At a time when expertise fades with retirements or job changes, a company called Delphi is setting out to develop "digital minds"—living, interactive profiles that draw from professionals' work and materials to capture how they think, allowing anyone, anywhere, to interact with their knowledge at any time.
At the center of this effort stands the company's Chief of Staff, Basten Heutink. Trained in law and in public administration and with verified experience helping startups grow, his work at the company connects technology and human understanding, translating Delphi's vision of lasting, interactive expertise into a practical reality.
The Digital Mind Concept
At a time when digital interactions are reshaping professional engagement, the concept of representation through digital avatars is gaining traction. Surveys show, for example, that younger audiences in the 16 to 34 age bracket increasingly expect immersive, personalized experiences from brands and their respective professionals.
Against this backdrop, Delphi emerges to propose the creation of what it calls "living profiles," designed to preserve and share expertise in an interactive form.
These living profiles aim to go beyond traditional formats such as résumés or LinkedIn entries, which rely on accomplishments and static descriptions. Instead, Delphi builds dynamic, conversational knowledge archives that learn from their creators' inputs, whether those are academic papers or podcast appearances. Users can engage with these profiles as though they were interacting with a thought leader, investor, or professional expert, instead of accessing rigid, one-way material.
In practice, the system lets professionals capture and encode their judgment and reasoning into an AI-driven model. Once created, that model responds to queries, simulates reasoning pathways, and allows others to benefit from the expert's thinking, no matter the hour.
In effect, expertise that used to reside only in people or documents is transformed into a living resource—and it's this idea that first drew Basten Heutink, now the company's Chief of Staff, to Delphi's mission.
How Basten Heutink Found His Way to Delphi
Heutink's path to Delphi began far from the world of startups. After studying law at Oxford and completing dual master's degrees in public administration and global affairs at the London School of Economics and the University of Toronto, he expected to pursue a legal career. Yet the realities of corporate law left him questioning whether that was where he could make the greatest impact.
During his graduate studies, a course on entrepreneurship introduced Heutink to the possibilities of applied AI as well as the pace of startup life, becoming drawn to an environment where problems could be identified, tested, and solved in real-time.
He soon joined the founding team of Clipbook, a company focused on automating how communications professionals collect and analyze media data. There, he handled everything from building the go-to-market infrastructure for its first clients to overseeing enterprise client solutions, gaining a full view of what it takes to scale a young business.
When he first encountered Delphi, it wasn't as a candidate but as a user. The idea of preserving and sharing human expertise through technology resonated deeply with his belief that knowledge should be accessible, living, and scalable.
By the time the opportunity arose to join Delphi as Chief of Staff, he was already aligned with its long-term vision. "I started using Delphi long before joining," he says. "I believed in the mission before I was ever part of the team."
Heutink's Plan to Drive Growth
Heutink's work at Delphi involves nearly every part of the organization's growth engine. He leads the company's go-to-market strategy, guiding how it brings its technology to professionals, partners, and creators. Here, he leverages his background in sales and operations to translate big-picture goals into tangible systems that people can find practical use cases for. He also manages investor relations, shaping how Delphi explains and community its mission and progress to the company's stakeholders while preparing the groundwork for long-term partnerships.
Heutink oversees the process of recruiting top-tier talent, describing Delphi as "a company that hires the top one percent who want to be here." That means not only sourcing skilled candidates but also building a united culture aligned under one shared goal. "You want people who don't just understand what we're building," he explained, "but who are energized by how fast we're building it."
He also leads special projects that go beyond Delphi's core product. Among them is the Library of Minds, an interactive podcast that transforms recorded conversations with founders, investors, and thinkers into living digital minds.
More broadly, Heutink acts as the link between the CEO, investors, and internal teams to make sure the ongoing product development strategies always align with business priorities. He structures decisions around two simple criteria: speed and impact. "The key," he said, "is balancing both—knowing when to do it yourself and when to bring in others so things happen fast without losing quality."
In practice, that means identifying which initiatives demand his direct involvement and which can be delegated. "The goal isn't to do everything," he explains. "It's to make everything happen."
The Road Ahead for Delphi
Delphi's long-term ambition is to showcase a new method for interactive professional knowledge. The company aims to make these living profiles as commonplace as professional networking platforms today, allowing anyone (not just public figures or industry leaders) to share their knowledge dynamically. In other words, it aims to make digital finds the foundation of human-AI collaboration and the architecture of a new kind of legacy, one that gives users a living record of thought that evolves alongside their careers.
For Heutink, that future is both professional and personal. In step with Delphi's mission, his focus now lies in refining and overseeing the systems that allow the company's vision to endure—a space where knowledge not only persists but continues to evolve, becoming accessible to anyone who seeks it.
As he puts it, "We're building the infrastructure for a future where knowledge doesn't disappear—it evolves and scales endlessly."
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