and young adults. After her studies, she followed a leadership training year in which she deepened her coaching skills. Later, together with Wouter, she also gave substance to this in the
youth work.

Esther was hit by life in the form of a burn-out, illness, dismissal and depression. Sometimes she took a hit and managed to continue, but there were also periods in which she was literally and figuratively disabled in bed for months. The knocks of life regularly left a wound, but also made her stronger. She learned how to prevent a relapse, which is why her focus is now directed forward. She now has several scars, but they mainly give her strength and the ability to empathize with people who are going through the same thing.