Marcel Smits, Angel Investor

Marcel Smits is a Founder, VC, and Seed Investor helping young companies succeed. After completing his corporate career in early 2022, Marcel is mostly dedicating his time to helping young people and early-stage companies to be successful. Sometimes as an early-stage investor, a coach or advisor, or just generally as an enthusiast. He works on things that pique his curiosity and he only works with people he trusts and enjoys hanging out with. A lot of the things that he works on have a sustainability or circularity slant. Other than that he occasionally teaches, writes and he takes care of family matters. Lastly, he is the founder of Stridy which is trying to build a global community of people who help to keep our living environments clean. Marcel started at Unilever back in 1986 as a finance person. After twelve years, he left Unilever as he was privileged to accept his first CFO position at a public company. He has been in various management roles such as CFO, CEO, Divisional, Regional, and Strategy leadership roles. His experience is in various industries such as Food and Agriculture, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Telecommunications, and Retail. He gained extensive experience in Finance, IT, Procurement and Logistics, Operational Excellence, Financial Services, M&A, Compliance, large-scale transformations and turnarounds. On the side, he has been an investor in start-up companies since 2007 and he has been occasionally teaching as well as participating in not-for-profit organizations such as unions, employers organizations, charities, and the like. He was privileged to work and live in the Netherlands, Bogota Colombia, Shanghai, the United States, and Singapore.