In this episode I spoke with Rutger Bevers, founder and CEO of Conversation Starter, a matchmaking platform helping event participants and communities meet the right people and have meaningful 1-on-1 conversations. He's also co-founder of several communities, including Steward Owned and Long Term Society.
Based in Antwerp, founded in 2015, Conversation Starter is a Belgian startup born before the ecosystem had the support network it has now.
I found Rutger inspiring and impressive. I’ve heard people say that “Belgian founders aren’t ambitious enough”, but Rutger is deeply defying this stereotype. He started coding and teaching before he was even legally allowed to start a company. He has unstoppable ambition and high standards and it’s from these extremely high standards, that Conversation Starter was born. He built for Hasselt's first TEDx event, which Rutger co-organised, and the rest is history.
We talked about the tricky balance between working on vs working in your company. Rutger shared how he’s navigating that shift today, hiring his first salesperson, raising new funding, and trying not to get stuck in day-to-day operations.
We also explored why communities are moving away from social media and into smaller, curated spaces.
Summary
In this episode I spoke with Vincent Declercq, CEO and Co Founder of Dalton, a startup revolutionizing website optimization through AI. Vincent shares his journey from previous ventures to the inception of Dalton, emphasizing the importance of validation and learning from past mistakes. He discusses the appeal of marketing and growth hacking, the impact of competitive sports on his entrepreneurial spirit, and the significance of finding the right co-founders. The conversation delves into Dalton's innovative approach to website performance, including a case study showcasing impressive conversion rate improvements. Vincent also addresses the technical challenges of building the product, market positioning, and future directions, including pricing strategies and customer engagement.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Dalton and Its Vision
01:23 The Journey to Dalton's Creation
03:04 Lessons from Previous Ventures
05:34 Vincent's Background and Interest in Marketing
08:37 The Concept of Growth Hacking
10:14 The Impact of Competitive Swimming on Vincent's Career
13:34 Finding Co-Founders and Building the Team
15:51 Product Overview and Case Study of Dexter
21:17 The Technology Behind Dalton
24:31 Challenges and Market Positioning
27:22 Future Directions and Vision for Dalton
30:34 Pricing and Customer Engagement
The startup in focus for this episode is Altheria and I spoke with two of its co-founders, Dimitra, the CEO and Can-David or CD, the Chief Design Officer.
Altheria provides immersive virtual reality safety trainings for blue collar workers and its product is actually saving lives and limbs, keeping employees safe all over the world. They gave me a deep dive into their product and its evolution, from fun stories of people walking into each other in the early days to the real impact its having on the ground reducing accidents and increasing learning speed. We talked about what it means to be too early in a market and we ended with a candid discussion on the challenges of being a female leader in a male dominant sector.
Episode Summary
In this episode I spoke with Marte Greefs, CEO and Co-Founder of Go Ocean, a sister company of Go-Forest, of which Marta was the first employee. Each company is a small team of 2 or 3 people, with restoration partners all over the the world and big ambitions for the future.
Go Ocean is on a mission to restore and improves the ocean’s health and biodiversity. They do this by offering transparent and tangible restoration projects for companies to invest in, ranging from coral or mangrove restoration in the Global South to shellfish reefs and seagrass in our more northern waters. This helps companies compensate their CO₂-emissions, meet their sustainability goals, marketing and comms or even HR goals.
I was deeply touched by the founding story behind Go Forest: a tragic event that led to a strong push for positive impact.
Marte talked about the challenges of sales and fundraising as an impact business, some of the restoration projects they support, and them broader topics like when to move to an office what to delegate as a founder. She chose Go Forest over a role at the EU Commission (!) and she talked about what helped her make that decision.
Founder help recommended by Marte
Gig and Grow
Noa
Belgium Startup Ecosystem (and Awards)
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Go Ocean and Marte's Journey
05:44 Navigating Career Choices: Startups vs. European Commission
09:45 The Early Days at Go Forest
14:03 Business Model of Go Ocean and Go Forest
18:31 How to do Sales and Marketing as an Impact Business
22:34 A Different Take on the Carbon Credits Market
26:51 From Tragedy to Positive Impact: The Story Behind Go Forest
31:21 Current Projects and Future Directions of Go Ocean
32:54 Restoration Efforts and Challenges
35:24 Building Partnerships for Marine Restoration
36:05 Engaging Employees in Ocean Conservation
39:13 The Journey to Finding an Office
43:01 Aligning Values with Investors
46:02 Support Systems for Startups
In this week’s episode I spoke with Quinten Vandermullen, cofounder and CPO of Mbrella, which is an HR platform that allows Belgian companies to manage everything related to mobility for their employees, for example their mobility budgets and commuting allowances.
It’s a more mature startup compared to the ones we’ve discovered in previous episodes, arguably at this stage a scale up. Based in Brussels and founded in 2020, they’re currently a team of nearly 40 people. they’ve had two fundraising rounds, the most recent one in 2023 when they raised 6 million and acquired Mobbox.
