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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.