The man who brought the technology pearl snowflake to the stock exchange

“Why did I stay in the US for so long? Because I really feel at home there. Slootman was born in the wrong country. At least, this can be drawn from a rare interview with the media, in this case the Netherlands Site Computable.

Slootman has owned American citizenship for more than 25 years. Whenever he is in the low countries, he hopes to return to the Atlantic as soon as possible. The American performance culture suits him better than the mediocre Dutch. In the Netherlands, a mediocre six-year-old is enough.

Slootman has the right to speak. He has listed two companies in New York. Although he is a well-known figure in the Netherlands, the Americans are full of praise for him. An investor recently told CNBC that this is one of the most respected CEOs in the technology industry.

Slootman’s star may be even higher as he returns to Wall Street as CEO of Snowflake, a data processing company located in a sunny suburb of California.

Its roots are in the cold Netherlands. Slootman is also a student and lives in Rotterdam, where he completed 7 years of economics studies. He is active in the largest student association in the port city. Slootman not only likes to drink beer, but also showed ambitious ambitions on the board of the international student organization AIESEC. Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan and John Kerry took their first steps on the international stage.

For Slootman, he knew early on that he would go abroad. In the 1990s, he joined an IT company in California that provided computer hardware to other companies.

In 2007, Slootman conducted an initial public offering in Data Domain. He left the company, which entered Dell in 2009 and later wrote a book. Eight years ago, he made his second IPO at ServiceNow. He made $550 million from it.

About a year and a half ago, Slootman joined Snowflake, the company can process unlimited data in a few seconds. He managed to more than double sales to $242 million in the first half of 2020. His severe remedial policy contributed to this. Additional services such as ski trips and expensive lunches have also been cancelled.

In addition, Snowflake benefits from the ever-increasing amount of data in healthcare and the increasing need for organizations to store data. Slootman built his own team. It is not products or services, but people who determine the company’s success.

When Slootman arrived, Snowflake was worth $4 billion, which could be four times its post-IPO price. A series of Silicon Valley investors, including Sequoia Capital (known by Airbnb) and Slootman lead.

Even the hatred of Warren Buffett is enthusiastic. Super investors are investing $570 million in Snowflake’s IPO, hoping to raise $2 billion.

For Slootman, its 5.9% equity may be the icing on the cake. In 2017, he decided to retire. But the sixties missed the excitement of work. The daily pressure made him kick. He would feel it again when SNOW stock appeared on Wall Street.