Overview
Gilles Baekelandt is the co-founder and chief executive of Buildhive, which he co-founded in May 2025. He is based in Belgium.
Before that he worked at Bekaert in corporate strategy, joining in September 2022 as a young graduate analyst and continuing as a corporate strategy analyst from July 2024 until May 2025. In February 2022 he won the BCG Strategy Cup, organised by Boston Consulting Group. He spent July 2021 as a maintenance engineer at Cargill, worked on the promoteam of PKarus Gent between September 2019 and May 2021, and was a lifeguard on the Belgian coast with IKWV, the Intercommunale Kustreddingsdienst West-Vlaanderen, during the summers from 2016 to 2021.
Baekelandt studied electromechanical engineering at Ghent University, taking a bachelor's degree between 2017 and 2020, and completed a Master of Science in mechanical engineering there in June 2022. During that period he spent the autumn of 2021 at Polytechnique Montréal, also in mechanical engineering, and followed German and French language courses at Ghent University.
Career history
In the news
- A picture of last week Friday at the ‘Gentse Feesten’ - a contractor fails to upload his prices via Buildhive, as a startup founder first thing you do is help… It’s Friday, 17 July, 11pm, right in the middle of the yearly ‘Bouwverlof’. I was at ‘De Schaapstal’ in Ghent with friends when a message came in over Crisp: a contractor couldn’t upload his quote to Buildhive. As a founder, replying and helping right away just feels natural. You want happy users, non-stop. Early on, not everything runs perfectly. When you’re moving fast to
- One year ago, Buildhive was founded. Today, more than 5.000 construction professionals rely on it for their day-to-day work. Exactly one year ago, we set up our first pilots and projects. It feels insane how this year has passed by and to see how we have grown Buildhive. Today: - 3,000+ projects coordinated on the platform - 5,000+ users connecting architects, contractors, project developers and end-customers - 350+ paying customers This was born from the problem we saw in the construction sector, people drowning in email threads,
- Thanks to Start it Accelerate | @KBC, we had the opportunity to meet 5 C-levels in a great setting. We were selected as one of the five startups from the Sales Sprint training to pitch in front of 5 different CEOs. What I really like about these moments is the fact that you can get everyone's advice on what he/she is expert in: - The Construction Sector with Nele De Smet - Sales Team with Gunter America - Company Culture with Olivier Verhaege - Opportunities & Strategy with Karen Van De Woestyne - The Future of Startups and AI
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