Henk de Jong

Henk is co-founder of 4 recently started ventures in Europe and North America. Also, board advisor to over 10 globally operating companies. Added to that, Henk has advisory and investment board positions at 4 Venture Capital investment firms. He started his first “venture” in 1979, at the age of 12. His school’s principal allowed him the use of the school’s first and only computer. Fascinated by this new world of coding he spent endless after-school hours on this pre IBM-PC machine. This resulted in being able to demonstrate his own created early educational software at a Dutch national conference at that age. 

A decade - plus a high school diploma and an MBA – later, he co-founded straight from university an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) platform company. This inhouse developed platform served many ‘high data intensity’ industries with software and hardware solutions. Ranging from West-Africa sailing shipping companies in logistics to the world’s largest rose grower in agri-culture. After selling this company, just before the dot-com crisis, Henk continued to work mostly in the Telecom industry and was involved in developing new global technology standards as well as new markets.

Recent activities are mainly in the field of aviation and unmanned aerial flight. As an investor and advisor in drone infrastructure companies and as a co-founder in a drone – forestry company. This company uses autonomous flying drone swarms (typically 8) to gather tree and additional forest data, operating below the tree canopy line. Active in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Nepal and The Philippines.

On a personal note, what has been a major eye-opener, is a business course “The Harvard way of negotiation” by Frits Philips jr. (grandson of the founder of the Philips corporation). Its key elements of “trust” and “transparency on motives” truly resonated and still have a huge impact on how Henk works and communicates.