Gunther Ghysels

The through-line

Across LinkedIn posts and podcast appearances, Gunther Ghysels keeps returning to one word: "goesting" — drive, appetite, enthusiasm — as the thing that decides whether a business or a job is worth doing at all ⁶⁷. Early on, at Get Driven, that showed up as an all-in personality who trusted network and gut feeling over money and structure ⁸. By the time he talks about Tinrate, the same restlessness is still there, but it has hardened into something more calculated: he now moves fast on hard signals like recurrence and willingness to pay, kills ideas that don't clear that bar, and treats a lack of soft launches as a fact of doing business in 2025 rather than a risk to be managed ⁶. The constant is speed and appetite; what has shifted is his tolerance for sitting with an unvalidated idea.

On pivoting fast

Ghysels is explicit that Tinrate's original marketplace idea broke on a simple mechanic: "Recurrentie en willingness to pay is het grootste probleem met het initiële idee" . Once someone has "die expertise in 30 of 60m getankt," he argues, "ben je ze kwijt" — the customer cycle ends because the value was one-off and personal-brand-driven . His response was not to defend the original idea but to rebuild the product around a concierge/agent layer for company websites, described as "Niet zomaar een agent, maar uw eigen chat gpt die je uw website bezoekers sneller dan ooit de juiste info geeft" . He frames this as inevitable in the current environment: "In 2025 er bestaan geen soft launches niet meer. Als je met iets naar buiten komt dat werkt, een MVP, then you do a launch" ⁶.

On trust over control

At Get Driven, Ghysels built a culture with no clock-in system, justified with "Het is een beetje get shit done dat we hier doen. En als het gebeurt: fine. Op welke manier maakt mij niet uit, en je moet hier niet zijn, maar het moet wel gebeuren" ⁷. He treats badge-based attendance as obsolete: "Ik denk eerlijk gezegd dat het in badgen en uit badgen, dat dat niet meer van 2023 is" ⁷. This connects to a broader belief about work itself: "Ik vind het zo zonde dat je 40 jaar tegen uw goesting zou moeten gaan werken," followed by "Do what you love, love what you do. Dat is allemaal zo cheesy en whatever, maar het is wel zo" ⁷.

On capital, network and control

Ghysels is unusually blunt about why he sold a large stake in Get Driven early: "Netwerk is vaak belangrijker in begin dan middelen," and he wanted an investor who would go "met mij mee in de rollercoaster" rather than just supply cash ⁸. He separates ownership from operating control outright: "Ik denk dat het runnen en aandeelhouder of eigenaar zijn van het bedrijf los van elkaar staan," noting that despite being a minority shareholder, "laat hij mij 100% carte blanche" ⁸. On Tinrate, the same instinct for capital shows up differently: he applied to Belgian VC funds who were "zeer enthousiast" about his story but all declined, which "heeft dat mij tegengehouden? Neen" — he raised €1.6M from angels instead ⁶. He also generalizes this into a market view: "Ik denk dat je zeer moeilijk nog iets kunt bootstrappen op vandaag omdat je gewoon heel snel gekopieerd wordt" ⁶.

On pricing expertise

Ghysels treats the willingness-to-pay signal for advice calls as unambiguous: "Er is nog niemand die zegt van ja, ik vond dat nu zijn geld niet waard. Het is altijd omgekeerde van moest dat nu drie keer zoveel gekost hebben, dan ging het nog betalen" ⁶. He frames the whole category as newly monetizable behavior: "Die omzet is iets die niet bestond vroeger hè. Ofwel was het gratis ofwel hebben ze het niet gedaan. Dus it's new economy" ⁶. This same logic runs through his public pitch for Tinrate's tool: "Wil je expertise tanken, just pay for it en bespaar de 'zin in een koffietje?'" .

From the stage

In the podcast conversations, Ghysels gives operational detail that the LinkedIn posts never touch. He explains that Tinrate deliberately withholds full marketplace search until supply is deep enough, because "Een zoekmachine is maar zo goed als de zoekresultaten die eruit komen," and 1500 experts still isn't enough to power discovery ⁶. He also discloses the fee structure logic: the 5% transaction fee is charged to buyers rather than sellers, since the long-term plan is a seller-side SaaS subscription that can't be layered on top of sellers who are still bringing their own audience ⁶. He uses OnlyFans as a cautionary case study: originally conceived for knowledge-sharing, its adult-content vertical exploded by accident, leaving a 50% commission model with no real marketplace discovery that he sees as a strategic weak point competitors could undercut ⁶. On Get Driven, he describes a failed six-month push into Germany (living in Berlin, 50 nights in Munich) that collapsed on local labor law and culture — drivers wanting lawyers for contracts — as proof that even scalable software still needs local reach and local faces ⁶⁸. He also recounts the COVID moment when platform revenue nearly hit zero and he and his investor personally funded five in-house developers to rebuild the product rather than take on debt or dilute at a depressed valuation ⁸.

Takeaways

• Kill ideas on recurrence and willingness-to-pay data, not on how much you personally believe in them — Tinrate's original marketplace failed this test within seven months ⁶.
• Treat 2025-era launches as final, not soft: if the MVP works, launch it as the real thing ⁶.
• Separate company ownership from operating control explicitly when negotiating investment; carte blanche on operations can survive giving up majority equity ⁸.
• Build supply-side depth before opening full marketplace search, since a search product is only as good as its results ⁶.
• Ditch time-tracking for outcome-based accountability if your organization already runs on weekly and monthly targets ⁷.
• Expect that even software-scalable services still require local networks and local faces when expanding into new countries ⁶⁸.