Georges van Hoegaerden
Managing Director, The Venture CompanyEntrepreneurial success
Georges is an innovator. A term perhaps used loosely by others. Georges' new media sales track record at Oracle led to a personal invite from Larry Ellison to move to the US from his native Holland 15 years ago. He has since built the strategy and growth of a 4 person startup to a triple digit exit. Amongst other achievements as a 4x CEO, he has restructured a struggling startup to a $1M revenue run-rate within 4 months after his arrival, and he has raised double digit pre-money valuations based on new macro-economic direction and focus. Georges has taken a board seat in all of his early-stage endeavors.Operational Success
Georges has advised established companies (Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, Ericsson and others) to simplify and focus their go-to-market strategies and execution. He has reduced their product portfolio from 16 to 4 and dramatically improved revenues and reduced marketing and sales expenses. He has helped companies establish new ways to compete, driven by more sustainable macro-economic differentiation and better customer value. He has helped large companies turn complacency into a drive for new opportunity.Investor Savvy
Georges has been invited to become a Venture Capitalist many times but declined after a short stint as a part-time Venture Partner. Declined because the risk model deployed by the generally accepted venture model is so fundamentally flawed. Georges has recently defined a new model for venture investing that truly meets the needs of Limited Partners and entrepreneurs. Georges is an innovator, also on the investment side. Meritocracy runs through his veins.Pragmatic and Analytical
To give back to a country that served him well, Georges started writing down his thoughts in his blog, now for more than 3 years. There he continues to reinforce the upside of technology innovation and the creation of highly monetizable ideas that have no precedent. Lauded by experienced entrepreneurs, CEOs and Limited Partners his blog captures a progressively larger audience through periodic publication in The Wallstreet Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Business Week, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, NPR and other business, technical and financial publications.Prescience and Vision
Georges wrote about the demise of the image superstores before it happened. He wrote about the need to focus on better product and user experiences before companies started implementing them. He wrote about the need for a marketplace for software development one year before Apple's App Store was born. He wrote about the ludicracy of applying venture money to building tiny cell phone applications that is yet to implode. He wrote about sub-prime Venture Capital long before the numbers proved it.But more importantly Georges has proven his ability to spot innovation that raised the bar and tapped into phenomenal macro-economic pull.
Realistic optimist
Technology innovation, when applied correctly, is at its early stages of supplying 5/6th of our untapped world population with meaningful technology applications. He believes the world is our oyster when we apply the appropriate financial system to innovation.Georges continues to write about a currently defunct venture business and how a flawed risk model currently prevents us from tapping into that economic opportunity. He jumped into action in helping Limited Partners invest differently, and some very prominent government readers are paying attention too. Georges believes wholeheartedly in the meritocracy of innovation that lays at the foundation of our economic success, but we treat so badly. Yet, all is not lost, great entrepreneurs and money are abound. All that is needed is a better application of money.
Explorative and creative
In his private life Georges cofounded and built a tennis-club at age 14, played tennis and basketball competitively and was an avid sailor, owning his own boat. Nowadays most of his free time is consumed in the company of his wife and 5-year old daughter, discovering great surroundings and visiting new restaurants. Georges is an espresso snob and prefers Illy Cafe every day, a few times a day.Georges is a self-taught and published hobby photographer and he can often be found with his dSLR camera in tow, capturing and creating another vision.
