#CH2026: Jorden Lentze
Biography
Optimizers love iteration. We improve some copy. Simplify a flow. Remove friction. Run another test. Learn. Repeat.
But at some point a difficult question appears: How do you know when you’ve reached a local maximum?
Jorden Lentze was asking questions like that long before most of us were. Jorden was actually one of the very first Dutch speakers on the Conversion Hotel stage, presenting back at #CH2015. At the time he worked at Google as Conversion Industry Manager Benelux, advising advertisers how to improve conversion performance and get more value from their digital investments.
I already knew Jorden from before that, from his time at ABN AMRO. What immediately stood out was his curiosity. He always wanted to understand why things worked, why people made certain decisions, and whether there might be a better way. A true optimizer. But more importantly, simply a very good person to work with.
Back in 2015, Jorden spoke about finding inspiration outside our own discipline and already shared with us that a radical redesign is not always the answer. Fast forward eleven years. After Google, Jorden joined Booking.com, where he has now spent nearly a decade working as a product manager across ecommerce, mobile apps, room selection, and reviews. If there is one organization in the Netherlands that understands experimentation at scale, Booking is certainly part of that conversation.
Eleven years ago, Jorden warned us that many optimizers risk getting stuck in local maxima, becoming so focused on improving what exists that they stop seeing what could exist.
Which makes me curious. Does Booking still rely purely on iteration? Or do they sometimes take bigger leaps? Maybe even redesign entire experiences? The answer is yes, and Jorden has been there to witness it.
So how do you know when continuous optimization is no longer enough? When should you keep iterating? When should you take a bigger leap? How do you recognize that the local maximum you’ve been carefully climbing may actually be holding you back? And when you finally make that jump, how do you avoid simply landing on a different local maximum?
Jorden, welcome back to the Conversion Hotel stage. Eleven years after your first appearance on Texel, it feels fitting that you return with a topic that has been following you ever since: Demystifying Local Maxima. I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve learned along the way.
Founder & host of The Conference known as Conversion Hotel