User:Jellekies/sandbox

Ali Niknam (1981) is a Canadian born entrepreneur and founder of three Dutch companies: bunq, TransIP and The Datacenter group.

Early life
Niknam was born in Canada to Iranian parents. He grew up in Iran and later moved to the Netherlands, where he went to high school at Coornhert Gymnasium in Gouda. After high school he studied Computer Sciences at Delft University.

Career
Niknam founded his first tech company, TransIP, in 2003. The company is specialized in registration of domain names and web hosting and has Holland’s biggest market share.

In 2007 Niknam, together with two business partners, founded The Datacenter Group. Niknam is a stockholder and not involved with the company’s day-to-day activities.

In 2012 Niknam started his third company: bunq. He obtained a banking license from “De Nederlandsche Bank” (‘The Dutch Bank’) to this end, which was possible because TransIP could warrant the 17 million Euros necessary. This makes Niknam both founder and sole stakeholder of this fully mobile bank. Since bunq’s founding, Niknam frequently appeared in the media to promote his new company.

In 2014 Niknam passed on day-to-day leadership of TransIP.