Frank Slootman (61) brought a company to the stock exchange for the third time in his life. Snowflake’s IPO grossed nearly $3,6 billion, making it the largest ever for a software company. The Erasmus School of Economics alumnus, who became CEO in May 2019, became a billionaire in one fell swoop. “They’re just numbers. I can never spend it all anyway.”
He has seen the articles about him in the Dutch media. “He is not very well known in the Netherlands”, can be read everywhere. Slootman can laugh about it. “As if I was waiting for that. I really don’t need to be in the Quote”. “The IPO was a huge spectacle. The American press can’t get enough of it”, says Slootman. The initial offering price, which had already been hiked twice, was set at $120. Immediately upon opening, the stock was sold for $245.
Snowflake focuses on data warehousing: it stores data in the cloud and transfers it to specific themes during upload. This allows data to be processed and retrieved more quickly. Early this year, Snowflake completed an investment round after which it had a valuation of $12,4 billion. Now the cloud company is worth around $64 billion.
In 1984, Slootman arranged an internship at IT-company Burroughs in Detroit via student association AIESEC. He felt right at home in the United States. “I remember needing a car, but not having enough money to hire one. An older man at work said: take my car and see if you can pay something later. Americans solve problems right away. Dutch people often have a wrong image of how American people really are.”
Slootman, who graduated from Erasmus School of Economics in 1985, explained more about his youth, his leadership style and becoming a billionaire in his interview with FD. Read the full article here.
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Frank Slootman graduated from Erasmus School of Economics in 1985.
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