Filip Maertens

Filip Maertens, born 1978, is a Belgian internet entrepreneur, hacker and public speaker. He started his career from his dorm room at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) where he was the Founder and CEO of Securax. Filip studied Psychology at the University of Leuven, a Masterclass of Security in Information Technology at the Technical University of Eindhoven and Machine Learning at Stanford University. He currently lives in Antwerp and has a keen interest in Artificial Intelligence, Modern Philosophy and cryptographic applications, such as Bitcoin.

Cyber Security

On Packet Storm[1] Filip was leading the research of many of the vulnerabilities in Microsoft and Linux systems found by Securax, and was author of many articles, covering security vulnerabilities on Hexyn.[2] While working for Ernst & Young, Filip was a private computer forensic investigator and a Global Champion and Trainer of the Extreme Hacking[3] courses in Belgium and Ireland. After leaving Ernst & Young, he lived abroad as a contractor in the security and intelligence community, where he further specialised in cryptography, social network analysis, A5/1/OTA and mobile security.

Startup Ventures

In 2008, he joined the startup Attractel as CEO, and raised US$ 650,000[4] to premier a cloud-based PBX.[5] He reorganized the company in Ghent (Belgium) and Sofia (Bulgaria) and grew a user-base of nearly 1M users on the Zoiper soft-phone, and generated over US$ 3M in annual sales. Following an investor-dispute the company was disbanded,[6] after which Zoiper[7] became part of a buy-back operation by its founder and co-founder. Filip also proceeded to buy back the distribution activities and co-founded VOIP Depot[8] brand. Filip recently talked openly about his experience as a CEO at Attractel at the Fail Conference 2012,[9] inspiring other entrepreneurs not to fear failure.

In 2012, Filip founded the startup Argus Labs,[10] and raised a total of US$ 1,5M for the Jini Contextualization API.[11] The Jini technology allows developers and companies to understand and predict human behaviour and emotion, enabling hyper-targeting. Winning various awards and being a popular finalist at conferences, such as AppsMarathon,[12] LeWeb,[13] Red Herring,[14] Strata,[15] Mobile Premier Awards,[16] Argus Labs' contextualization platform, Jini, is considered the first open platform for aggregating sensor, personal and behavioural data to turn quantified self data into optimized-self data. The technology is being used at various clients in the music, advertising and healthcare industry.

References

  1. ↑ "Packet Storm Security, Securax Exploits".
  2. ↑ "Hexyn".
  3. ↑ "Ernst & Young Launches Updated Extreme Hacking Courses".
  4. ↑ "Filiep Libeert stapt in telecomspeler Attractel".
  5. ↑ "SME's don't need a PBX anymore".
  6. ↑ "Attractel closes down".
  7. ↑ "Zoiper.com".
  8. ↑ "VOIPDepot.com".
  9. ↑ "Fail Conference Talk".
  10. ↑ "Argus Labs / Jini AngelList Profile".
  11. ↑ "Argus Labs, creator of Siri rival Jini, lands $640k from Samsung Chief Strategy Officer, other angels".
  12. ↑ "AppsMarathon".
  13. ↑ "The 16 Companies That Will Compete In This Year’s LeWeb Paris Startup Competition".
  14. ↑ "Red Herring 2013 Finalists".
  15. ↑ "Strata Conference Startup Winners".
  16. ↑ "Mobile Premier Awards Finalists".

External links