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ENTREPRENEUR AND INVESTOR
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About me

Who I am

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PYKE VAN DIEREN

ENTREPRENEUR & INVESTOR FROM THE NETHERLANDS now Belgium

As of the age 6 I always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.  And if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I responded “rich”.

Now at the age of 48 I understand that there is much more to life. Life is about being surrounded with your loved ones, enjoying the things that you do on a daily basis, having a passion in your life and an urge to help people. As a father of 5 beautiful kids and having a loving wife, I can honestly say that I’m on the right track.

I have been fortunate that I was adopted and raised by loving parents, received multiple great educations, worked for big companies and experienced what it is like to build (and sell/ exit) a few companies myself – from the ground up. But perhaps more important: I also experienced what it is like to raise up my own kids as a stay-home-dad.

Anyway: I don’t like using Linkedin, Facebook or any other social media platform, because these companies misuse my personal data.

So this website is the only place that gives you insight in who I am. I hope you enjoy this website.

TAKE A LOOK AT MY COMPANIES
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SOME INSIGHTS

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Entrepreneur

INVESTOR
and hands-on
entrepreneur

Well. you have to look and see for yourself. The 5 Transformations as AI-chatbot help fight insecurity. It’s our mission to rid this world of people not achieving their dreams.

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For more info or visit theinnerchurch.com

 
 
Update: Exit as of Sept 1th 2021. Yes. I sold the company. more info: Icecat N.V. acquires Autheos Yes..after COVID-19. I had to step in as CEO again at Autheos video technology platform. Click on image for more info or visit autheos.com
In 2021 I Founded BulletProofVentures. As it seems everything in my life lead up to this moment. With this company I can combine all my skills and experiences and at the same time serve a much greater purpose than only taking care of myself and my family. I can help out other perhaps less fortunate entrepreneurs reclaim their right of building a successful business. Many of these entrepreneurs are now left out, because most banks or investment firms only focus on “the already successful businesses” or “twenty-something” year old startups founders who want to become the next Mark Zuckerberg with their billion dollar disruptive business ideas.. (and yes: all the “love” to them, but this is just not my cup of tea.). Bulletproof is a terminology used to describe people (entrepreneurs) and companies that can resist the toughest challenges. It’s like the movie scene from The Matrix (one of my all time favorites) where the main character Neo (personal note: my first sons name is, not coincidentally, Neo) suddenly understands that he does not have to run away or can be hurt by outside forces. He just have to believe in all the skills he acquired and all the lessons of life that he have learned. Long story short: We will help seasoned entrepreneurs become successful again.
Click on the image for more info or visit bulletproofventures.com

After Jeannette gave birth to our fourth child in 2016, I decided it was time to also enjoy my young kids and experience the young life of my four kids. So I took on the challenge to help raise my kids on a day-to-day bases and leave my working life behind. I was in the fortunate position to make this happen and even though people in my environment thought I was crazy to leave a successful business world behind, I knew it would be one of my best decisions in my life. I hope to become 180 (why not?), so it was also clear to me that spending a couple of years raising my own kids (instead of having a nanny take care them) would time wise only be a small fraction of my life with a high personal return. If you do something you have to do it good, so I basically burned all my bridged and handed over my company keys to others and wished them good luck. And the outcome. Yes it was a struggle. Most of this is on a personal and mental level (being a stay home dad can sometimes have big social consequences. Previous business contacts or friends did not return my calls anymore. Probably because I was not interesting (anymore) or perhaps because I talked about my kids 24×7. And yes, I do understand they had probably more urgent business challenges or simply had to make money. So that’s all fine. Anyway to make a long story short. All the respect to mothers (or fathers) of three or more children who are raising their own kids as stay home mom (or dad) and even more respect to those who also have to fight for survival or need a paying job just because kids need to eat (ooh really). But after three years reading over 200 books, watching hundreds of 1-3 hours podcast on Youtube, bringing the kids to school, picking them up and I can go on for ever ranting about all the things that take up your time.. Wow. I just needed to start my personal journey again and decided to start over the business life again. This time it will revolve around my family and it must have a positive impact on mothers, children and families though.

