Jan Baan, IT Entrepreneur
Jan Baan is an internationally recognized IT Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist from the Netherlands.
Podcast
Overview
The 1980s became the decade of new technology and innovation. The Brand Called You brings you an internationally recognized IT Entrepreneur who shares his journey of founding a tech company in the 80s and his experience of working with the biggest players around that time.
Jan Baan is an IT Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist from the Netherlands. From jumping into entrepreneurship at the cusp of the rise of technology, Jan has worked with some of the foundational technologies that led to the big tech revolution. He founded Baan Corporation in 1978 as a vendor of ERP Software. He also founded Cordys, which is now a global cloud platform. After this, he became a venture capitalist and invested in companies like WebEx and Top Tier which were later sold to Cisco and SAP respectively.
Jan’s contribution to India’s software development
Jan was invited to India in 1987 as an entrepreneur of the time. He started outsourcing in the country and built an ERP department. He shares his experience of working with the Indian companies at that time and how he empowered them with his Dutch experience with a medium of broken English. He is now said to be the first entrepreneur to build IT in India with a “cheap development capacity, high-quality Dutch experience, and all the resources in India.”
About Jan’s Venture Capitalist Journey
Jan invested early in WebEx when it was founded in 1995. He invested his private money to enter into an internet-driven company. We asked him about his vision while investing in such a company. He shares why he was asked to be a part of the company, and why it was later sold to Cisco.
“WebEx was sold to Cisco and it was killed. Now I see it today in zoom. Zoom came out of WebEx. The guy in zoom is starting with my money because in reality I funded WebEx and he worked there as an engineer in WebEx and learning the lessons …I feel proud that without my investment in WebEx there was never a zoom.”
A great visionary and businessman, listen to Jan talk about the evolution of technology over the decades and his vision for the future. Tune in!
Profile
Coming soon
