Team
We back exceptional founders and blockchain protocols that bring us closer to a world of more individual sovereignty, trust, and privacy.


“In a world that becomes ever more digital, the relevance of cryptography and blockchain technology will increase substantially for businesses and end-users alike.” Bart Preneel

“We see a growing demand for blockchain applications in the market, yet due to a lack of funding the European ecosystem is not developed enough to meet that demand. With a complementary team, Tioga is ideally positioned to capture this opportunity in Europe.” Stijn Bijnens

"I’m interested in how decentralized networks allow for the separation of money and state by giving open-source protocols a way to compete in this previously closed market." Michiel Lescrauwaet

“There has been a growing lack of trust towards institutions and I am convinced that blockchain will have a profound impact by restoring that trust. After returning to Europe, I noticed a strong dislocation in the blockchain ecosystem and decided to launch Tioga Capital to support entrepreneurs that are solving those problems" Nicolas Priem

“Blockchain forces us to fundamentally question and redesign legal concepts and regulations. Tioga offers the opportunity to actively help various start-ups navigate the regulatory landscape. This is the challenge I’ve been looking for.” Olivier Lefebvre

“At Smartfin, we see many opportunities around blockchain and believe in its potential. Collaborating on smart and trusted datasets as well as securing sensitive information is ever more important. We believe Tioga is best positioned to capitalize on this opportunity and we’re looking forward to a fruitful partnership” Jürgen Ingels

“New technologies are increasingly centralized. I believe blockchain technology and crypto assets offer a powerful & important counterforce by enabling a decentralized control of data. In addition, I am enthusiastic about how crypto assets can help to better distribute value creation.” Patrick Van de Mosselaer
Core Team

Nicolas Priem
Managing Director & CIO
Prior to co-founding Tioga Capital Partners, Nicolas was a founding team member and part of the executive committee as Vice President at the Brussels based private equity fund Core Equity Holdings (+€1B AuM). In 2015, Nicolas discovered the emerging crypto asset class during his tenure at the San Francisco based private equity fund Altamont Capital Partners (+$2.5B AuM), where he served as Vice President taking on multiple investment and operational roles. Earlier in his career, Nicolas was a consultant at Bain & Company residing in Brussels, London, and Los Angeles, which set the foundations for his ever-evolving career in finance and investing. Nicolas holds a master’s degree in finance from the KUL, a master’s in general management from the Vlerick Business School, and has passed his CFA level III.
Focus areas: investment strategy, commercial/valuation due diligence, and investor relations

Patrick Van de Mosselaer
Managing Director
Patrick discovered crypto in 2016 and was immediately intrigued with the potential of the technology, and how it could be shaping the future of money, finance, media, data etc.
Patrick is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. After successfully starting, scaling, and exiting multiple ventures ranging from a scalable hospitality concept to a med-tech platform in Western Europe, Patrick co-founded Tioga Capital. Earlier in his career, Patrick worked as a strategy consultant at Roland Berger in Belgium, France, Russia, Canada and the US which set the foundation for his passion around building, growing, and analyzing businesses. At Tioga he is combining his love for blockchain technology, with his engineering background and his experience and network in the start-up world.
Patrick understands what it's like to be an entrepreneur because he is one himself.
Focus areas: investment sourcing, due diligence, investor relations and operations.

Michiel Lescrauwaet
Managing Director
Michiel discovered Bitcoin in 2012 and never lost his conviction on the potential of decentralised trust models ever since.
He has been an active investor for over 10 years and holds a MSc degree in Business Administration and one in macroeconomics (magna cum laude). His Master’s thesis “Investor attention and short-term return reversals” was published in a peer-reviewed finance journal. With a background in macroeconomics, he has immersed himself in DeFi since 2019
Prior to his role at Tioga, he co-founded Adamant Capital, a Bitcoin focused fund, and helped develop Bitcoin valuation metrics that are widely used today. Adamant was later acquired by Blockstream.
Focus areas: Investment strategy, investment research, and investment sourcing

Atul Luykx
Technical Advisor (external)
As a cryptographer, he has been conducting research in the development and analysis of cryptographic algorithms for the last 7 years. With over 20 articles published at top cryptographic venues, and as co-designer of five algorithms (one standardized at ISO), he brings deep technical expertise and connections that are leveraged in Tioga’s diligence process.
With his expertise and deep network in the space, he also provides invaluable advice to drive value creation at the early-stage investments of the fund.
Focus areas: technical due diligence, custody, and research/publications

Olivier Lefebvre
Legal Counsel
Olivier has been active as an international tax lawyer for the last decade in Belgium and Luxembourg. He gained professional experience first as a tax consultant within the financial services department at EY and later became the group tax counsel of a large private equity firm, JAB Holding Company (+$10B AuM). With his experience as tax-advisor and in-house tax lawyer in Luxembourg, Olivier has deep expertise in the Luxembourg fund ecosystem and serves as Tioga Capital’s General Counsel and Partner. His role not only consists in outlining the regulatory and tax framework of the fund, but also in leading the legal due diligence activities. Olivier holds a masters degree in law and an LLM in taxation from the KUL, as well as a postgraduate in business administration from the EMS. Olivier also completed the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Program at the Saïd Business School.
Focus areas: legal due diligence, regulatory/tax matters, and structuring/reporting
SmartFin Partnership
We work closely together with one of Europe’s leading FinTech VCs.

