Leadership Team

Meet Richard Van Belzen

Richard Van Belzen is an entrepreneur and commercialization strategist with 30+ years of experience bringing complex, mission-critical technologies to market. He has led turnarounds, built high-growth divisions, and scaled emerging technologies across energy, infrastructure, medical devices, and industrial sectors.

At Aestus Energy Storage, Richard is focused on solving the grid’s most pressing challenge: permanent, reliable energy storage infrastructure. His career demonstrates a consistent pattern: identifying broken markets, understanding customer pain deeply, and architecting go-to-market strategies that create sustainable competitive advantage.

Career Highlights:

Corporate Leadership (Xerox, Tyco Sensormatic)
Richard spent his early career at Xerox, where he progressed from account executive to head of Channel Strategy. During a critical period, he was part of the leadership team tasked with repositioning Xerox’s market presence and improving shareholder value. He led the scaling of the Business Services Division, architecting channel partnerships that drove 40% compound annual growth for over a decade. Later, as Head of Marketing at Tyco Sensormatic, he positioned a RFID like technology and source-tagging solutions during a transformative period in retail technology adoption.

Strategic Consulting & Technology Commercialization
Over the past 15+ years, Richard has consulted with companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 organizations across diverse sectors:

• Energy & Infrastructure: Solar, wind, thermal storage, water systems
• Industrial & Manufacturing: Supply chain optimization, IoT integration
• Medical Devices & Life Sciences: Regulatory navigation, market entry strategy
• Defense & Aerospace: Complex procurement, long-cycle sales
• Clean Energy & Mobility: EV charging, sustainable transportation, emissions reduction

In each engagement, his focus has been consistent: matching innovative technology with genuine customer need and building the organizational and commercial structure to win.

Formative Foundation
Richard’s approach to problem-solving was shaped early. Growing up on a farm, he learned responsibility and independent decision-making at a young age. With his father often managing business operations elsewhere, Richard managed the farm’s daily operations and learned to diagnose problems, make decisions with incomplete information, and deliver results. This foundation—combining practical problem-solving with accountability—has defined his career.

Through his father’s business, he also gained early exposure to entrepreneurship and high-net-worth decision-makers, learning how experienced operators think about risk, value creation, and long-term building. These lessons informed his later work as both a corporate executive and entrepreneur.

Why Aestus
After decades helping companies commercialize technology, Richard recognized that the energy storage market was still missing what utilities, data centers, and industrial operators actually needed: infrastructure-grade storage that lasts as long as the power plants it supports. Most competitors are selling equipment designed for 10-15 year lifecycles. Aestus is building permanent infrastructure.

Richard founded Aestus to solve this problem, bringing together his deep understanding of customer requirements, his network across energy and infrastructure, and his track record of taking complex technologies from concept to commercial success.