By Virginie Robert

He's vying for the title of most famous Dutchman in California. Jerome Mol is the founder of Tornado-Insider.com, an online magazine that claims to be the "digital nervous system for high-growth Europe" and a powerful stimulant to European internet entrepreneurship.

Drawing inspiration from US new-tech guru Geoffrey Moore, he is seeking European-scale duplication of what Mr Moore calls the "tornado effect", whereby spectacular growth in new markets is driven by widespread adoption of a new technology, whose suppliers are whipped up in a growth spiral, with the higher performers able to harness tornado power.

"The US enjoys some unfair advantages: they've got the networks, the investors, the management, the technology, and the vision. There's clearly a need for a motivational information channel addressing Europe," says the 35-year-old, who acquired his entrepreneurial skills by founding Prolin, a software publishing business that he sold to Hewlett-Packard in 1997.

Today, most of his cash is invested in the magazine, launched last year, and in the Gorilla Park business incubator for European start-ups. One of his partners points to Mr Mol's "strong belief that an investor should be offering more than just money: guidance, advice, the impetus to get things moving fast."

r Mol spends half his time in Silicon Valley and the other half in Europe. He generates ideas at an incredibly fast pace, and expects others to follow them through.

"He's the one with the bright ideas, but we're the ones out there doing the hard work of putting them into practice," jokes a staff member. Mr Mol likes to portray himself as a visionary, but his most appealing traits are those of inexhaustible energy and relentless determination to break down closed doors.

The tornado tag fits him perfectly.





This article was originally published in Connectis magazine April 28, 2000



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