Ben Verwaayen

Ben Verwaayen (born 1952) is a Dutch business executive with more than three decades in senior telecommunications and technology roles. He earned a master's degree in law and international politics/relations from Utrecht University in 1975. His early career included a subsidiary of ITT Corporation (1975–1988), followed by a directorship at PTT Telecom / KPN in the Netherlands, where he served as President and General Manager.

He then moved to the US as International Vice President and later Executive Vice President / Vice-Chairman at Lucent Technologies. From 2003 to 2008 he was Chief Executive Officer of BT Group in the UK, and from 2008 to 2013 he was CEO of Alcatel-Lucent. During his BT tenure he also chaired the Confederation of British Industry's climate change committee and sat on the board of Dutch production company Endemol.

In 2016 (the firm's origins trace to around 2014), Verwaayen co-founded Keen Venture Partners alongside his son Robert Verwaayen (formerly of Prime Ventures) and Alexander Ribbink (former COO of TomTom), with the explicit aim of pairing seasoned operating experience with younger investing talent. He remains a General Partner at the London/Amsterdam-based firm.

Beyond Keen, Verwaayen has held numerous board seats, including as a director of Akamai Technologies (joined November 2013), Non-Executive Chairman of waste-management company Renewi plc (since April 2020), and a board member of UK communications regulator Ofcom. His honours include Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau, Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE), and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.

• Backs "exceptional teams across Europe," positioning Keen as "the radically human venture capital firm" — emphasizing people over purely financial metrics.
• Historically targeted early-growth scale-ups with €1–50M revenue showing "break-away momentum" (minimum ~30% revenue growth), writing €5–10M checks.
• Original three investment theses: (1) distributed intelligence — networks, IoT, machine learning, robotics; (2) the "prosumer continuum" — EdTech, SaaS, productivity tools; (3) "convenient transacting" — marketplaces, fintech, digital security.
• Current focus has sharpened onto two areas: defence & security tech (cyber defence, AI, robotics, autonomous systems, space) and technology for SMEs (AI solutions).
• The new European Defence and Security Tech Fund plans to back roughly 20–25 startups from seed through Series B.