Bart Houben

Bart Houben is a General Partner (and CFO) at Ninepointfive, a Belgian corporate-backed venture capital firm founded in 2019 and headquartered in Antwerp. He brings a corporate-finance and operating background to the fund, having worked across investment and executive roles before turning to venture. Earlier in his career he was an Associate Consultant at OC&C Strategy Consultants and an Investment Manager at Gimv, one of Belgium's best-known listed investment companies.

On the operating side, Houben served as Managing Partner and COO/CFO at iController (a B2B credit-management software company), as Corporate Development Manager at Viabuild!, and as a Partner at Vermec. He has also held board and advisory roles, including a board seat at Avail and involvement with early-stage companies such as Future Kitchens. He is associated with WAD Capital as well, reflecting an ongoing corporate-finance and deal-structuring practice.

Houben studied Commercial Engineering (Business Information Systems) at KU Leuven, and pursued executive and international education including an Accelerated Development Program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, corporate-finance executive education at London Business School, and an MBA program at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. His profile centers on investment management, deal structuring, and corporate finance.

At Ninepointfive he partners with Pieter Van de Velde. The firm positions itself as (in its own words) one of Europe's first VC firms investing exclusively alongside corporate partners, blending strong corporate relationships with entrepreneurial independence.

• Corporate co-investment model: Ninepointfive builds and backs tech start-ups in partnership with leading corporations — "integrating strong corporate relations with the independent spirit of entrepreneurs" (Bart Houben). Its backers include Siemens Energy, ZEISS, Amadeus, Vopak, and Agfa.
• Full-spectrum corporate setups: The firm invests "across the spectrum of potential setups of how a corporation invests," from pure corporate spin-outs to CVC-style partnerships.
• Stage & checks: Early-stage focus — pre-seed/seed to Series B — with early tickets reported around €50K–€250K.
• Sectors — Fund "One": Digitisation of Europe's industrial value chain: manufacturing, logistics, maintenance, enterprise software, digital identity, and industrial hardware.
• Sectors — Fund "Tidal": Energy transition in maritime, ports and offshore — electrification from offshore green-energy generation, through storage (electrolysers, batteries), to deployment (hybrid/electric propulsion).
• What makes them say yes: A clear corporate partner/market pull, B2B focus, and a credible path to exit — "We operate as any other venture capital fund. We have the exit of the start-ups as our primary target" (Bart Houben).