Who is Michiel Das?

My name

As you've surely already noticed by my exotic name, I am not from Spain. I was born and raised in Belgium, and I guess my parents never imagined that I would end up in Barcelona (if not they'd probably have chosen a more international name).

On the other hand it offers one big advantage though, because just like that you've already learned your first Flemish/Dutch word!

Who am I?

As a young student, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I grew up, because I liked math but I was also passionate about communication and publicity. During the last year of high school I realized that math in the end wasn't what motivated me the most, and I started studying Communication Sciences, specializing in marketing and persuasive communication.

During the last year of my Bachelor I had the opportunity to do an Erasmus exchange for 6 months in Barcelona, and I fell in love with the city.

I did everything I could to return to Barcelona as quickly as possible, and after many mails and telephones to my university, they gave me a scholarship to do my internships in Barcelona as well.

After my internships finished I went back to Belgium to pursue my Master in Management, but during my internships I'd met a girl (who later became my wife) so my parents soon realized that I was not going to stay forever in Belgium.

After returning to Barcelona again I started working for a Belgian entrepreneur until I got my first job in a startup in the photo printing industry.

After suddenly losing my job due to Spain's economic crisis, I decided to create three business cards and let them travel through Spain with the idea of finding a job thanks to the theory of the Six Degrees of Separation.

Thanks to my project I got the job I was looking for, and I started working as SEAT's Employer Branding Responsible, where I took care of the strategies and actions to turn the company into an attractive employer.

My project also opened many doors for me, and I had the opportunity to explain my idea and the importance of Personal Branding in several conferences and national and international news outlets.

So what do I do now?

I have been in marketing for fifteen years, across startups, SMEs and multinationals. Having worked in all three teaches you something you cannot learn any other way: each one has its own challenges, and what works in one cannot be copy-pasted into the next.

At SEAT I stayed almost nine years and three different jobs: first running employer branding, until the company was recognised as a Top Employer in Spain; then global SEO and SEM across eight European markets, with a team of 17 people and a 20M budget; and finally the digital launch of CUPRA in 2018.

Then I moved into urban mobility. As CMO at XMOBA we scaled the ridesharing platforms past 250,000 users, and from there I became Global Head of Marketing & e-commerce at SEAT Urban Mobility: electric scooters in more than ten European markets and SEAT's first e-commerce built in under two months.

Then came four years at Cuideo, in care services, as Chief Marketing & Growth Officer. I arrived with the company at Series A and we came out of it as a profitable Series B scale-up, with the marketing P&L under my name and presented to the Board.

What I am proudest of from those years is the brand work. We got Cuideo's monthly branded searches to nine times the volume of the most searched generic keyword in the sector, and 63% spontaneous brand recall in our core audience. In under two years we gathered more than 8,700 customer reviews averaging 4.8 out of 5, which in a business where people trust you with their parents is worth more than any campaign.

And then there is what the funnel measures: 43% more MQLs year on year while spending 29% less, 21% better MQL to SQL conversion and 26% better SQL to closed deal. We opened offices and pop-up venues across Spain, which lifted local lead generation by 63%, we ran B2B campaigns with Mapfre, DKV and AXA that drove B2B sales up 40%, and we launched the e-commerce, a revenue line that did not exist before. All of it mixing online and offline: Google, Bing, national and local TV, and radio.

Today I am AI-First Chief Marketing Officer at Service Club, the global ecosystem that attracts, trains and retains professional drivers in logistics and last-mile delivery, and connects them with the companies that move the world. I run marketing for four verticals (Driver Pulse, Academy, Jobs and Perks) across seven markets (UK, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States), reporting to the CEO.

With the four teams I lead (acquisition, marketing ops, branding and comms, and go-to-market) I am changing the way we work. Agents wired into Search Console and Analytics that turn data into decisions, n8n workflows that orchestrate data and reporting end to end, programmatic SEO that generates and localises pages by market and language, brand assistants that keep the tone consistent, and synthetic users to pressure-test messaging and funnels before launch. The site you are reading works the same way: Astro and Keystatic, edited from VS Code.

Along the way I never stopped teaching: over thirteen years and some 10,000 students at schools like EADA, ISDI, The Valley and EU Business School. And I have invested in a handful of European startups (Plum, Mintos, Velca, Heura, 900.care), which is my way of keeping a finger on what is coming.

I am still in Barcelona, which deep down was the plan from that Erasmus onwards.

Why this website?

One of the most important things I discovered is how you can turn an idea into a creative project that allows you to differentiate yourself from others.

Another important lesson I learned is that it is better to depend as little as possible on only one employer, because the day you're without a job you also run out of income.

Knowing how to turn ideas into reality and generating an income out of them is not only a great source of personal motivation, but also allows you to have more peace of mind on a psychological level.

I believe that everyone has the potential to start the projects or dreams they have, and that many times the problem is just finding out how to do it, and how to differentiate yourself creatively from others.

Questions… and answers

More about me

• I'm very interested in the world of startups, and I'm always testing new ideas.
• I speak Flemish/Dutch (my mother tongue), English, Spanish, French, Catalan and some German.
• I love giving presentations and talks, and as a speaker I've talked about Personal Branding, Employer Branding, web positioning (SEO & SEM) and the creation of startups. So if you're looking for a speaker for your next event and I fit the profile, don't hesitate to reach out.

Thanks for stopping by!