David never finished formal education. He worked his way into tech, left a €20,000-a-month freelance contract to build JOGO, sold it to 433, and went on to start a venture studio with two co-founders and no safety net.

"Those people don't get it. They don't get the thrill of building your own company or working on your own ideas and vision. No money can compete with the excitement of being a founder."

Sport was always part of it

From early on, the conventional path — formal education, a stable job, steady income — held no appeal for David. He worked his way into tech, built companies, made exits, and kept moving.

David comes from a family where elite performance is ordinary: his oldest son, sister, parents, and great-grandparents were all Dutch Champions, European Champions, or Olympians. Moving into sports was always where he was headed.

By the time he landed a lucrative freelance role at a large Dutch corporation, he already had the track record to back up the decision he was about to make.

"Being an entrepreneur has always been my path. Leaving a high-paid job to do what I do best was an easy decision for the heart.”

He left to build JOGO, a tech venture focused on football tracking and performance. JOGO was eventually acquired by 433, one of the world's largest football media platforms. With that exit, he took everything he had built and learned and co-founded ve2ventures alongside Kevin and Jerry in December 2023.

From agency to venture studio

The journey didn't start as a studio. It started as an agency building sports tech solutions for other founders. As they built, David and his co-founders realised they were better at building for themselves than building for others, so they pivoted.

Today, the model is clear: get deep into the product, shape the go-to-market strategy, bring the right people in, and build an ecosystem where each venture strengthens the others. In almost three years, the studio team has grown to over 60 people across ten-plus ventures in sports, media, and tech.

One of the flagships is ClubOS, a platform designed to address the fragmentation inside football organisations. "A lot of football clubs are interested in getting more insights, but they don't want to have another platform. With ClubOS, we want to build one platform that incorporates everything — using one brain.”

The football club in Portugal

Partway through building the studio, David took on the role of manager at Cascais SAD. What started as a personal passion grew into the foundation for Estrella Football Group, a Horizontal Multi-Club Ownership model where clubs collaborate as equals: each keeping its own identity, community, and commercial independence.

The first season: four new kits, ten new players signed from higher divisions, three players called up to the regional squad, a commercial base generating over €500,000, and both the first team and U19s sitting top of their leagues. "We operate like a Champions League-level club every day.”

"Buying clubs is the easy part. The real work starts when you try to connect them.”

How David leads ve2ventures

At ve2ventures, David's role is to carry the vision and the network, to identify the opportunity and assemble the right people to execute it. The core team he built with Jerry and Kevin includes people from his JOGO and 433 days, a group that has worked together for over six years.

When it comes to new team members or incoming founders, the CV is not the deciding factor. "We look for builders first — people who want to go from zero to one. And then, of course, personality. How does this person sit across the table, how do they believe in their project, and what is the unique part of it?”

The 30-plus angel investors and family offices who back ve2ventures are held to the same standard. They are part of the ecosystem, and David built it that way deliberately.

"Sportstech brings emotion. It's not anonymous like traditional investments in bricks or pure tech companies. It brings people together into an ecosystem and a community."

What is next?

The plan is to keep building in the niche that has proven itself, scaling both the studio and the Estrella network, while staying close to what has always driven David most: helping other founders build what they could not build alone.

"The best part is that I also get to help other founders on their journey. Sharing my knowledge and my network has helped other entrepreneurs, and together, we can do so much more."