Hello, Harry: Introducing our Chief Executive Officer

Before there was Snowflake and before there was NUITEQ®, there was a young student with the visionary mind of a pioneer and the guts of a hero: Harry van der Veen.

No stranger to the concept of exploring untouched territories and passionate about his dream to change the way people interacted with technology, Harry co-founded NUITEQ in 2007, and has since been the company’s proud Chief Executive Officer.

Q: Hi Harry, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

A: Hi, my name is Harry, I’m the CEO of NUITEQ. I’m 35 years old, originally from Holland and I co-founded NUITEQ 10 years ago here, in the North of Sweden, during my graduation project at the Luleå Technical University in Skellefteå.

Q: How about being one of the NUITEQ founders? What is the best part of it, and what would be the least favorite thing about being a CEO?

A: As CEO I’m involved in many different aspects of the business, such as marketing, sales, management, strategy, recruitment as well as customer support from time to time.

The most rewarding part about the job is having the privilege to wake up in the morning with a great sense of drive and a feeling of passion for the job. I’m absolutely blessed to work with an amazing team of colleagues that are creative, innovative, hard-working and that at the same time challenge themselves daily.

What I like the least about the job, are the Friday afternoons. Don’t get me wrong, I love the weekends, but sometimes I wake up in the weekend with a sense of disappointment thinking “ow it is weekend, no discussions with colleagues, no talks with partners and customers, not many things happening on LinkedIn”. I just really enjoy working, and I’m always excited when it is Monday morning.

Q: How did you decide to launch NUITEQ? Tell us a bit about its history.

A: I was one of the first people in the world that had engineered a multi-user multitouch display back in 2006, while I was studying Communication, Multimedia & Design back in Holland. This was before the iPhone was launched.

I moved to Sweden to work on my graduation project together with students from the university in Skelleftå. During the project, on my blog, we documented the development progress, both on the hardware as well as software side. This created significant global interest in our technology from the US military, Fortune 100 companies and wealthy individuals from the Middle East.

This commercial demand, combined with our passion that we thought we could change the way people were interacting, was the spark that started NUITEQ. When Apple, around the same time, announced their multitouch enabled iPhone and even Microsoft entered the multitouch arena, we knew we were onto something special.

Q: Sounds like an exciting start. How about the company future, what can you tell us about it?

A: It has been an exciting journey until now, working with amazing partners like Intel, Sahara, Clear Touch, Lenovo, Fortune 100 companies, teachers, and students.

Even though we have been around for over ten years, I feel that we have barely scratched the surface of our potential. We are just getting started. Our development team is developing new innovative solutions at hyper speed, the team is expanding, we’ve opened offices in multiple countries and the products are being used in over 70 countries around the world, and it continues to grow. We actually moved our headquarters last week to larger premises. I expect us to continue to grow our teams globally.

In an accelerated fashion, we will continue to help our partners to differentiate themselves from the competition and help them win more business. I feel that as over time hardware will become a commodity, we will play an even more pivotal role to help them to become more successful through our innovations.

Q: What motivates you in doing your job?

A: My world-class colleagues inspire and motivate me. It is absolutely a delight to work with them. Also, our partners, customers and Snowflake users motivate me, as they help us with striving to further develop the most exciting software solution for teachers and students.

I’m also feeling lucky that my family motivates me to work hard and they have never held me back from trying to achieve something truly amazing.

Q: And finally, what does a busy CEO like yourself do during his free time?

In my free time, I enjoy learning about technology. I’m also interested in traveling, food, different cultures and did I mention food? :)

I like to spend time with my family and friends, watching documentaries, going to the movies and I really appreciate nature. One of my most favorite things to do is floating down the Skellefteå river in the Summer in my rubber boat with some friends or colleagues. The nature in our city is absolutely breathtaking.

Furthermore, I’m interested in the stock market, crypto currencies, mixed martial arts/UFC, real estate and in my free time I also like to play football.