Roel Pieper

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Roland ("Roel") Pieper (1956 - ) is a Dutch IT-entrepreneur. Pieper was born in Vlaardingen, son of an engineer at a car manufacturer. His father died when Pieper was 12, and on his 18th birthday he was subject to a motoring accident which destroyed his sporting career as a player of the Juventus Schiedam basketball team. According to himself, both of these experiences gave him a certain hardness. Pieper obtained his engineer's degree from the Delft University of Technology, 1980, in informatics.

After graduation, he worked for ten years for Software AG (both in Germany and in the United States). In the United States he worked for Unix System Laboratories of AT&T. In 1995, he changed to UB Networks formerly Ungermann-Bass, a subsidiary of Tandem Computers. In 1996 Pieper became president of Ungermann-Bass where he was instrumental in rebranding the company to UB Networks. Under Pieper's leadership UB transferred most of its research and development capital to the rebranding effort, leaving the company without any new products in the development pipeline; thus sealing the ultimate fate of UB Networks to acquisition. Tandem was sold to Compaq in 1997, and Pieper became a member of the executive board of Compaq. Pieper's reputation rose significantly during his American period, where he got to a reputation as a restructurer. His public face was that of putting ailing companies back on the rails; however, the UB transformation ultimately ended the existence of UB Networks following his departure.

Pieper returned to the Netherlands in 1998, and his career plummeted abrubtly. For a short period he was vice president of the Dutch electronics giant Philips on an invitation by Cor Boonstra, then Philips' president. This involvement ended abruptly in May 1999 when Pieper got involved in the claimed coding technology of Jan Sloot, a connection Pieper made while still on Philips' payroll. Pieper came out of his four month employment with Philips with a golden handshake of 16.8 million Guilders (around 8 million US$).

In 1998, together with ex-minister of economy Hans Wijers, Pieper set up Twinning, an incubator for starting entrepreneurs, particularly in the IT and especially the Internet sector. The project got eighteen millions Guilders of government subsidy, and as the Dot-com bubble burst, loss-making Twinning closed after three years leaving a chaos.

Pieper also independently took part in other IT businesses, including BitMagic of Michiel Frackers and Francisco van Jole. By 1 September 1999 Pieper was appointed as a professor of Electronic Commerce, a newly created chair at the faculty of informatics and technology management of the University of Twente.

In the end of 1999 Pieper founded Insight Capital Partners Europe, a private investment society for IT-businesses, particularly in the field of E-commerce, and in November 2000 he became president of the board of Lernout & Hauspie, a Flemish company in speech technology, which suffered a financial scandal and bankruptcy in October 25, 2001, after struggling for about a year.

In 2001, Pieper conducted a study requested by minister Tineke Netelenbos for setting up a system for road pricing, the Mobimiles. Later that year he became president of Connekt, an organisation for questions of road tolling in the Netherlands. Pieper is currently chairman of the Favonius Ventures venture capital firm, specializing in funding of software startups.

In May 2003, Pieper was involved in an incident where a confused man broke into his house in Aerdenhout, and stabbed his wife. Pieper is married, and has six children.