About Us

René Bonvanie

Co-Founder and CMO
Palo Alto Networks
Enterprise Technologies, Cybersecurity, SaaS, Marketing
René has 35+ years of (product) marketing, business development, general management experience in executive roles at companies such as Salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP and Palo Alto Networks, where he was one of the founding team members and held the position of CMO. René spent a large part of his career in the US and is currently on the board of scale-ups such as Collibra, Bionic, Seemplicity and Bitwarden. Next to that, René is executive-in residence for Battery Ventures.

Peter van Harten

Director, Smart Industry Ambassador NL
Isah GmBH
Software, Enterprise Sales, Smart Industry
Peter is an all round business leader and entrepreneur, with broad experience in business development, finance and strategy, specific knowledge about the smart industry software development. Peter leads the international growth of Isah Business Software and is passionate about digitization of the Dutch Industry, shown by his role as Smart Industry Ambassador of the Netherlands. He advises many startups and later stage companies on their international strategies. He has extensive knowledge of and network in the German market and also in France, Canada, Czech Republic and South-Africa. Lastly, Peter has published a book on the German market support of SMEs. Demonstrating his passion and expertise in the market.

Elisabeth Stevens

COO
Sunrock
TravelTech, Sustainability, SaaS, Platform
Elisabeth is an experienced tech leader with experience in fast-growing tech companies such as Sunrock, Incision and Booking.com (she helped Booking.com to grow from 300 to 18.000 people and scaled the North-American branch). She helps scale-ups with their commercial and people strategy, preparing them for: international growth, building organisational capabilities and scaling culture.

Marco Barkmeijer

Co-Founder & CEO
SecureLink
Cybersecurity, SaaS, Cloud Software, Enterprise Sales
Marco has experience in enabling organisations to scale from startup to scale-up and from national to international. He is passionate about marketing & sales and has also gained experience in obtaining external financing and working with private equity while scaling SecureLink as founder & CEO.

Irene van den Brink

Commercial Director Insurance
Booking.com
FinTech, InsurTech, SaaS, Finance
Irene is an expert in growth through simplicity and innovation. She has been involved in a broad number of successful international projects for global financial institutions, with relevant experience in all continents.

Harm-Jan Wessels

Investor, Advisor, & Board Member
Forcare, Holland Capital, NextGen Ventures
HealthTech, AI, Software
Harm-Jan is an experienced visionary serial entrepreneur and CEO with 30 years experience in the healthcare and software industry. With strong entrepreneurial skills, he built international businesses acquired by General Electric (Applicare) and Philips (Forcare). Harm-Jan has set up and expanded offices and teams in markets such as North-America, UK, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and the Middle-East. With a broad international industry network, he has deep domain expertise in healthcare around imaging, interoperability and medical standards. Harm-Jan is also an active investor at Holland Capital and board member at NextGen Ventures.

Erik Wienk

Co-founder & COO
Hiber
Platforms, Big Data, E-commerce, IoT
Erik is an analytical leader with a track record of successfully guiding and supporting organisations and teams through periods of fast growth and restructuring. Erik is an entrepreneur with a strong commercial and financial focus.

Jan Aleman

Founder & CEO
Servoy
SaaS, Software Sales
Jan took Servoy from idea to a company operating around the globe. After fourteen years of running his company as CEO, he gained international experience with clients in over 30 countries and applies this in his coaching trajectories.

Pieter Aarts

Co-founder & CEO
roOomy / nucleoo
AI, AR/VR, HighTech
Pieter is the co-founder of roOomy and managing director of nucleoo, bringing more than 25 years of diverse industry experience to the teams. Including entrepreneurship, management, and sales. Pieter is passionate about initiating or spinning out new businesses while focusing on go-to-market strategies, product, execution and team development.

Joris van Winsen

Founder
Orange Octopus / Labfolder
Sales, Marketing, AgriTech, FoodTech
Joris, based in Berlin, has led both bootstrapped companies as well as closed VC-led finance rounds of 7-digit figures. His most important ability is being able to grow a business sustainably and with impact. In the past years he has coached a large number of entrepreneurs and their teams.

Bart Houlleberghs

Founder / Investor
Type22 / TIIN Capital
Cybersecurity, Funding, CleanTech, Aviation, Logistics
Bart helps startups get to the next level by providing growth capital and strategic support. He also has hands-on experience with the hardware/software combination and how to operate in a multi-stakeholder B2B market.

