Toon Coppens
TLDR
Toon Coppens co-founded Netlog and Twoo with Lorenz Bogaert and Nicolas Van Eenaeme, serving as CTO of Europe's first major social network, and became a Board Advisor at Pitchdrive after the Meetic exit.
Overview
Toon Coppens, born 1981, is one of the three original founders who built the Ghent tech cluster. He graduated as Master of Science in Informatics at Ghent University, and during his first year at university in 2000 he launched the chat platform that would become Netlog.
The site started as ASL.TO, founded in 1999 by Lorenz Bogaert and Toon Coppens. Toon served as CTO, building the chat and social infrastructure. The platform grew through multiple rebrands (Facebox, Bingbox, Redbox, Netlog) to over 94 million registered users in 20+ languages by March 2010.
In January 2011, the Massive Media group was formed, and Netlog was integrated. Toon and Lorenz also launched Twoo, a dating platform, in 2011. Massive Media was acquired by Meetic (IAC) in 2012 for approximately USD 25 million.
Post-exit, Toon co-founded Realo alongside Lorenz Bogaert and Nicolas Van Eenaeme, a data-driven real estate Marketplace. He has also been active as an angel investor with approximately 5 portfolio companies, and serves as Board Advisor at Pitchdrive, the institutional VC vehicle built by the Netlog/Rydoo founder generation.
Career History
- Board Advisor at Pitchdrive (2020 - present), the Netlog-generation VC fund
- Co-Founder at Realo (proptech, real estate data platform, post-2012)
- Co-Founder & CTO at Match Group Belgium / Twoo / Massive Media (2011 - 2012), acquired by Meetic/IAC 2012
- Co-Founder & CTO at Netlog / Facebox (1999 - 2013), 94M+ users, 20+ languages
- Angel Investor, approximately 5 portfolio companies
Education
- Master of Science in Informatics, Ghent University (graduated approx. 2003)
About
Toon is the technical founding pillar of the Ghent mafia. While Lorenz became the more visible public face, Toon's platform engineering made Netlog operationally possible at scale before cloud infrastructure was commonplace. He also co-founded Opus Labs, the Ghent product studio behind the Delta crypto tracker acquired by eToro in 2019, and StarApps, the venture builder co-founded with Lorenz Bogaert and Nicolas Van Eenaeme. His continued engagement with Pitchdrive as Board Advisor keeps him connected to the institutional layer of the ecosystem.
Notes
Less publicly active than Lorenz Bogaert or Nicolas Van Eenaeme, but foundational to the origin story of Ghent tech. The Pitchdrive board advisor role provides ongoing ecosystem signal.