Pieter Velde

Pieter Van de Velde is an entrepreneur and investor who has spent his career in the European tech-startup and corporate-venturing space. He studied at the University of Antwerp, where he earned a Master's degree in Product Development (2003–2008), and later served as a guest lecturer at the University of Antwerp (roughly 2009–2014).

Before founding his current firm, Van de Velde built and ran Bundl, a venture development / corporate venture-building studio, as its founder and Managing Director from around 2008 to 2018. Through Bundl he became one of the earlier practitioners of corporate venturing in Europe — helping large companies design and launch new ventures — an experience that directly shaped the co-investment model he would later formalize.

Since 2017 he has been Founding Partner and Chairman of the Board of Ninepointfive (9.5 Ventures), an Antwerp-based venture capital firm formally established around 2019. The firm positions itself as one of Europe's first VC firms investing exclusively alongside corporate partners, pairing its own capital with a strategic corporate that contributes industry expertise, market access, and customer relationships. Ninepointfive manages approximately €35 million across two strategies: "One," focused on accelerating the digitisation of Europe's industrial value chain, and "Tidal," focused on the energy transition across maritime, ports, and offshore shipping.

Alongside his fund role, Van de Velde has held related positions in the ecosystem, including Investor-in-Residence at Vlerick Business School (from ~2022) and board or investor roles at several portfolio companies such as Penny Black, Eccocar, and MakerVerse.

• Invests at pre-seed/seed through Series B in European startups, typically pairing each deal with a strategic corporate co-sponsor.
• Core thesis is "accelerating the digitisation of the Industrial Value Chain" — backing "visionary entrepreneurs digitising Europe's industry."
• The firm's differentiator is a corporate co-investment model: as partner Bart Houben puts it, "Our model was built from the ground up to address this need, integrating strong corporate relations with the independent spirit of entrepreneurs."
• Sector emphasis on industrial software, manufacturing, maritime/ports/offshore, energy transition, logistics, and hardware/value-chain innovation — deep-tech and B2B rather than consumer.
• Despite the corporate angle, the firm stresses standard VC discipline: "We operate as any other venture capital fund. We have the exit of the start-ups as our primary target."
• Values founders who can integrate long-term strategic vision with incremental execution, and who can benefit from a strategic corporate's market access and customer channels.