Tanja Sanders

Co-founder & CEO
GrowthHub
E-commerce, Marketing, Adtech, Growth Hacking
Tanja is an entrepreneur and growth hacker. In the past 10 years, Tanja has helped more than 15 companies with (international) growth, mainly in the online industry. She has succeeded more than once in scaling businesses from scratch to internationally-active, multi-million dollar businesses.

Vincent van de Poll

Director E-commerce / Co-founder
The Cookware Company / Direct Impact
Growth Hacking, E-commerce, 3D printing, AR/VR
Vincent founded Direct Impact, an international growth agency to inspire people with a Silicon Valley mindset and help companies grow. For Vincent, being entrepreneurial means taking risks, crazy success, making the world a better place, sleepless nights, disruptive ideas and meeting amazing people.

Loes van Egmond

Business Development Director
Healthy.io, Skinvision
HealthTech, Software
Loes has been responsible for scaling digital health scale-ups like Skinvision and Healthy.io internationally. From exploration to execution, Loes brings first hand experience of expanding a digital health solution into new markets, with deep market knowledge of Germany and the UK.

Tomislaw Dalic

Co-founder / Managing Director
GrowthHub / Groupon
Platforms, E-commerce, AdTech, Direct-to-consumer, Growth Hacking
Tom has experience in scaling more than 100 ventures internationally using rapid experimentation and validation. He is an expert in all major acquisition channels (Facebook, Google Ads, Email, SEO) as well as conversion rate optimization & retention.

Benjamin Pomerantz

Founder
Pocket Media
Adtech, E-commerce, Big Data, B2C, Mobile, Singapore
Benjamin is experienced in setting up offices and teams around the globe. As founder of Pocket Media, he is responsible for expanding markets, writing strategies, setting up offices (e.g. in NYC, Singapore, Israel.)

Jeroen Plink

Co-founder & COO
LegalTechnology Hub
LegalTech, RegTech, FinTech, SaaS, B2B
Currently based in New York City, Jeroen is a hands-on entrepreneur and global executive with experience building products and companies from the ground up to successful exit. He has a proven track record of developing and growing businesses, teams and technologies with innovation and passion.

Robert Bruil

Founder / VP Global Partnerships
Navads / Uberall
Platform, SaaS, EdTech, Smart City, Web Marketing
Robert is a local search executive interested in companies looking to increase their reach, frequency, market share and outlets in GPS channels. He has broad experience in all aspects of geolocation and is also experienced in SEM, SER, advertising and branding.

Lourens Verweij

MedTech Director, Board Member & Investor
CAJU Venture Partners
HeathTech, Life Science, Medical AI, Investing
Lourens’ expertise lies in the Healthcare & Life Science sector. He has a strong MedTech and Digital Health industry track record as Member of the Board, Investor and Advisor to a large portfolio across Europe. Focusing on international expansions, financing, partnerships, and governance aspects. At present he holds the Director position of a surgical implant division, leadings its global expansion. Lourens has a prior track record in the Management Consultant industry, building and consolidating organisations with operations in 24+ countries.

André Grift

Co-Founder / Head of Sales
NOAD, Gryphon partners / bunq bank
Sales, Executive management, FinTech, Big Data
André is a hands-on entrepreneur with over 16 years of experience in international business. In 2000 he co-founded a tech company and was responsible for the business development and international expansion in a large number of countries across Europe.

Gerwald van den Oetelaar

Founder & CXO
Appical
HRtech, EdTech, Operations
Gerwald is a resilient, determined and game-changing HRtech entrepreneur with extensive experience in providing global leadership to enhance business operations and accelerate new ideas into global businesses and brands.

Maarten Neve

Founder
Healthy Entrepreneurs
Social Enterprise, HealthTech, Developing countries
Maarten is an entrepreneurial manager with a successful history of working in the international pharmaceutical, healthcare & development industries. Maarten also has a strong background, expertise and interest in developing countries.

Marc Jellema

CEO & Co-founder
Tom Kabinet
Big Data, Platform, E-commerce, EdTech
Marc is an entrepreneur who challenged the global publishing industry. He has extensive knowledge in how to build a stable, scalable and international platform business. Marc knows what to do when you are faced with (international) legal challenges as a startup.