The submitted executive summaries (up to 4 pages) are screened by a pool of judges. Each submission will be assessed by at least three judges. The top twelve submissions are selected as semi-finalists and announced on May 12.

The semi-finalists will submit a full business plan by May 22 and present to a panel of judges on June 8 in either the FBL or SGP campus. The top six teams will be selected as finalists.

Judges for 20th BVC Finals on Friday, 25 June

Anat Bar Gera

Serial Entrepreneur

Wi-Max Africa Chairperson

Anat is a former CEO, co-founder, board member and an investor of several companies, and as such has wide experience in developing companies, raising funds and realizing exits.

At present, she is a co-founder and Chairperson of Wimax Africa, a pan-African broadband wireless operator, with the mission of closing the digital divide in sub-Saharan Africa (www.wimax-africa.net). The company acquires Wimax licenses in chosen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, builds up and operates the networks, and serves its subscribers.

Anat was the CEO and co-founder of surfEU, a pan European internet provider, formed in 1999 as a joint venture with Media Markt, the largest electronic retailer worldwide. The company operated 15 portals in 5 different countries and accumulated 1.4 million subscribers within 18 months. The company was sold in 2001 to Tiscali, the largest European ISP at that time, listed on the MIB.

Anat was also the co-founder in different start ups, mainly in the Telecom sector, with numerous successful exits including Airpage – the first private telecommunication operator in Austria which took 40% of the paging market within 2 years, and was sold to Telenor, the Norwegian incumbent; RSL Com Austria – a fixed line telephony provider which became the largest alternative operator in Austria within 2 years from inception, was rolled out to a Nasdaq company and is today part of Telekom Austria; Wimax Telecom (www.wimaxxed.at) - founded in 2004, won Wimax licenses in Austria, Slovakia and Croatia and operated networks in these countries, was sold in 2007 to Nextwave, listed on Nasdaq ; Peoplefone (www.peoplefone.ch) – founded in 2005, offers VoIP in Switzerland, Poland and Slovakia in cooperation with Media Markt.

Prior to this, Anat was part of the M&A team of UBS in Zurich, and practiced law as a commercial lawyer at one of the top commercial law firms in Tel-Aviv.

 
She holds an MBA from INSEAD and an LL.B. from the Law School of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Anat is married, has 3 children and lives in Zurich. She is a member of the advisory board of the Friends of UNICEF Switzerland (Zurich), and is supporting academic education on a need and diversity basis at the Technion, Israel.

Houdijn Beekhuis

Owner, Tendris Holding

Houdijn is the owner of Tendris Holding (www.tendris.nl)

His current activities of which he has majority ownership are:

His previous experience includes:

Houdijn holds an MBA from INSEAD, LLM Tax Law from Erasmus University (Rotterdam) and BA Corporate Law from Leyden University.

Klaas de Boer

Managing Partner

Entrepreneurs Fund Management LLP

Klaas has nearly 20 years of experience in venture capital, entrepreneurship and strategy consulting.  He is currently the managing partner of Entrepreneurs Fund, which he joined less than 4 years ago.  During this time, Klaas restructured the fund and hired a new team.  Entrepreneurs Fund is an active, hands-on investor in  the clean tech and life sciences sectors, with a focus on Europe.  Klaas currently holds 7 board seats in the portfolio, most of which are in the life sciences sector.

Prior to Entrepreneurs Fund, Klaas spent a number of years as independent angel investor, advisor and (interim) manager, generally at the intersection between technology and entrepreneurship on the one hand and strategy and finance on the other.  Companies he worked with were active in a broad range of areas including: decision support software, internet payment/loyalty, CMOS based chemical sensing technology, health care services, and more broadly internet and IT services.

Klaas started his career with McKinsey & Company in Amsterdam and St. Petersburg, Russia.  From McKinsey he transitioned into venture capital by joining Baan Investment (later Vanenburg Group), where he set up a corporate venturing activity.  The team he led invested in enterprise software companies in the US, Europe and Israel.  The most successful investment from this period was WebEx, which listed on NASDAQ in 2000, and was acquired by Cisco for US$ 3.2 billion in 2007.  After the collapse of BaaN, Klaas joined the team to restructure Vanenburg Group’s activities, and left the group once the restructuring was largely complete.

Klaas holds an MBA from INSEAD, and an MSc in Applied Physics from Delft University.

Andrey Kessel

Amadeus Capital Partners

Andrey's career has been devoted to technology innovation. It covered investments in and work with high profile technology startups in a blue chip European venture capital firm as well as many years of international operational work.

Andrey has significant Board experience with multiple venture backed companies. These include: Openbravo, a developer of open source software for business management; TeraView, a terahertz instrumentation company; Solexa, which developed ultra-high throughput DNA sequencing technology and was acquired by Illumina in 2007; Veebeam, a company delivering a novel PC-to-TV connection box; Valista, a software company providing payments and offer management software to wireless and fixed line operators and ISPs (acquired by AePONA); and MyVocal, a mobile content provider.

During his time with Amadeus Capital Partners, one of the leading global venture funds, Andrey has worked as an investor and Board member. Prior to joining Amadeus, Andrey gained substantial operational experience in technology start-ups, which covered most aspects of establishing and running a business, business development, and managing offices, teams or projects. His previous roles were predominantly commercial positions in such companies as: Scala Business Solutions, a multinational business software company; PanTel Telecom, the eastern European subsidiary of KPN; and Nextra, an internet division of Telenor. Andrey started his career at Baltic Communications, a Russian subsidiary of Cable & Wireless.

Andrey co-founded several startups and is also working with a portfolio of several companies as an advisor and / or shareholder.

He holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MSc in Computer Science gained in Russia.

