Maarten de Jong
Excel Expert

Who is Maarten?

Maarten was especially excited about two things as a kid: Sports and Puzzles. In particular he loved both solving and creating mazes. He loved the process of optimizing and finding the very best way to solve a puzzle or problem. Also with things like mystery games where the puzzle is “who was the murderer” for example, he wanted to find a way to solve the problem in as few steps as possible. This love for puzzles and optimization is really clearly mirrored now in how he builds Excel models. Finding clear, simple, elegant solutions to complex problems/questions, he is definitely always up for a challenge.

Sports on the other hand are still a big part of Maarten’s life, in a more direct sense. Things like volleyball, especially beach volleyball, and tennis give him a huge amount of energy. Being in the sun and being active are what fuels his enthusiasm to do his work at such a high level. Afterall, Excel professionals are people too!

Why Excel?

Maarten studied business administration and got his start at Dutch real estate giant KOMwonen. It was not long before he really started to enjoy Excel, before long he was not only producing great models of his own but also helping a lot of colleagues with their questions on how to use Excel. This mix between business administration study and a deep understanding and connection with functionality in Excel made him curious about stepping out on his own. He first started at a consultancy company and his plan was to start his own company with a good friend. Plans change, and Maarten realized that for him the true passion really was based around Excel and solving a diverse set of problems that way, so he started his company Urban Excellence, pairing well with the company his friend started Urban Reality, centered around urban projects.

How you deal with problems?

I asked Maarten if he had any examples of a problem/challenge that he had faced and how he approached it. He explained that for him a big part of modelling is really the aesthetic portion as well as the underlying calculations. An end user needs to be able to use the model, and for that the user also need to know how to use the model, this is best done visually. A client wanted a global heatmap of where interest was being showed in certain products, this was possible but visually quite difficult. Maarten found a way to do this at a time when it wasn’t standard in Excel through the visualization available. If you want to know exactly how he did it, you’ll just have to ask him sometime!

On the calculation end one of the more challenging things to model out are sculpted loans. This is difficult because the loan amount needs to be 0 at the end of the term, mathematically possible but tough to build into Excel. Things like iterative calculations can’t handle this type of calculation, Maarten realized that the best way to do it in Excel was to start at the 0 (the end of the period) and work backwards. Literally reverse engineering the issue and ending up with a model that worked!

Why should you reach out to Maarten?

From my own personal experience Maarten’s easy going, friendly nature really makes the prospect of working together exciting and it’s easy to see how he wants to take on the challenge. Rather than shying away from complex issues he is looking for simple ways to solve difficult problems and make everything as fluid and easy as possible for the eventual end user. You can find him through his website (https://urbanexcellence.nl/) or you can contact him directly via email (maarten@urbanexcellence.nl). We will personally also be working more with Marten going forward!