Jakob Vedel Adeltoft, who founded WebProof in the year 2000, has turned 30 years old. He was the youngest person and entrepreneur ever to be portrayed in the biggest daily business magazine in Denmark, Børsen.
Technical Director (CTO) Jakob Vedel Adeltoft turned 30 today. He established the company WebPoof.com in 2000. It is a web proofing service, which today has over 40,000 users in more than 100 countries. Most users are advertising agencies, all of them being involved in the approval of primarily graphical documents. With around 80% market share in Denmark, his focus now is to increase its export share from 50% to 90%. In other words, a great entrepreneur of the type that society needs.
From childhood, he was already showing his entrepreneurship and business talent by selling used books from a cart at Lejre Railway Station. As a 10-year-old he received a warning from the headmaster of Allerslev School for reselling 30,000 magnets in the school, which he had bought cheaply from a scrap merchant near the family’s old farm in Sweden. The school’s explanation was that the commercial activity disrupted education. In his period at HTX he invented, for example, an electronic wind anemometer tool with no moving parts other than the red IBM cursor from a keyboard.
Jakob Vedel Adeltoft already had his own official company at the age of 18. After his first year as an engineering student at the Danish Technical University, where he was at the same time a popular database programmer, there was so much interest surrounding his WebProof Internet Services that this took all his attention. Jakob Vedel Adeltoft is a global entrepreneur of today, with half of his staff based in Roskilde and the rest being outsourced worldwide.
His best birthday present is doubtless that his company has been selected for the Accelerace Program – a programme for companies with exceptionally high international growth potential.
Despite the international growth strategy and his business talent, Jacob Vedel Adeltoft has his feet on the ground and makes little fuss over his image. His versatility has been shown by his own hand in acting as the developer of the complete renovation of his newly purchased “old” house on three floors.
But all is not work. Jakob is married to designer Ann-Britt, who also has had her own company for several years, most recently with the shop Second Street in Roskilde. The couple have two children, who benefit from having parents who also know how to accommodate family life.