Meet our advisor: Steven Deurloo
For iCasting Steven does what he does best: he is the source of knowledge about everything related to structuring ICOs in order to meet legal, regulatory and tax requirements and knows what is takes to be attractive to investors. He has a limitless supply of information on legal structuring of business ventures, but also knows just the way that investors think, because he is one himself.
Born on the Dutch Cavalry military base in Amersfoort, the Amsterdam-residing Steven made the first step towards his career at the University of Groningen. Having the ambition to become some sort of “deal maker” but actually having no clue about the work involved or how to become one, he decided that an Economics major was cut out for him. Two years later he took on a second major in Taxation Laws as he realized it would add important practical structuring skills in contrast to the somewhat subjective and theoretical nature of economics.
The combination of doing two very different studies, showed Steven the benefits of being versatile. It also gave him the excitement of stepping out of his comfort zone and trying to learn something completely new.
For the same reasons and because in 1992 there was still conscription in the Netherlands he requested to join the Cavalry back in Amersfoort and learn about leading teams, project management and a couple of unusual things you only get to learn in the military (like tank shooting practice and military operations).
After this little impromptu Steven started out his career in finance at KPMG as an international tax lawyer. Here, his job mostly consisted of analyzing and providing advice on international finance structures. Three years later he found himself looking for new experiences, something which would be a regular occurrence in his life, and moved to London and later to Tokyo to work for Citibank. He found his new challenge in offering complex finance solutions to large clients of the bank. He decided in 2001 to move back to the Netherlands and was offered a position to join ING Bank in Amsterdam.
A few years down the line Steven, again looking for a new experience, started working for multi-strategy global hedge fund Stark Investments in 2008. This gave him the perspective of a large investment fund structuring dozens of complex investments in various energy, real estate and venture capital projects in places like India, China and Australia.
In 2014 Steven got to full-fill his life-long ambition to start his own corporate finance firm together with three other seasoned finance professionals by co-founding ThoroFinance, where he still works today. The partnership succeeded as their networks, skill-set and industry expertise would complement each other greatly. The company successfully organized various investments in, and capital raises of, innovative startups and large renewable energy projects.
Understanding the opportunity of ICOs in combination with blockchain technology, he started investing in ICOs early on and was later hired by Effect.AI in December 2017 as their ICO advisor. Since then, he has advised half a dozen ICO projects and sits on the advisory board of existing coins and a number of companies and investment funds.
If you want to know more about Steven’s work and projects you can find out more on his LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-deurloo-955a991/
