How Basten Heutink is building the future with Delphi

Photo courtesy of Basten Heutink.

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Engineers today are learning to work alongside artificial intelligence rather than simply build it. Their work now involves adapting to systems that learn, reason, and evolve on their own. In this new landscape, success depends as much on understanding people as it does on writing code.

Basten Heutink reflects that shift. Trained in law at Oxford, he left behind a traditional path for the faster, more fluid world of startups, where he’s learned to tighten the balance between making a company grow fast without compromising quality. He’s currently Chief of Staff at Delphi, and helps shape the company’s “living profiles,” digital minds designed to preserve and share human expertise in ways technology alone never could.

Finding a passion for entrepreneurship

Heutink first studied law at Oxford, then completed a double master’s in Public Administration and Global Affairs at the London School of Economics and the University of Toronto. It was a path designed for diplomacy and governance, setting him up for a life managing tricky legal cases.

But the more he looked into this path, the more he realized it wasn’t for him. The long hierarchies and slow-moving systems felt out of step with his instinct for speed and accountability.

As he weighed his next move, the startup world caught his attention. New companies were emerging by the week, building tools with the potential to change how people work. “At a startup,” he explains, “you’re the one making things happen. That means you can go from zero to one and gain real experience right away, instead of waiting years to move up the ranks.”

Over time, this curiosity continued to grow, and he set out to leave law behind and focus on working with early-stage companies, where he could take on broader responsibility and help turn promising ideas into real products.

His early work with startups

The shift from theory to practice came quickly. In 2023, Heutink joined the vertical AI startup Clipbook after reaching out to its founder directly on LinkedIn, a move that separated him from other engineers with similar qualifications.

Clipbook aimed to organize business intelligence through AI-driven insights, but like many early-stage ventures, it needed to properly build and refine its internal structure. Heutink stepped in to build that foundation.

Over the next year, he helped build Clipbook’s revenue to mid-millions, building its first go-to-market funnel as well as leading its sales and enterprise client success operations. He designed the company’s first revenue frameworks, managed more than half its employees, and helped secure $3.3 million in funding led by Mark Cuban.

For Heutink, Clipbook was a crash course in dealing with complexity, being in charge of translating the founder’s broad vision into measurable results while managing the daily mechanics of a growing business. However, it taught him how to handle many overlapping tasks under pressure, something that would become useful as his career went on. “We grew fast,” he said, “but it taught me what it takes to lead through the pace and pressure of AI-driven work.”

Defining strategy at Delphi

Now Chief of Staff at Delphi, Heutink is working with a company built around an ambitious idea: preserving and expanding the reach of human knowledge with AI.

Delphi aims to serve professionals who want to share their experience with a broader, international audience. Users upload footage of themselves, whether it’s them speaking at a conference or podcast or an article to their name, which the platform then uses to create a digital avatar that other users can interact with, asking questions and receiving customized answers reflecting the person’s overall tone. Its users range from investors and creators to educators and young professionals, each wanting to share their insights in a more dynamic, human way.

Heutink first discovered Delphi as a user, experimenting with its early tools to build out his own digital presence. The idea of turning thought into something interactive immediately resonated with him. To someone who had studied systems and structure his entire life, Delphi felt like a living model of how knowledge could evolve — one that, he felt, few other companies were offering.

As Chief of Staff, Heutink acts as the connective tissue between vision and execution to ensure that the company’s short and long-term strategy leads to tangible, measurable results that can be shared with Delphi’s stakeholders. His day often moves between investor relations, internal alignment, and the larger projects that seek to shape Delphi’s public identity — including Library of Minds, an interactive podcast series that mirrors the company’s mission by translating expertise into conversation.

He also focuses on the less visible side of growth: talent, speed, and structure. Scaling a startup means learning when to move fast and when to refine, and Heutink’s approach reflects both urgency and discipline. In his own words, “The key is optimizing for speed and impact. Knowing when to do it yourself and when to bring in others so things happen fast without losing quality.”

Looking ahead

Heutink’s outlook remains pragmatic. In the next three years, Delphi aims to make its living-profile technology a staple for professionals worldwide. As the company matures, his own role may evolve toward specialized leadership in operations or revenue — but the throughline remains the same: scaling systems that connect human intelligence with digital continuity.

“Being able to create a legacy of your mind and your unique way of thinking is something truly unprecedented,” he says.

Throughout his career, Basten Heutink has focused on making complex systems work more efficiently, whether in the structure of a business or the growth of a new technology. From his early focus in (and shift away from) law to his work at Delphi, his path reflects a steady interest in how ideas become organizations and how strategy turns into execution.