Update: Exit as of Sept 1th 2021. Yes. I sold the company. more info: Icecat acquires Autheos In 2012 as single founder I build and bootstrapped Autheos video tech distribution platform from the ground up. For the first 3 years I personally made all investments myself, hired a kick-ass team of tech developers and we started building our proprietary video technology platform. Because we had a very scalable system (that could potentially serve the world) we only needed to grew to a very small team of only 11 FTE and managed to reach a break even scenario. Which is very unusual (and not cool) for tech-startups. At that point in time we where the biggest ecommerce video platform in the Benelux with customers like Bol.com, Wehkamp.nl, Blokker.nl, Kieskeurig.nl and many other retailers. We had over 450 global brands like Philips, Bosch, Lego, Samsung, Sony, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, EA-games that we could consider to be our happy users. In 2016 I decided to leave everything behind (I missed seeing my kids grow up) and handed over the company to others (a new “co-founder”) and let them grow the company internationally. I only stayed on as one of the Advisory Board members. Now many years later Autheos operates at the intersection of video, e-commerce and big data. Leading the Benelux region with a 70% market share, the Autheos platform is used by global brands to optimize the delivery of their official product videos to e-commerce retailers. Autheos generates data insights that drive growth, increase reach, and help both brands and e-tailers to create compelling digital product experiences with video. Click on image for more info or visit autheos.com
In 2006 as single founder I build and bootstrapped Dentalcast video distribution platform from the ground up. I manager to get a 60% market share in the Netherlands and had big partners like Henry Schein (fortune 500 comp), Ivoren Kruis, KNMT (dentist branch organisation) and many others. In 2012 I sold the company, but in 2016 I bought back the company. By that time the markershare has dropped significantly because we no more had our initial partners. As of today we still serve hundreds of dental practices and are still considering the possibility of growing the company again.  Click on image for more info or visit dentalcast.eu

First Jobs

EARLY YEARS

EMPLOYEE

At IBM I was part of the ex-PWC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) business consultancy group that was acquired by the big Blue company IBM. It was a strange time because suddenly we also had access to more technological challenges and expertise and depending on your entrepreneurial character this could either mean new opportunities or a great threat. I belonged to the people of great opportunities and I was dedicated to take on the challenge to help become big companies Basel II, IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley proof, with the use of technology systems. Also assist companies with the early internet and multi-media challenges. After spending more then 2 years on this I decided to call it a quit. I was not able to manage the politics within such a big company. At that time I was also more interested in starting up my own business, but did not know how to make this happen. After some interesting business deals as a co-contractor I had enough starting capital and was finally able to make this dream a reality. So a great thanks to IBM.

During my time at PriceWaterhouseCoopers I mainly focused on business consulting and fulfilling interim positions within the Financial Services Industry. I had big customers like (Dutch companies) Delta Loyd and Achmea. My area of expertise was Corporate governance, Bases II, IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley and setting up organisational structures and processes within companies so they would meet Accountancy Reporting standard (Financial audits).

At the STE (Stichting Toezicht Effectenverkeer), the predecessor of the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) as a senior I was part of a team of professionals supervising the operation of the financial markets and especially the bigger professional traders. We conducted our supervision by means of inspections, enforcement and transfer of standards, and in doing so we expressly monitored signals originating from the market and findings from its own control organization. In my portfolio I had (Dutch) companies like ING, Postbank, Achmea and Staalbank. I was also part of a team investigating WOL (WordOnline)-IPO that made the headlines in the Netherlands. And I was helping to setup general guidelines for the financial market on how to stay compliant. It was a very interesting time. After some discussions and disagreements with my manager I decided to leave because there was not that much room for growth at that time (or this would mean I had to wait until the few manager positions would become vacant).

