Eduard Meijer

Eduard Meijer is a co-founder and the managing director/CEO of Navus Ventures, the venture-capital vehicle of the Lely family office. Lely is a Netherlands-based family-owned company (roughly 75 years old) best known for pioneering robotic milking and other automation for the dairy sector. Before moving into investing, Meijer spent several years working within Lely itself, giving him direct operating experience in agricultural technology and robotics before he transitioned to guiding startups and building the Navus portfolio. He studied at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (2004–2005), and his professional skill set spans strategy, change management, continuous improvement / lean manufacturing, and product development.

Navus Ventures was established in 2013 as part of the Lely single-family office. Meijer founded the firm alongside Alexander van der Lely (of the founding Lely family) and Joop Ham, positioning it as an independent, family-funded investor focused on the transitions underway in food and energy. Rather than chasing quick financial returns, the fund is structured to back technologies with long development horizons — Meijer has spoken about being comfortable with 10–15 year market life cycles, a patience that reflects the family's own experience commercializing agricultural robotics over decades.

Today Meijer leads a team that includes Jaap Zijlstra (COO/director) and investment staff (Lynn Hoendervanger, Olivier van Holthe tot Echten, and Ewoud von Martels). He has also been active in the broader Dutch/European agri-food-tech ecosystem, including through co-investments with vehicles such as Rockstart, the EIC Fund, and Oost NL. He is based in The Hague, while the fund operates out of the Lely Campus in Maassluis.

• "Technology for Transition." Navus invests to accelerate the transition in food and energy, backing high-tech and sustainable startups from idea/market validation through product development and scaling.
• Stages: Early — described internally as Seed → Market Entry → Growth, spanning pre-seed to Series A.
• Hands-on but not in the driver's seat. In Meijer's words: *"we try to be an actively involved investor. We will never sit in the entrepreneur's driver seat"* — instead the fund acts as a "passenger" that guides when needed, rather than demanding formal quarterly-report relationships.
• Selection criteria (per Meijer): uniqueness/defensibility of the technology, size of the market, severity of the problem being solved, and whether Navus can genuinely add value through its experience and network.
• Leverages Lely's operating DNA: ~75 years of family-office experience in agricultural robotics and deep industry networks are pitched as the fund's differentiator versus pure financial capital.
• Sector emphasis: food & agri-tech (14+ investments) and high-tech/robotics (11+), including greenhouse horticulture (five-plus investments), cultivated/fermented foods, and energy storage.
• On choosing investors: Meijer advises founders to pick investors based on their strategic goals and geographic-expansion plans, and to weigh the added complexity that can come from an investor located far away.