Meet the team!
Tarek Ghobar – The Boss
Co-founder of two high tech startups in Delft, the Netherlands with 5 years startup experience in technology commercialization (healthcare industry). My vision is to focus on both practical lessons for entrepreneurs and the stigma that failure is bad!
Cass Phillipps – Executive Producer
Cassandra has been a startup event producer for over five years, producing and managing conferences like FailCon, SF MusicTech Summit, Inside Social Apps, Unleashed Conference, and many more. She works with clients to insure each has a high-quality and profitable event, connecting them with the best partners, sponsors, and speakers for their topics. Cassandra has a B.A in Human Development from the University of Chicago.
Suzanne Blotenburg – Media Queen
A perfectionist and a real journalism lover! She is a freelance business journalist and writes for both media and (startup) companies, amongst which NU.nl NUzakelijk, (Sanoma), and 7 Ditches TV. She has also written for Het Financieele Dagblad, mainly on SME's, entrepreneurship and the young entrepreneurs platform FD Young Entrepreneur. She will be our media and promotion queen.
James Dooms – Event King
With a keen eye for detail, he is well underway in creating a successful career in event management. Being able to keep calm and carry on is one of his abilities that adds value to the team. He will be the floor manager on the day itself and handle the day to day operations leading up to the event.
Arthur Tolsma 伟理ip软件免费
As entrepreneur Arthur experienced the emotional rollarcoaster of a high-tech startup intensively. From winning a TV in 2009, to being overworked and broke in 2010. Selling the company in 2012 meant a big financial loss, but a great gain in experience that we wrote down in his book ‘Startups & Downs’. Nowadays he is professional coach, trainer, speaker & presenter, and will host Failcon.nl
Andrea Francis – Chief Hustler
Andrea is a content marketer with an eye for growth hacking techniques. She's a hustler and marketer for tech startups, and is an advocate of open knowledge sharing. Currently, Andrea is growing Twoodo - a lightweight collaboration platform for teams - and helps organize the Growth Hackers Amsterdam meetup.
Prepare For and Avoid Common Startup Mistakes
You aren’t a real entrepreneur until you’ve had to deal with failure, and recovering from it – financially emotionally and practically – can be challenging. Hear how entrepreneurial leaders have dealt with failure while keeping a positive and tenacious attitude. In March of 2014, we're hosting our inaugural European event in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Whether you’re a successful founder, or just getting started, this event is not to be missed, and will define how the industry approaches failure.
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Hans Rekers
Director & founder of Rekers Management Consultancy
Daan Weddepohl
Founder of Peerby
Gijsbert Koren
Managing partner of Douw and Koren
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
Founder of The Next Web
Floris van Alkemade
Co-founder of Solid Ventures
Niels ‘t Hooft
Founder of Bashers.nl
Janneke Niessen
CIO and co-founder of Improve Digital
Prof. Paul Iske
Professor of Open Innovation at Maastricht University
Jan van Kranendonk
Co-founder of Sunuru
