Jim Stolze is a Dutch entrepreneur, author and public speaker. He is also an investor in start-ups through The Founder Institute which he launched with Joris Heukelom. The Founder Institute is a Silicon Valley initiative where 40 talented entrepreneurs are linked with experienced CEOs and international investors. Jim Stolze studied at the VU University Amsterdam. He has a background in applied linguistics and an executive MBA study.
He is also known as the driving force behind the TEDx conferences in Europe and recently was invited by TED.com to be one of the twelve “TEDx Ambassadors” worldwide. His innovative research in 2008 on Internet Usage and Happiness called the Virtual Happiness Project gained much attention, leading to an invite to be a speaker at the TED conference California in 2009. Stolze’s research showed why people who have access to the Internet are significantly happier. Since his TED talk, he has founded and organized the TEDxAmsterdam annual event twice and with great success. The event gained overwhelming media attention, winning a European Design Award and was nominated by High Profile magazine as the “event of the year.”
Also, Stolze captured international attention with an experiment in which he went completely offline for a whole month to see how one survives without the Internet. He discovered that living without the Internet is awful, but that life without email is fantastic. That inspired him to join the Lifehackers Movement and write a book about In-box Management called “How to survive your Inbox”. Stolze has also been one of the lead bloggers on a popular Dutch weblog called DutchCowboys. His latest book called “Uitverkocht!” (”Sold Out”) describes the Attention Economy and the usage of social media to facilitate this.
He serves as a Jury chairman of the section in the Spin Awards, and is a visiting professor at several universities and business schools worldwide. Being an earlyTwitter fanatic earned him an accolade by the magazine Computerworld that put him on the list of “must-see twitterers.” His motto is “Dream Big – Work Hard – Be Nice!”
Further reading:
- @jimstolze
- Jim Stolze’s LinkedIn profile
- http://www.jimstolze.nl/weblog
- http://www.founderinstitute.com
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