Time flies when you are having fun! On 18 November 2009, Advance Consulting existed 10 years, during which we have succeeded in creating a professional business consulting firm focusing on international business partnerships and investment projects in emerging economies.

Peter Bleeker set up Advance Consulting B.V. a decade ago, initially running the company from a small room in his backyard in Bennekom. Within three months, the company had already outgrown this ‘office’, which was reason to move to a more appropriate location in the nearby town of Ede. This office was again exchanged for a larger one in 2004 before moving to our present location in 2008 to accommodate a gradually expanding team of consultants. In 2002, Advance Consulting opened an office in Haarlem, which in 2009 was moved to Amsterdam.

Advance Consulting’s first initial focus was on East Europe to assist Dutch companies to access the emerging markets by taking advantage of support programmes such as PSO and PESP. Before long the attention was turned PSOM, which eventually absorbed PSO and today is called PSI, providing co-funding for qualifying investment projects in Asia, Africa, Latin America and East Europe. We have been singularly successful in these competitive programmes with more than 150 of our PSOM/PSI projects approved till date. Meanwhile, we have been increasingly able to access a wide range of other international grant and debt financing programmes, while deepening our skills as business matchmakers and financial engineers, thereby significantly diversifying our portfolio of assignments.

After 10 years, projects in 58 countries so far and clients from all over the world, Advance Consulting is here to stay. We firmly believe that this success is premised on our ability to deliver what we promised, generally on a no-cure no-fee basis, so this is what we will continue to do. Let’s see where the next decade will bring us!