Auke is managing partner of Graduate Entrepreneur (www.graduate.nl), a leading early stage VC firm.

After a career in investment banking, Auke has been working in the marketing and media industry since 1998, most recently as CEO of Nasdaq listed Acxiom in Europe.

In 2010, Auke founded Adatus, a digital advertising company, and ReturnSocial, a social media agency. Both companies were succesfully sold in 2015. From 2015-2017, Auke was a partner in Makerstreet, a business design agency focussed on digital transformation of corporate organisations. In 2017 Auke founded Nimbus Ventures, a European VC firm investing in tech scale-ups, before moving to Graduate Entrepreneur Fund in 2021.

Auke van den Hout holds a masters degree from Erasmus University Rotterdam and is an alumni from Stanford University.