Arthur Andersen was one of the biggest (if not: the biggest) Accounting & Consultancy firms in the world. So this meant I was very proud to be hired by this company after a rigorous selection process. It was my first real job so I took on the challenge to start with my career and put everything I have learned during my years in college to the test. Even though Arthur Andersen was the biggest in the world, this doesn’t mean you also have the biggest local market customers. So in the Netherlands this meant that I had some very interesting customers, but most of the time I was part of often small teams. This has many upsides (that were not clear to my at that time) like: you can easily stand out. It also has a big downside: if you don’t fit the general consensus people, especially those with the need to fit in and do what they are being told, start to spread non work related rumours/gossip. All in an attempt to block your career. Had I not been so A-political (non-political) and more like a cog in a system I would have been able to deal with this situation in more strategic way. But, being in the prime of my life, I did’t want to waist any time so I abandoned the ship. In hindsight I was right, because in 2001 Arthur Andersen was part of one of the biggest financial scandals in US history. Part to this can be attributed to this “cog in the system” and act “like the general consensus” mentality within Arthur Andersen that was so visible for the observing eye.

EDUCATION

FORMAL EDUCATION

EDUCATION

After you graduate your initial thoughts will be: “finally I have completed my education, now let’s start my working life”.

And ooh boy.. are your wrong. The only thing my education did was that other people (like employers) took me seriously. And this all just based on some sort of paper. What a world. Some employers (or the wrong ones) only look at degrees and not at the more important things in (working) life. Now two decades later this luckily has somewhat changed.

No seriously, the real education starts when you finally are freed from regurgitating mostly boring information. You then discover how wonderful it actually is to learn new things. And then it happens…. You are hooked. You can not stop learning and you realize that you will be a student of life for the rest of your life.

So still to this day I make it a habit to read lots of books, listen to interesting podcast, talk to interesting people and really dive deep into various fields of expertise and take up as much information as possible. The result of this is hopefully visible throughout my new business and family life (yes.. there are also many books about raising kids, maintaining a loving relationship etcetera).

The Postmaster Accountancy (note: this is not bookkeeping) can be seen as an PHD in Accounting & Auditing. In the Netherlands it’s the highest Accountancy university degree and I’m proud to say that I succeeded in acing all exams (even my final oral exam). Yes even though I was always surrounded with books at that time I wanted to work with the biggest Accounting firm (which I did). Unfortunately during my graduation year suddenly “they” decided that in order to be granted with the official and protected “RA” (Certified Auditor, some sort of Phd) title. You needed to be part of a 3 year internship program basically writing (stupid) reports, unless you where able to pass a final oral exam before a certain date. Because of personal obligations I was not able to meet this deadline. For me this would mean that I had to do a lot of freshmen years internship work at a time I was working fulltime for over 4 years. I didn’t want to do this so I decided I would not pursue being part of the NivRA and complete my dissertation/graduation thesis. Nowadays many things have changed and Accountancy is somehow even called Assurance. So see: more info on University of Amsterdam more info on Praktijkopleiding Assurance more or info on NivRa

The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) is a four-year full-time bachelor’s program designed as a pre program for the (three year) Postmaster program. Here the ground work was laid for my financial and business working career. During my years at collage I decided to already start working 4 days a week because I did not want to waist any time. So when I finally graduated I did not even had the time to pick up my degree myself and skipped this moment in my life. more info on AUAS

These were my first years as student. I did not follow the highest possible college, perhaps in hindsight because I did not value learning boring stuff when I was young. At that time the education system was more focused on producing factory workers who could sit still all day and learn meaningless things. Now with the internet, there is shift in the education system and I would like to think that if I had known what I know right now, I perhaps would have put more time and effort in studying. Then again.. nothing happens without a reason and everything worked out great. (and yes… I do regret not attending some MD education). more info on Mendelcollege

MY EXPERTISE

EXPERTISE

MY SKILLS

SKILLS

skill details
skills details
skills detail

PARTNERSHIPS

CLIENTS
/PARTNERSHIPS

Some background info. Psst don't tell others.

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