In 2002, Gerlas co-founded Genexis, a company focused on the development of home gateways for fiber-to-the-home. He is currently CEO of Genexis Group, now part of Inteno Group. In addition, he is chairman of the fiberSociety, which stimulates deployment of fiber-based networks in the Netherlands.

Gerlas van den Hoven started his career at Philips Research in the area of semiconductor optical amplifiers. He worked as product line manager for optical amplification at JDS Uniphase, where he was in the JDSU Netherlands management team. After JDSU, Gerlas worked for Genoa Corporation as VP Products, developing the market for low-cost integrated optical amplifiers for the metro-access market.