The Sloot Digital Coding System (moved from ATSNN), page 1

In 1999 a Dutch electronics engineer got out in the open with an invention he had been working on for over twenty years. A digital coding system with a huge potential. His system allowed storage of 64 entire movies on a simple 64Kb chipcard through a revolutionary compression technology. Jan Sloot, living in a small town called Nieuwegein in the middle of the Netherlands, managed to draw the attention of some small investors at first, but in the end his invention attracted dozens of large scale investors. Even the most respected names in the digital industry were convinced of the revolution his system would unleash and invested millions.....Suddenly the inventor dies.....And strange circomstances are exposed....

In no time the road show is running at full speed again. Presentations were given to a.o. ABN Amro, the investor Gilde and the investment fund Optimix...'At Optimix a whole presentation room was filled with the richest people from the Netherlands' says Boekhoorn. 'You really dont want to know what names were present'.....

Fentener van Vlissingen is watching that night. Later John de Mol will see for himself how the products from his entertainment factory might be compressed to minuscule particles....'Roel even went by at Rupert Murdoch in London' Boekhoorn recalls. 'And all of these people wanted to join the circus'.

ABN Amro turned out to be the first to provide the necessary seed capital. It is Boekhoorn who pushed the entry to management level this time. Boekhoorn : 'I knew Wilco Jiskoot from my previous deals with Bakker Ban and he financed my door and window factory. Wilco took us seriously from the start. I introduced him to Roel. That was the first time the two had met. At ABN a team of fifteen specialists examined Sloot's invention. For starters they would provide a convertable loan of 25 million dollar, after which a second financing round would take place. The whole world was ready for that'.

That 25 million dollar would give ABN Amro an interest of 4% in the Fifth Force. 'The rate to which that loan would be converted to shares was not set yet' says Boekhoorn. 'In fact we were handed a Carte Blanche for only 4% of the number of shares. In order to become footloose in the IT world. I can tell you, we must have been unique for this in the Netherlands'. 'And of course, they would join in on the next round if Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield and the rest would pull their whallet'.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

I am translating the report on this series of events from a Dutch series which I posted on a corporate website some time ago. The translation is halfway now and is expected to be finished within two weeks. It is published in a feuilleton shaped series on my personal web log. The story is barely known outside the Netherlands, allthough several internationally known people are involved.