Luc De Vos
advisor, Director, and investor in Leuven, Belgium
Luc De Vos
advisor, Director, and investor in Leuven, Belgium
60 SHADES OF VENTURING
Luc De Vos pioneered "the Internet" in Europe in 1993 when UUCP was some weird protocol and WWW was still a CERN project. He was founding father of the EUnet International group as the first commercial ISP in Belgium and also the first pan-European large(st) ISP. It was in fact a European counterpart of what UUnet/Worldcom meant in the US. Advent International Ltd was our VC from 1996 to 1998. EUnet International Ltd was acquired in 1998 for $154 million by Qwest Communications (NYSE:Q) and was about a year later subsequently injected into a new joint venture with KPN, creatively named KPNQwest.
As such, he is one of the very early business angels of this new "media and Internet" generation industry that was shaped in the nineties.
Luc has been a key actor in the creation, development and internationalisation of some of the household names that sparkle or have sparkled on the ICT sky of Europe such as: KPNQwest, Stepstone, Starlab, and was an early business angel, director for 8 years and private investor in the vehicle remarketing company CarsOnTheWeb.com ("COTW"), acquired in November 2018 by US based KAR Auction Services (NYSE:KAR) for up to €156 million.
In 2011 Luc was again at the cradle of a paradigm shifting company in the digital health space. The company closed for $60 mio in funding and received an FDA clearance in Q3 2018 for its Urine Testing product.
Luc has also invested in a diverse portfolio of other companies such as EU digital magazine 'tech.eu' and more recently in augmented (data) analytics company DataStories and in the collaboration software company Husky Marketing Planner.
Vintage year 1958 but still feeling rather young Luc has now ventured in 60 companies for 26 years in one or another role as founder, director, investor or advisor.
Cumulative numbers (as of 2019) on the venturing chart:
117 years as a (co-)founder
187 years as a shareholder
203 years as a director
108 years as a chairman
72 years in management
-and a weighted total of-