Team

Over 30 years experience in the electronics industry in consumer electronics, semiconductors, telecommunication, software and computer architecture. Served at Philips Research, Philips Telecommunications Division, Manager IC design group, CTO, Managing Director at Philips Semiconductors, President Philips Semiconductors North America, CEO Digital Video Group. In 2000 he followed a long-term ambition to be entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and co–founded, mentored, was interim CEO of or invested in start up companies and was involved in one IPO and several M&A activities. His dream is to help start–up companies in The Netherlands and help create a smart money venture capital environment. Msc/PhD from Delft University (TUD) and serves on the Board of XCeive, Techwell and Adesto.

Worked for almost 20 years in the financial industry with ABN Amro Bank. Nicolaas has experience in the areas of corporate banking, structured finance, corporate finance, IT strategy and venture capital. From 2005 – 2009 he was member of the Technopartner Seed Advisory Committee and he is currently member of the SenterNovem Groeifaciliteit Advisory Committee and the Eureka Advisory Committee. Nicolaas holds a business economics Msc degree from the University of Amsterdam.

Loek Nijman has broad experience in research and he has been active in various functions from researcher to senior vice president in fields such as solid state physics, integrated circuit technology, parallel computing, robotics, natural language processing, speech recognition and medical image processing. His dream is to produce value and growth while creating jobs for people. Gradually his interest in venturing has grown and so he has been the founder of the speech recognition business in Philips and stood at the birth of the Philips Technology Incubator and some of its ventures. He also negotiated the deal of Philips Research with New Venture Partners. Recently he founded the healthcare incubator.

Dr. Theo Claasen has more than 35 years of experience in digital signal processing and micro electronics. He has lead from the start in 1985 the IC Design Center at Philips Research Labs and became CTO of Philips Semiconductors in 1997. He has been involved in the demerger of this division from Philips in 2006 thereby creating the independent company NXP. Until his retirement he has been a member of the Board of Management of NXP. In that role he has been responsible for the company strategy and various acquisitions and sales of business lines. At this moment he is active as advisor for strategic issues to small and large companies. Through his participation in Point One Investment Fund he hopes to provide his wide expertise in micro electronics and digital systems to young entrepreneurs so as to create economic welfare and employment for young engineers in this field. Dr. Claasen is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Dr. Hans Sassenburg received a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) in 1986 and a PhD degree in economics from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in 2006. He worked as an independent consultant until 1996, when he co-founded a consulting and training firm. This company specialized in software process improvement and software architecture and was sold in 2000. In 2001 he moved to Switzerland, where he founded a new consulting and training firm SE–CURE AG (www.se–cure.ch). In addition, he has been a visiting scientist at the Software Engineering Institute since January of 2005. He is further involved as a venture partner and business coach in early-staged investments in technology growth companies. He is a widely published and well–known speaker on software management topics.

Dr. Erik Volkerink is Chief Scientist at Verigy Memory Test Solutions and Consulting Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University. He contributes to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Previously, he worked with HP, Agilent, and various smaller companies in the Netherlands. He is president of the Dutch School Silicon Valley which he founded in 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in Semiconductor Design & Test from Stanford University and a Master´s from the University of Twente. He studied Marketing and Venture Capital at The Wharton School of Business.

Casper Koomen is founder of Combustic, an Industrial Design company focusing on product concept development for consumer, mobile, web and other product areas. Casper has a MsC degree from Delft University of Technology in Industrial Design. He works with various companies and technology institutions where he focuses on product design and business creation.