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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 carieer 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 University of Delft, 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 then worked at Unix System Laboratories of AT&T. In 1995, he changed to UB Networks, a subsidiary of Tandem Computers. In 1996 he becamer president of this company. Tandem was sold to Compaq in 1997, and Pieper became member of the executive board of Compaq.

Piepers reputation rose significantly during his American period, and he got to a reputation as a restructurer, putting ailing companies back on rails. Pieper returned to the Netherlands in 1998, and was over a short period vice president at Philips, an involvement that ended abruptly in May 1999 with Piepers personal involvement with the claimed technology of Jan Sloot, a connection Pieper made while still on Philips' payroll. Piepers came out of his four month employment with Philips with a golden handshake of 16.8 million Guilders.

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 dotcom bubble burst, loss-making Twinning closed after three years.

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 new seat 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 2001, Pieper conducted a study by request of 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 form, 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.

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