Peter Nientker

Serial Investor

Peter is a serial investor with board level and strategy consulting background. He currently holds position in 5 investments in growing Telecom Media and Technology businesses with a non-executive role. He grew the Dutch postal venture, Selektmail, for Deutsche Post Mail from €5 to €60 million.

As an Executive Committee member of Wegener, he restructured and sold ten non-core entities and started a number of new ventures, including Funda.nl, AutoTrack.nl and Selektmail. While as an MD of operating company of Stork, he reduced the work force from 1,200 to 700 and turned around the company from a 25% loss to profitability and growth. He has also worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Peter holds an Msc. in Econometrics and Operational Research from the Free University in Amsterdam and a MBA from INSEAD.

Judges for 20th BVC Semi finals on Tuesday, 8 June

Filipe Santos

Chair of 20th BVC semi finals judging panel

Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship

Director, Maag International Centre for Entrepreneurship (Maag ICE)

Academic Director, INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Initiative

Filipe Santos is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD. He is the director for the Maag International Centre for Entrepreneurship and the academic director of the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Initiative.

His research lies at the intersection of strategy, organization theory, and entrepreneurship. His current focus is the field of social entrepreneurship and social innovation. He is particularly interested in understanding the processes through which entrepreneurs construct new firms and markets. He is also interested in the growth and scaling up processes of new ventures in order to maximize economic and social impact. A related focus of research is on business model innovation. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Technology Policy and Management, as well as several book chapters.

Professor Santos teaches the New Ventures course in the INSEAD MBA program, as well as entrepreneurship modules in the EMBA and Executive Education. He regularly speaks on topics of entrepreneurship and innovation from both a commercial and a social perspective. He also mentors entrepreneurs and advises venture investors.

A native of Portugal and a former entrepreneur, Professor Santos holds a PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, with a focus on entrepreneurship. He also holds an MSc Degree in Industrial Strategy and Management from Lisbon Technical University, and an Economics degree from Lisbon New University. He was the recipient of the Lieberman Fellowship at Stanford University, an award recognizing outstanding scholarship and institutional contributions. He also received in 1996 the award for best MSc student. His doctoral thesis "Constructing Markets and Shaping Boundaries: Entrepreneurial Action in Nascent Markets" was finalist for the Heizer 2004 Entrepreneurship Award. He received an Honourable Mention for Best Paper at the 2006 Strategic Management Society Conference and the 2008 IDEA award for Research Promise from the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division. He also won the 2008 award for Best Teacher in Elective Courses at the INSEAD GEMBA programme.

Audra Shallal

XMP Business Angels

A trilingual (English, French, Italian) American national and French Resident received her International Business and International Economics degrees from the American University of Paris (AUP), her MBA at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC) and her DEA degree in Strategic Management at the Sorbonne.

Currently founder and Managing Director of an International Strategic Management Firm, Audra maintains two streams of specialization: Entrepreneurship-Business Planning and Luxury Goods. She has over ten years of experience in strategic management, business development, business and marketing plans, and product development in a wide range of industry sectors. She consults for international organizations such as OECD, UNEP and UNESCO, gives conferences and teaches undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral courses on Entrepreneurship and Business Plan Development, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Entrepreneurial Finance, Strategic Creativity and Strategic Management to the Grandes Ecoles such as ENPC, ENSCP, ParisTech.

Audra has played a key role in launching the Enterprise Financing Network within the MENA – OECD Investment Programme which creates a unique platform to connect entrepreneurs, financiers (business angels, private equity, venture capital, etc.) research bodies and policymakers in order to improve the conditions for financing entrepreneurship thus bridging the equity gap.

She is past Vice-President of the Femmes Business Angels and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Club of Paris as Vice-president and the Executive Board of the MENA-OECD Enterprise Financing Network. She manages entrepreneurship programs using a unique interactive pedagogical approach to the steps taken in creating a professional business plan and pitching to potential investors and participates on a number of business plan competitions annually as a jury member on a national and international level. Besides being involved in the promotion of Women Entrepreneurs, she is increasing greater awareness for Women Business Angels in the MENA region. Audra, a former professional classical ballet dancer, is also continually pursuing performing arts initiatives.

Rob Moffat

Associate, Balderton Capital

Prior to joining Balderton Capital Rob worked for Google in London, as a Manager in their global sales strategy team. Rob’s experience at Google included developing growth strategies for a number of Google’s new businesses – reviewing potential acquisition targets as well as organic growth options. He also worked on the post-merger integration of DoubleClick in Europe and on long-term strategic planning.

 
Before Google Rob spent five years at Bain & Company, the management consultancy. His work there included business due diligence for private equity clients, as well as operational & strategic projects across a range of industries in Europe & North America.

Hans Oerlemans

Investment Director

Waterland Private Equity Investments

Hans Oerlemans has over 15 years experience in private equity, strategic management consulting and line management. He has been responsible for major operational improvement projects and has held senior management positions in industrial companies ranging from multinational to mid-sized, often in a crisis or major turn-around situation. He holds an MSc from Delft University (Aeronautical Engineering) and an MBA, with distinction, from INSEAD.

Prior to Waterland he worked for Value Enhancement Partners, a specialised turn-around investor where he worked on several investments, among others as interim COO for an international plastics company and on the consolidation of the production facilities of a leading European food processing company. Before that he worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in Amsterdam and Brussels. With McKinsey he worked on a variety of projects including developing a turn-around plan for a mid-sized industrial company, an exit strategy for a private equity company and assessment of acquisition targets for a financial institution. Before INSEAD he worked with Corus and BHP-Billiton, mostly in (senior) line management positions. He has worked and lived in Australia, Poland, France, Belgium, Russia and the Netherlands.

Hans has also been a jury member of the Dutch New Venture Competition (annually ~400 business plans) for about 7 years now.