The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everthing you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
To learn more, join a free upcoming event;
- Startup Pitch Bootcamp with Adeo Ressi: October 26, 6:30pm
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Autumn 2012 Brussels Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adeo Ressi
CEO, TheFunded.com
Adeo Ressi is Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Adeo also runs the Founder Institute, a mentoring program that helps entrepreneurs launch hundreds of world-class companies each year. The Institute is the eighth start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating.
Alain De Taeye
Co-Founder, Tele Atlas (now TomTom)
Alain De Taeye, born in Belgium, graduated as engineer-architect from the University of Gent. After having done research work in the field of Operations Research at the Business School of the Gent University, he founded Informatics & Management Consultants (I&M) where, next to IT consultancy, he continued his work on digital map databases and routing. In 1989 I&M was integrated into the Dutch Tele Atlas group and as of 1990 Alain headed the Tele Atlas group. During this period, he successfully introduced Tele Atlas on both the Frankfurt and the Amsterdam Stock Exchanges. In 2008 Tele Atlas was acquired by TomTom and Alain joined the Management Board of the TomTom group.
Bart Becks
Co-Founder and CEO , SonicAngel
Bart is the co-founder & CEO of SonicAngel, a new music platform that allows fans to directly empower talented musicians. He is also Chairman of the IBBT, the research and innovation institute for ICT and Media. Additionally, Bart founded an advisory firm to support innovation and startups, such as Storify, Zamante, InThePocket and others. He is the former CEO of Belgacom Skynet, and Chairman & CEO of Skynet iMotion Activities (BelgacomTV). He was also Senior Vice President of SBS Broadcasting, in charge of all digital media activities across Europe - SBS got acquired for 3.3b Euros to become ProSiebenSat1. Bart alternately lives in Brussels and Los Angeles with his wife and son Charlie.
David Hachez
Founder, The After
David Hachez is an entrepreneur who started Growth Bridge the company behind Raz*War; he is a digital communication specialist highly involved on the internet landscape since more than 13 years. During his professional career he worked at companies - mainly as a digital communication strategist - such as Duval Guillaume, Microsoft, MediaEdge, DAD (now LBi) and the Rossel Group. His entrepreneurial career started as a brand activist with the successful launch of Raz*War (razwar.com) - a shaving brand building its reputation through social media. He has won the Bizz Starter of 2010, the Plugg Audience Award 2010 and is still actively involved in the entrepreneurship scene (BetaGroup, WeStartup, Feweb). He owns a BA in Applied Communications from IHECS and he is currently following an International Executive MBA at Louvain School of Management in Louvain-La-Neuve.
Diederik Stols
Partner, Boekx Advocaten
Diederik Stols is a partner at Boekx Advocaten, a law firm dedicated to media and intellectual property, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He previously practised at the law firms Allen & Overy and DLA Piper. Diederik’s practice has a focus on new media, traditional media, fast moving consumer goods and cultural institutions. Diederik has written dozens of publications about IP and media in nationwide newspapers and in legal journals. He is a country correspondent for Entertainment Law Review, and a frequent speaker at seminars and conventions. Diederik lectures on IP at the postgraduate institute of Leiden University, as well as the MBA Cross Media program founded by Lemniscaat Education.
Filip Tack
Co-Founder / SVP Global Sales & Business Development, Nomadesk
Filip is the Co-founder, SVP of Global Sales and Business Development of Nomadesk, a leading provider of online storage, file sharing and synchronization software that enables users to access, share, synchronize and safeguard files from any location, whether online or offline. He bootstrapped Nomadesk and made it into a revenue generating SaaS-business, geared for growth (revenue CAGR of 271%). Nomadesk was selected by the Guidewire Group during Innovate! 2009 as "the most promising European startup" and is among the Red Herring Europe TOP 100. The company is venture-backed by Gimv and BAMS Angel Fund.
