Maura Nachtergaele

Maura Nachtergaele's public statements circle around a consistent conviction: that employee compensation in Belgium is opaque, overpriced, and in need of modernizing, and that Payflip exists to fix exactly that. On LinkedIn she aligns herself with trade bodies and public figures against "de ontransparante en hoge kosten rond maaltijd- en ecocheques in België," positioning Payflip's model of "Géén Payflip commissies op transacties" as a direct, three-times-cheaper alternative for merchants, wrapped in an unapologetically national frame: "100% Belgisch. Because Belgium earns it." This is not a one-off marketing line but the surface expression of a mission she describes at length elsewhere: that "verloning blijft een beetje in die taboesfeer" and that making compensation "sexy" and "modern" is the founding purpose she and her co-founders set out with four years earlier ².

Her account of Payflip's early years is built around deliberate slowness rather than speed. The company bootstrapped for two years by running a tax consultancy on the side, generating revenue on rulings and copyright remuneration schemes while simultaneously learning the market, before consciously killing that revenue stream to force a transition into a pure SaaS business ². That transition, not a cash shortage, is what triggered the January 2023 funding round: financing as a safety net for a business-model shift rather than a survival necessity ². Throughout, she frames the frugality of those years almost devotionally: "We leefden wel als franciscanen," a phrase that captures both the financial discipline and the sense of mission underneath it ².

That discipline sits alongside an explicit rejection of growth-at-all-costs thinking. Asked about scaling fast, she is blunt: "Wij willen eigenlijk niet groeien at all cost. Zoiets als hypergrowth, dat zegt mij niets, niet als professional en niet als bedrijf." ² For her, the compensation landscape in Belgium is too complex to rush; taking time to shape the vision properly matters more than velocity, and she treats hypergrowth as a source of avoidable damage rather than a badge of ambition ².

Her account of raising the €1.25M round with Smartfin, KBC and PMV is notable for how unromantic she keeps it. Hiring an experienced interim CFO with an investor network was a deliberate move to open doors to family offices and investment bankers, and it taught the founders to skip account managers and go straight to the people who actually write checks ². She also credits the standard VC advice, "talk to investors before you need them," with paying off literally: Smartfin's Thomas Depuydt had been in touch long before the raise, so a term sheet materialized quickly once the round opened ². Yet when it came to choosing a lead investor between two nearly identical offers, the deciding mechanism was not analysis but a coin flip, and even that wasn't final: "Filip heeft mij omhoog gegooid en dan letterlijk kop of munt. En was het de ene partij geworden en dat voelde net niet goed, dus dan hebben we zelf de munt eruit gedraaid." ² The anecdote is her clearest statement that, at the margin, gut feeling overrides even careful process.

She is equally candid about what she'd change. Looking back on Payflip's early pricing, set at €79 per employee per year, she regrets a kind of national modesty: "Ik denk dat een Amerikaan dat onmiddellijk ging verkocht hebben aan het triple wat dat wij deden." ² It's a specific, self-critical admission that Belgian politeness cost the company money, and it pairs with a broader piece of advice she gives herself and others: "Minder perfectionistisch zijn... You're just missing out on fun." ² Together these remarks suggest someone actively correcting for an instinct toward over-caution, in pricing and in general disposition.

On what the funding actually bought Payflip, she's unsentimental: beyond the cash itself, the round's value was maturity signaling, media visibility, and above all budget to hire the head-of-sales and head-of-engineering profiles the company needed, hires who cared about salary rather than which investor's name was on the cap table ². It's a deflationary way of describing a fundraise, consistent with her broader tendency to strip hype out of decisions that are often mythologized.

Finally, she keeps a notably sober view of her own role as CEO. Rather than treating the founder seat as permanent, she says the founders regularly ask themselves whether they remain the right people for their positions, and that she would step aside if someone else could add more value to Payflip ². Combined with her comment that "It's a good time to be in HR" ², the overall picture is of a founder who sees Payflip's opportunity as real and timely, but who insists on pairing that optimism with self-scrutiny, patience, and a refusal to romanticize growth, funding, or her own indispensability.