Job van der Voort, Dutch CEO and founder of the new Unicorn’ Remote’, has been awarded the winner of the 12th edition LOEY Award 2022.
Ali Niknam, CEO and founder of Dutch neobank bunq, received the special Lifetime Achievement Award from Coolblue founder Pieter Zwart.
LOEY (Leading Online Entrepreneur of the Year) Awards, an initiative to promote online entrepreneurship, announced the winners at a ceremony in the recently renovated Groote Museum in Amsterdam on Tuesday.
The foundation board announced earlier that it would stop with the yearly Award ceremonies after this edition.
“I am very proud to have won this award. A very nice recognition, coming from fellow entrepreneurs who know what it means to set up a great company. The LOEY Award is the prize for online entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. My predecessors, such as Pieter Zwart, Steven Schuurman, Jouk Pleiter, and Adriaan Mol, have all built brilliant companies with billions of dollars worth of value. So it’s great to be on that list as well,” says Van der Voort after receiving the award.
Remote: What you need to know
Remote was founded by Job van der Voort and Marcelo Lebre in 2019 to simplify how companies employ global talent. The platform helps companies hire remotely by arranging all necessary paperwork and payments in countries where they do not have a branch.
The company works with thousands of businesses for legal, financial, and cultural expertise to onboard, pay, and manage employees and contractors in 150+ countries.
Remote has raised more than €500M in growth capital at a valuation of more than €3B in less than three years. The company is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Accel, Sequoia, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, General Catalyst, and B Capital.
From his home near Zaandam, The Netherlands, Job van der Voort manages over 900 employees in 75 countries.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Ali Niknam invested €98.7M of his own money into developing bunq. The Dutch fintech company turned out to be the only self-funded challenger bank that branched into 30 European markets without a penny of VC funds.
He was also a part of ‘People for People,’ a private NGO launched earlier this year to help those in Ukraine. The foundation was established after bunq received an enormous amount of messages in response to a LinkedIn message that Niknam posted.
“Ali is a truly exceptional entrepreneur. People know him as the founder of the disruptor of the Dutch banking industry, bunq, but before that, he was also the founder of TRANS-IP and The Datacenter Group. Moreover, the road to success was not an easy one for him. However, this man has incredible perseverance and is a very gifted entrepreneur. More than LOEY-worthy!” says Zwart.
LOEY Awards: What you need to know
Founded in 2010, the LOEY Award is an initiative to stimulate online entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. The board of the LOEY Foundation consists of Heleen Dura-van Oord and Hubert Deitmers. Marijn Pijnenborg, Patrick Kerssemakers, and Valentijn Bras are members of the organising committee.
“Job is a unique talent. A scientist who developed into a top entrepreneur in no time, with a very sharp nose for market developments. With Remote, he went from a startup to a giant company with unicorn status, which is active worldwide, in no time. An incredibly strong performance and therefore a more than justified successor!” says jury member Thomas Plantenga of Vinted, who won the LOEY Award in 2021 and handed the award over to his successor.
