Peter-Frans Pauwels (born June 1965) is a Dutch

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

. In 1991, soon after he completed his studies in Business and Computer Science at the

Universiteit van Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

, he founded, with his former university mate

Pieter Geelen Pieter Geelen (born 1964) is a Dutch entrepreneur. Geelen was born in January 1964 in Hilversum as the oldest child of the illustrator Harrie Geelen and the children's author Imme Dros. In 1991, he dropped off his Ph.D. research in Computer Scien ...

, a company called ''Palmtop Software'', which was later renamed to

TomTom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. ...

. In 2006, the Dutch magazine ''Quote'' stated that Pauwels was then the richest Dutch person less than 41 years old, with a fortune of about 766 million euros. In 2010, ''Quote'' ranked Pauwels the 100th richest Dutch person, with 280 million euros.

References

1965 births Living people Dutch businesspeople University of Amsterdam alumni {{Netherlands-business-bio-stub