Dirk Van Dijl Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Polegate, East Sussex

Bernhard Baron Cottage Homes is a charity providing care for older persons. A completely new 'industry' for me and a two year contract became a permanent position. Almost six years later I am still discovering what a fantastic business sector and what opportunities. Slight difference in this particular case in that it is a charity, so no shareholders.Key.

London, United Kingdom

CrowdAhead has developed an equity based crowdfunding site with the mission: simply equity crowdfunding. What a wonderful concept - funding, the internet, information, everything comes together. Lets hope the regulators come to understand it and help us drive out the current costs and inefficiencies of raising money - especially for small companies.I have.

Hastings And The Rest Of Britain

Weekly blogs on behalf of our country's four point nine million business owners and manager. It started as a little aside and just grew and now just keeps on going. Great for networking and what a name - thank you to the people who came up with the name and to Gordon Brown (remember him?) and David Cameron for mentioning us.

London, United Kingdom

StartersFund looked at developing a crowdfunding site aimed at being the first Europe wide and subsequently global equity crowdfunding site. Walk before you run is what we advisers recommended, but what a great team.Lesson 2: do not set up your company offshore if you want to have credibility in the UK (as we advised).

Huddersfield (again?) And The Rest Of The UK

LPW provides truck washing facilities thereby 'protecting the brand' of its clients, as once seen on Dragons Den (at least a company which LPW acquired before the Dragons moved in). Sometimes family companies are best left to the family, but a brilliant concept.

London

A private investment vehicle which ultimately did not fit into my plans.

Suffolk

At the request of investors attempted turnaround of this small PLUS listed company. I never knew that training in truck driving could be such a great business. Sadly, the other lessons included that a company of this size should never be listed - perhaps it was the first step towards crowdfunding. As Lehman Brothers disappeared with its A-rating our.

Huddersfield And The Rest Of The UK

Expanded the network from 4 towns to 7, the fleet from 35 cars to 250, membership from 350 to 7,000 and automated the signup procedure reducing time from application to 'able to drive' from 3 weeks to 20 minutes. Staffing kept at under 25 during this time. Efficiency was not a word much used in this industry at the time, where the focus seemed to be social.

Loudwater And Cambridge And The Rest Of The UK

Hard work, luck and a great team helped to turn this business disaster into the UK market leader,with firsts in GPS tracking, SMS information provision, internet tracking - these things were new then especially in the bus industry. The company was sold at major profit for investors.

Barton Mills, Suffolk And The Rest Of East Anglia

Medium sized rental company with 20 locations throughout East Anglia all operating under the Willhire brand as well as being a large Hertz franchise operation. 8 great years with lots of fun, stresses, new friends and a new country I have not left since.The company was sold to Arriva, who later sold their rental operations to Northgate.

Amsterdam And The Rest Of Europe

Europe's largest trailer rental company. A wonderful time with a MBO followed by the first flotation simultaneously on the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges and no we were not the gang with a similar name. Key lesson: business is fun.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Not the most exciting time of my life, but I learned a lot, like do not try to be a banker if you are not.

Florham Park, NJ

Nothing like starting in the shoe business - at least you start at the bottom. A wonderful year where I learned about the trials and tribulations of working in the subsidiary of a private Dutch company based in the US. All this before internet! Try sending a business plan by Telex!The owner was being robbed - hence my appointment. We managed to sell it.

New York, NY

I could have become an accountant I guess, but chose banking. The best training course in the world and lots of good friends.But banking was not for me. Later I found out why - Bankers Trust took the lead in big swinging d...s. Not my type, but good fun.

Mba, Finance

Ba, Economics

High School

Education record