Jürgen Ingels
Founding Partner SmartFin
Jürgen Ingels is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist.
He was the founder and CFO of Clear2Pay, a leading payments technology company. Under his leadership, he grew the company to one of the world leaders in payment software with more than 1.200 employees in 14 countries.
Today, Jürgen is the founder and managing director of SmartFin, a fund targeting promising European technology companies. Jürgen is also the initiator of ‘Supernova’, Belgium’s biggest technology and innovation festival. He is involved in various companies like Guardsquare, Silverfin, Cumul.io, The Glue… Jürgen currently holds a board position in countless reputable companies from various sectors: Materialise (NASDAQ: MTLS), Itiviti, Willemen, Ghelamco, UnifiedPost, WDP (Euronext), Itineris, Exellys, and more.

Thomas Depuydt
Managing Partner SmartFin
Thomas is managing partner at SmarFin, an investment firm investing in growing B2B technology companies.
Before joining SmartFin, Thomas worked as Portfolio Manager for iMinds (now part of imec), where he managed a portfolio of 100+ companies that graduated from the iMinds’ incubation program including e.g. Ugentec, Posios, Datacamp. Prior to that, Thomas worked at Bain & Company as part of their private equity practice, and performed due diligence and post-acquisition work for large investment funds. He was also involved in digital transformation projects for blue-chip companies in FMCG and Financial Services industry. Thomas started his career at Accenture, where he defined product specifications and did software testing as part of large software implementations in sectors such as utilities, chemicals, and natural resources. He currently holds Board positions at Cumul.io, Silverfin, and Theo technologies.
Thomas holds a Master of Science in Economics from the University of Leuven and a Master of Science in Computer Sciences from the University of Ghent and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Advisory Board

Bart Preneel
Head of COSIC Research Lab
Prof. Dr. Ir. Bart Preneel is a world-renowned expert in blockchain and cryptography, co- author of over 1000 publications, containing multiple standardized and widely used cryptographic algorithms and attaining over 23,000 citations. In 2014, he received the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics and in 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the IACR (International Association for Cryptologic Research). Besides teaching and leading research, Bart chairs multiple top-tier conferences has led as president of the IACR, and frequently consults for industry and governments about security and privacy technology.

Stijn Bijnens
CEO Cegeka
Ir. Stijn Bijnens, has 11 years of experience as CEO of a successful Belgian venture capital fund (LRM). Prior, he co-founded a network security software company -Ubizen- that he IPO’ed on Nasdaq in 1999 at ~500M EUR valuation. Currently, he is the CEO of Cegeka, a leading European IT service company.

Alex Pruden
Chief Strategy Officer at Aleo Systems Inc.
Alex serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Aleo Systems, a blockchain startup focused on privacy integrations for decentralized applications. Prior Alex was a deal partner a16z’s blockchain fund. He has also worked at Coinbase, and has started working in the blockchain industry in 2017 as a blockchain research analyst at GGV Capital. Before his business career, Alex served many years in the US military. He holds an MBA from Stanford where was the president of the Stanford Blockchain Club. Alex also holds a degree in International Relations from West Point Academy.
Operating Partners
We engage collaboratively with entrepreneurs and provide significant support as and when needed. For this reason, the Tioga team is surrounded by experienced people who are willing to roll up their sleeves to support management.

Hanna Zubko
Co-Founder and CEO at IntellectEU
Hanna Zubko is a serial entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of IntellectEU Inc, a global leader in enterprise-grade blockchain solutions. In addition, Hanna is the Governing Board Member of the Hyperledger Foundation. As an experienced startup mentor, she supports entrepreneurs at Startupbootcamp Fintech New York and SAP.io Venture Studio. Hanna is an active member of YPO, Entrepreneurs Organization and MyEO Angel Network with a primary focus on crypto and blockchain investments.

Quentin Adam
Founder and CEO of Numerium3

Jean-Marc Bonnefous
Ex-Global head of Commodity Derivatives at BNP Paribas
Jean-Marc is the ex-Global head of Commodity Derivatives at BNP Paribas. He is now an active blockchain angel investor with a focus on decentralized financial market infrastructures (=dFMI). He helps sourcing startup deals (UK and France with a focus on dFMI) and has a strong network in the financial services industry.

Jean-Luc Verhelst
Bitcoin & Blockchain author

Thomas Daniels
Start-up advice

Thomas Daniels![]()
Start-up advice
Thomas is an early investor in the bitcoin ecosystem. He has a wealth of relationships throughout the ecosystem as well as >20 blockchain angel investments. Thomas actively assists several blockchain companies and helps with sourcing startup deals (with a particular focus on Switzerland).
