Management

Hippo's leadership team consists of five inspirational people that keep the company going and growing.

Jeroen Verberg - CEO

 Jeroen grew up on top of the natural gas bubble in the far north of Holland. During his general Economics studies at the University of Amsterdam, Jeroen founded Hippo together with Tjeerd and Arjé. After completing his Masters, he went straight from his university desk to a desk at Hippo where he took on the role of Head of Sales and Business Development. With the growth of Hippo, Jeroen's role has continued to expand and today he serves as the CEO at Hippo. Jeroen and his wife Manou have three kids, Steven, Florine and  Sebastiaan live on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In his spare time, Jeroen loves to play golf and most recently had his first hole in one at the local golf course.

Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer - CCO

Tjeerd is one of the founders of Hippo. Before founding Hippo, Tjeerd worked as a successful consultant for companies such as KPMG, ProjectX and Fource Consulting. He founded Hippo in 1999 to help organizations & governments benefit from open source Content Management and Portal technologies. Nowadays Tjeerd handles all Sales and Marketing activities within Hippo. Travelling between the Hippo offices & conferences around the globe, you can always find Tjeerd carrying around his kite-surfing gear to try & find new undiscovered spots with lots of wind. Every Friday morning he is working from home while taking care of his two sons Olivier and Jasper.

Arjé Cahn - CTO

 Arjé is the technical brain behind Hippo's CMS. He is an avid member of the Apache Software Foundation and has a number of commitments in his name. As CTO, Arjé keeps a close eye on all technological developments within Hippo. No thing escapes his attention. At an early age, Arjé would travel with his dad, then owner of a special FX company for the media industry, and managed to entertain himself for days on end sitting behind the computer. Arjé is also the proud owner of a cat with the unpronounceable name Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Recently, Arjé and his wife Kristen became parents of a lovely baby daughter named Nora. You can occasionally see him pushing a stroller through Artis, the Amsterdam Zoo, which is located around the corner from his home.

Lars John Peters - EVP North America

Lars joined Hippo in 2008 to run its North American operations, marking his return to entrepreneurship after 5 years of consulting at the Boston Consulting Group. Lars has a background in Economics with an MA in general Economics from the University of Amsterdam and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. After his studies he was the co-founder / CFO of SmartHaven, a start-up developing personalized search technology which was recognized as one of Europe's 12 hottest start-ups by Tornado Insider magazine in 2000. After SmartHaven was sold in 2002, he joined the Boston Consulting Group, and worked as a strategy consultant in the Netherlands, Spain and United States for the next five years. Lars and his wife Vidya live in San Francisco, California. In his spare time, Lars loves to explore the Californian outdoors. You'll find him on his kite-board most summer weekends and on skis/snowboard in winter.

David Sean Taylor - VP Engineering

 David has extensive professional experience in the computing industry. After studying Computer Science at Arizona State University, David has worked as a software engineer and architect at leading software companies including Autodesk (on the AutoCAD core team), IONA Technologies, Poet Software, Informix, and DST Systems. David founded Bluesunrise software in 2001 to develop open source enterprise solutions. As CEO of Bluesunrise, David established business relationships with Fortune 500 companies in the US including Hewlett Packard and IBM as well as international clients Siemens, the BBC, and the National Health in England. In 2008 Bluesunrise was sold to Hippo.