Frank Bekkers
CEO, Mobile Vikings
Reading Frank Bekkers' resume, one gets the impression he is a serial entrepreneur. One is right. Mobile Vikings is his 13th company, preceded by various others like Tupperware, Creneau, Medical Software and the Living Lab i-City. As varied as all these companies were, there is one thing connecting them, one thing that is Frank's real passion. It encompasses creativity, new and different business models, in a word: innovation. Mobile Vikings is a fine example. Creating an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) without a brand, without points of sales, with a whole new approach and rapidly muscling his way into a market that was supposed to be saturated, for Frank it's just what he does. He is more an evangelist than a CEO. To quote George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Jonathan Abrams
Founder and CEO, Nuzzel
Jonathan Abrams is the Founder & CEO of Nuzzel, and co-founder and a Managing Partner of Founders Den, a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. A seasoned entrepreneur, Jonathan previously held the title of founder & CEO at Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks. Jonathan holds a bachelors of science in Computer Science from McMaster University.
Matthew Bromberg
CEO & Founder, ImOK.com
Matt is the former CEO of Major League Gaming and Founder of I'mOK. He is currently working as the GM of Bioware at Electronic Arts, and spent 5 years at AOL as GM of Moviefone, Consumer Products, and Games. Prior to AOL, he was the GM of Techweb (IPO'd and sold to United News and Media) and Deputy Publisher of American Lawyer Media (Sold to Bruce Wasserstein). He holds a JD from Harvard Law School. Full bio is available here: http://corp.imok.com/about
Michael Daun
Founder, Incloode
Michael Daun is the Founder and CEO of Incloode, a unique video platform for viral video marketing that makes it easy to create great user videos. Previously, Michael was the co-founder of Spray - a media company specializing in interactive consumer services, of fluidminds - a management consultancy focusing on innovative leadership and corporate culture. Michael is a PhD drop-out from the Stockholm Schools of Economics, and originally hails from Sweden.
Nico Perez
Co-Founder, mixcloud.com
Nico is Co-founder and Creative Director of Mixcloud - an Internet radio company based in London, UK. He graduated from Cambridge University with a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering before working as an analyst in the renewable energy sector. Nico used his technical background and visual orientation to design and build websites as a hobby, before founding Mixcloud in late 2008. At Mixcloud Nico is responsible for product development including graphic design, information architecture, branding, identity and HTML/CSS development. Nico has mentored several Founder Institute semesters including Paris, Singapore, Bogota and others. He also regularly speaks at conferences around the world. More info: http://www.nicoperez.com/speaking
Niko Nelissen
Co-Founder & CEO, Oxynade
Niko is co-founder and CEO of Oxynade, a VC funded company, focussed on monetizing hyper-local verticals. He is an investor and chairman of the board at MobileJuice, and an investor and board member at KeyConcepts. He is also the founder and owner of iHub, the home of various technology startups in Ghent. Previously, Niko was co-founder of Hostbasket. As CTO of Hostbasket, he helped grow the company to the largest hosting provider in Belgium. Hostbasket was acquired by Telenet in 2008. Further more, he co-founded Q-layer and was VP of Business Development at Q-layer. Q-layer was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2009, and Niko became Director Cloud Computing at Sun. Niko brings years of experience in internet technology, cloud computing, software development and web 2.0 concepts.
Patrice Roulive
COO & Co-Founder, Telemis
Co-Founder & COO of Telemis, a Medical Imaging company building software that Extends Human Life. Telemis is active in Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. Now with 50 people, Telemis announced 6.8 MEUR in revenue in 2011. Patrice started at Telemis as VP of R&D. He then moved to France to manage the local acquired company and grow it to a major player on the French Healthcare market. He then went back to Belgium to become COO of Telemis, therefore responsible for Sales, Services and R&D operations in all countries. Patrice owns a Master in Computer Sciences from the Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain, Belgium. He is the founder of the Passionate People community and regularly mentors entrepreneurs through Microsoft Boostcamp, WeStartup or Mind&Market events.
Pieter Dubois
Founder, Paycento
Pieter is the Founder of Paycento, a micropayment platform that allows consumers to pay for content through their social networks. He also is a graduate of the Founder Institute, where Paycento has been selected as top 2011 Graduate. Pieter has 15 years of experience in IT and finance while working for IBM in Belgium and Switzerland as well as working for BNP Paribas Fortis.
Robin Wauters
Editor , The Next Web
Robin is the European Editor of The Next Web, and former writer for TechCrunch. Aside from professional blogging activities, he is an event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an allround startup champion.
Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz
Founder & CEO
Rodrigo is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and currently President at Sepulveda Capital as well as RISC Partners, a private equity boutique, specializing in strategic advice to entrepreneurs and business angels launching new ventures or seeking turnaround opportunities Formerly, he was Founder & CEO vpod.tv, Founder at MD RISC Partners, CEO of glowria, Principal at Gemini Consulting, and Manager KPMG Consulting. He earned a Master's degree in computer science from EPITA as well as an MBA from INSEAD.
Sacha Vekeman
Founding Partner, Camargus International
Sacha Vekeman has a huge amount of technology entrepreneurship experience – first working in high-growth startups, then launching one of his own. Sacha started Mobiya Ltd., a mobile classified advertising platform in 2005 – and took it from concept to profitability and then to exit. His primary roles were strategy, fundraising, M&A and business development. In an advisory role, Sacha is involved with a lot of cloud and mobile companies: Core Consultancy Limited, Planzone, Mobila, Oxopia, Nomadesk and Telemak.
Sebastien De Halleux
COO & Co-Founder, Playfish
Sebastien de Halleux co-founded and was COO of Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social game companies, which was acquired by EA for $400m in November 2009. Upon joining EA, he was appointed Vice President of Business Development for EA Interactive. Prior to Playfish, Sebastien was part of the founding team at Macrospace, a European mobile games startup which merged with US-based Sorrent to form Glu Mobile and grew to a $337m IPO in March 2007. Sebastien also helped incubate Nokia Ad Service, an entrepreneurial new business unit at Nokia aiming to monetize traffic across 850 million Nokia handsets. Sebastien holds a Master’s in Civil Engineering with honours from Imperial College, London.
Toon Coppens
Co-Founder / CTO, Netlog
Toon Coppens graduated as a Master of Science in Informatics at the University of Ghent. June 2000, during his first year at university, Toon launched the first Belgian social networking site. Next to developing and maintaining several successful online social media properties throughout Europe, he was also a semi-professional volleyball player, party organizer and dj. Since 2005, Toon has been fully dedicated to building Netlog.com of which he is co-founder and CTO. As fromf 2011 Toon co-founded Massive//Media which is behind the social dating site Twoo.com
Toon Vanagt
Founder & Managing Partner, Various Companies
Toon Vanagt is managing partner at several SMBs, as well as an entrepreneur with broad experience in all aspects of setting up and managing ventures in the BeNeLux. He raised 4.000.000 EUR on his first start-up (Casius.com |1999) and did a management-buy-out in 2005. He also has extensive experience with e-business, consulting and ICT projects.
Tyler Crowley
Founder & CEO, Skweal
Tyler is currently the Founder & CEO of Skweal, Producer of the Open Angel Forum/Launch Conference, and Director of Corporate Development and Strategy at Mahalo. Some of his past experience includes working as a producer for Open Angel Forum/Launch Conference, TechCrunch50, and ThisWeekIn. He is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego in Interdisciplinary Studies in Computers and the Arts, and graduated Summa Cum Laude.
Wim Vernaeve
Co-founder, Green Park Investment Partners
Wim is a founding partner of Green Park Investment Partners, a deal based investment fund based in Belgium. Previously he spent 6 years in London and co-founded Bragster, the social network for daredevils where people can dare their friends and post video evidence of their challenges. Bragster sold to Guinness Book of World Records in 2010. Before that, he worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley in London, co-founded an internet start-up in DVD rental, and spent a year in Shanghai at a rapid prototyping startup. Wim received a MSc. in Aerospace Engineering.
Xavier Damman
Co-Founder & CEO, Storify
Xavier is the cofounder & CEO of Storify. He moved from Belgium in the summer of 2009 with the vision that there are voices on social media that deserve to be published on main stream media. Xavier earned a master’s degree with distinction in computer science from Belgium’s Leuven University.
Yves Vekemans
Found/CEO, Hercules Trophy International
Yves is the Founder and CEO of the Hercules Trophy International, and he is now busy rolling out this amazing inter-company competition all over the globe. He’s passionate about everything he does in his working and private time. He’s an energetic business leader, go-giver, coach, customer-person, family man, man of the world. He’s a humble warrior who never ever gives up. Previously he has been involved in entrepreneurial roles in numerous sectors spanning sports, IT, online media, telecom, industry, insurance etc. He was awarded youngest CIO of the year back in 1999. He is convinced that passion, vision, great teams and strong networks can make people change the world to a better place.
