Thomas Holvoet

Buckle up for the great process of Thomas Holvoet – this guy is the real deal in the startup world. So, he’s a Belgian tech whiz who crushed it at Ghent University, graduating summa cum laude in Computer Science Engineering – that’s like the top of the class, no cap. Then he jumped into some serious research, working on stuff like detecting coronary stenosis with cardiac CT scans at Robovision – super niche, super technical, shows he’s got mad skills in deep learning and data infrastructure.

But here’s where it gets wild – he was actually gonna do a master’s at Columbia in data science, right? But instead of sticking with that comfy plan, he dropped everything and went all-in on his own thing. That’s a huge move. He co-founded Converge, a Y Combinator-backed startup, and now he’s CTO. This thing is all about real-time marketing attribution and unified measurement for online stores, which is basically the holy grail for e-commerce brands trying to understand what’s actually driving sales.

And get this – he built Converge’s core Customer Data Platform all by himself, like, from scratch. And it’s no small feat – it competes with systems built by giant teams, yet he did it solo. The pipelines he’s whipped up can handle tens of millions of customer interactions in real time. That’s some advanced engineering. And it’s paying off – they’re serving over 180 customers and hitting over $1 million in ARR. That’s not bullshit, that’s real traction.

What does this all say about him? It’s simple – this guy is obsessed with building stuff that actually works at scale. He’s not just some coder – he’s a builder who jumped into the deep end, left a prestigious program at Columbia, and went all-in on his vision. That tells me he’s driven, super passionate about tech, and not afraid to take risks. He’s got the brains, the hustle, and the guts to turn complex data into something practical and useful for businesses.

Basically, Thomas is the sort of founder who sees a problem, figures out how to fix it with tech, and then just goes for it – no bullshit. He’s one of those guys who’s gonna keep pushing boundaries, and I’d bet big on him because he’s proven he can build real stuff that matters.