Ventures & Investments

From evaluating ventures to building them.

My professional relationship with venture capital started almost 30 years ago.

My master's thesis at KU Leuven examined venture capital for start-ups and subsequently became the book Verdien Risicokapitaal / Earn Venture Capital. I then started my career as an early-stage venture capital Investment Manager at Dexia, followed by LRM.

Since then, my career has moved through real assets, government, corporate transformation, entrepreneurship and industry — before bringing me back to venture capital and investment platform building. 

With the Tidal fund we aimed to bring venture capital to the hardware and digital tech in the maritime, ports and offshore industry (fundraising canceled). With Shift4good, the Paris based venture capital platform for decarbonising logistics, I advise the collaboration with Smart Freight Centre and support the fundraising for their following funds.

That journey has changed the way I look at investing.

I am particularly interested in three questions:

• What makes an opportunity investable?
• What makes a team capable of turning an opportunity into a company?
• And what investment model does that industry/company actually need?

Beyond traditional venture capital

Traditional venture capital has become extraordinarily effective at financing highly scalable digital businesses.

But many of today's largest transition challenges involve combinations of digital technology, hardware, infrastructure, industrial capabilities and new business models: Energy transition. Logistics. Maritime. Industry. Infrastructure. Climate technology.

These businesses do not always fit neatly into the traditional venture capital investment model.

That is why I am particularly interested in corporate-backed venture capital and hybrid investment models capable of bringing together professional investment expertise with industry knowledge, customers, technology, infrastructure and routes to market.