What stood out to me from this conversation is the intentional and unconventional company culture Mbrella is building, based on a fundamental belief in the power of an async and written first communication style. We talked about the inspiration for that, how it works on a practical level and the impact it’s having.
As the conversation evolved, I realised that their success has also come from defying conventional advice. Instead of building global from day 1, they built hyper-local from day one, and it’s paid off. In 5 years, Mbrella has had 100% customer retention, no customers have churned. This is almost unheard of in SaaS.
We see on Linkedin these 10M ARR in just a few months stories. Mbrella is an example of success achieved on a different path. A belief in the market opportunity, even when growth was slow, and a commitment that paid off down the line because after 5 years, the results are visible.
Keep listening to see how they got there.
Resources
Mbrella's company handbook
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Quentin and his first Startup Moovle
05:47 The Birth of Mbrella: Addressing Mobility Needs
09:57 Market Positioning: Competing in a Niche
13:11 Winning The ING Tender and Building for Enterprises
16:42 Building an Async Writing First Company Culture
26:15 Launching from a Studio
32:43 Creating a Parent-Friendly Culture
39:50 Deep Work and Slow Responses
46:00 PLG Doesn't Work for Everyone
In this week’s episode, I spoke with Christina Hadinoto, founder of Contour Lab, a fashion tech startup based in Antwerp. Their product is a digital shopping assistant that uses AI to help you find clothes that match your body type and preferences, just like a human shopping assistant would do in a real store.
I first met Christina when we both participated in an incubator organised by Impact Shakers in collaboration with BeCentral, Elle Magazine, and Google. This was in January 2023; she was just at the beginning of her journey and was still working on closing her first paid customer.
Then I saw her pitch at SuperNova in March 2025, and I was amazed by the results she had achieved since I’d last seen her. Some major names appeared on the customer slide, she had strong data about the impact of her product, and she’d just closed a funding round. They’re now a team of five. When I saw that, I knew I had to get her on the show to share the story of how she got to where she is now.
Keep listening to find out how she found a technical cofounder despite not having a network to draw from, how she managed the shift from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, what it was like to enter a market as an early visionary before the world was ready for her solution, the impact she aims to have within the fashion industry globally, and her passionate call for more female entrepreneurs and investors.
Resources
Co-Founder matching from IMEC iStart
Lovable, the app building tool mentioned
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Christina and Contour Lab
06:25 The Impact of Contour Lab on Fashion and Mental Health
12:54 Finding Co-Founders and Building the Team
19:33 Overcoming Fundraising Challenges
24:57 Scaling and Market Opportunities
29:38 The Role of Support Programs in Entrepreneurship
32:45 Lessons Learned and Mindset Shifts
36:29 Future Ambitions and Advice for Founders
Summary
In this episode, I spoke with Margot Wuillaume, co-founder and CEO of eBloom, an HR tech startup. The core product is employee engagement software but they've expanded their offering to provide a broader suite of digital HR tools.
I’ve tried several different tools in this space as a Head of People I can honestly say that I don’t think there’s another tool on the market that’s more customer centric than eBloom.
We talk about many things in this episode, the two stand-out topics for me were eBloom’s contrarian approach to building a product in a crowded market and their journey fundraising in the early stages. Margot shares how they managed to close their first round in just 2 weeks.
We talk about many other things including hiring, finding customers, the help they received as a Brussels-based startup from local organisations.
Chapters
02:07 Introduction to Margot and eBloom
04:10 EBloom’s origin story
05:32 Building a product in a crowded market space
09:30 Launching during covid and finding their first customers
12:03 eBloom’s first hire
13:50 The power of meeting in person
15:53 Building a company culture that optimises for employee happiness
18:75 How a Master’s in Entrepreneurship became eBloom’s launchpad
20:06 The origins of Margot’s entrepreneurial itch
22:18 Writing a book about management
24:29 eBloom’s fundraising journey
28:35 eBloom’s key metrics that matter
31:32 The Belgian entrepreneurial support network
Link to Margot's book
You can buy a copy here
Brussels organisations mentioned in the episode
StartLab
Réseau Entreprendre
HubBrussels
In this episode I spoke with Patricio Castillo, co-founder of Prodi, a SaaS tool that uses AI to create internal communication podcasts for big corporates. At the time we recorded the episode, they’d only been incorporated for 5 months, but they’d already closed deals with some major customers such as Lineas and EntityData. The first customer they signed was Delaware, who chose them over Google’s Notebook LM! We discussed:
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Patricio Castillo and Prodi
05:42 The Journey from Idea to First Customer
11:13 Incorporation Decisions and Challenges
13:38 Transitioning to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
20:10 Getting into Start It KBC
24:04 Other Key Accellerators That Boosted Prodi
31:13 Onboarding Clients and Product Iteration
35:26 Overview of The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers
40:13 Vlaio Subsidies
42:13 Choosing Belgium for Entrepreneurship
45:33 Advice for Future Founders
48:04 Future Goals for Prodi
Resources
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Talking to Humans by Giff Constable
The YC talk Patricio mentioned about the 3 things you need to build a tech startup
Full Transcript
Full transcript of the episode with time stamps available here