Bas Beerens (WeTransfer) wins LOEY Award 2016

It’s official: Bas Beerens, founder of WeTransfer, has won the prestigious LOEY Award 2016. With the prize, Beerens can call himself the best online entrepreneur in The Netherlands. Hans Ober of TicketSwap received the LOEY talent award, an award for the recognition of new, ambitious talent in the industry. 

Seventh year

The LOEY Awards are a big deal. The independent awards for the best online entrepreneurs aims to stimulate growth, innovation and inspiration in the Dutch online industry. The event is marking its seventh year already, with an impressive and diverse hall of fame. Past winners include Pieter Zwart (Coolblue), Marten Blankesteijn (Blendle) and Stephan Bosman (Zoover); big names whose companies made a big mark on the online industry. And although it’s not the first big award for Beerens (this year the United Nations appointed him as Entrepreneur of the World for his diverse entrepreneurial qualities), he must be proud to have WeTransfer added to that list.

Cutting costs

Beerens started the now famous file sharing service when he wanted to cut costs on couriers by developing a tool that allowed him to send big videofiles to his customers without too much trouble. In other words: getting your file from A to B quickly and safely. After an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from his surroundings, WeTransfer was born – a simple, elegant and highly functional online service that quickly became popular. WeTransfer is a big supporter of the creative industry – thirty percent of the famous wallpaper adverts (something that was new and unusual in the online industry) are created by people from the creative industry.

Bas is a true example for entrepreneurship in the Dutch online industry, who shows how can you can conquer the world with a great product

– Daniel Ropers, jury chairman

Talent Award

Next to the LOEY Award, the LOEY foundation also handed out the talent award; a prize that launched last year to recognize and award ambitious talent in the online industry. In other words: people who we should definitely look out for in the near future. After the three finalists made their pitch, the audience selected Hans Ober, cofounder of ticket (re)selling platform TicketSwap as their winner. The popularity of the second hand e-ticket selling and buying platform grew by storm last year, with a great implementation and use of social media.