Veroniek Collewaert

Veroniek Collewaert specialises in the relationships between entrepreneurs and investors. She believes angel and venture capital investment is fundamentally about people – so intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics are front and centre of her research. She’s an expert in how to foster more productive relationships with investors. 

Next to investor-entrepreneur relationships, her research interests also extend to other key people dynamics in young scale-ups. She also focuses on founding teams and early hires - and the growth challenges specifically related to building and scaling up a team. She has published articles in several prestigious academic journals.

At Vlerick, she teaches courses on entrepreneurship and scaling in our Masters and MBA programmes. She also organises the Silicon Valley trips, and she heads our Centre for Excellence in Scale-Ups, a unique community of founders and senior leaders of high-potential, high-growth scale-ups.

She has built a substantial network of entrepreneurs and angel investors – both in Belgium and Silicon Valley. She’s a board member of BAN Vlaanderen, one of Belgium’s largest angel investor groups, and a board member of the Advisory Board of the Europe Startup Nations Alliance (ESNA). 

Who am I?

• Full Professor, Director of Masters Programmes and Director of the Centre for Excellence in Scale-Ups at Vlerick Business School 
• Founder and Academic Director of the European Scaleup Institute
• Professor at KU Leuven
• Professor at Maastricht University, The Netherlands (2009-2012)
• Editor at the ‘Journal of Business Venturing’ and editorial board member of ‘Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice’
• Doctor in Applied Economic Sciences, Ghent University
• Visiting Scholar, Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA (2007-2008)