Bringing structure to a flexible world of work

Mission

The mission of bookU

We believe the way people work is fundamentally changing. Work is becoming more flexible, more decentralised, and more data-driven, yet the systems managing it remain siloed and outdated. Our vision is to build the infrastructure that connects it all. A world where workforce planning is no longer reactive, but predictive. Where companies don’t manage people, they orchestrate talent. bookU aims to make flexible work flow across Europe.

bookU orchestrates the on-demand workforce across the full value chain. We connect fragmented systems, unify workforce data, and enable real-time orchestration of talent across vendors, platforms, and operations. From planning to execution, bookU turns workforce management into a competitive advantage. Built to integrate. Designed to scale.

Be real

We tell each other the truth: kindly, clearly, and on time. No politics, no sugar-coating, no exploding either

Think big and bold

We chase ambitious things and aren’t afraid to question the path, but we know who we are, and we don’t bulldoze others to get there.

Make it happen

We take responsibility, clear the hurdles, and don’t let go, but we do it together, each from their own strength.

Build for impact

We solve the right problem, the best way, not the fastest. We are forward-thinkers who iterate to keep moving, never to look busy.

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Founder story

“I built it because I needed it myself.”

Dieter Vanthournout is not your typical tech entrepreneur. He was a hospitality business owner doing his own scheduling in Excel — twenty students, rotating shifts, a spreadsheet that was growing into a disaster waiting to happen. Around 2014, he built something himself. bookU was born: a planning tool for flexible workers in hospitality. Simple, intuitive, built from real-world experience.

When hospitality shut down in 2020, bookU had almost nothing left. Dieter saw it as an opportunity.

“When you lose everything, you also have nothing left to lose. That’s when you dare to pivot.”

bookU redirected its technology toward vaccination centres, got acquainted with social secretariats — and laid the foundation for what the company is today.

House of HR saw the potential. The partnership brought bookU to a new scale: staffing agencies planning thousands of workers per day — still in Excel. bookU Staffing was built to solve exactly that.

More than ten years later, bookU serves clients in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The technology has evolved. The core has not: solving problems that Dieter experienced himself.