Thomas Smet

Thomas Smet's central and most unusual claim is that a bank can and should lend to loss-making startups. Innovation Banking, the unit he built inside KBC, extends credit against future cash flow projections rather than historical profit, which he freely admits is "atypical for a bank" ¹. The basic mechanics of lending don't change, he insists, but the analysis does: instead of trailing financials, the dossier turns on a monthly cashflow statement that shows when burn stops, typically within 18-24 months, combined with a hard look at whether these specific founders can actually execute ². This is not charity or marketing; it is a deliberate recalibration of what counts as evidence in a credit decision.

The origin of the unit is bottom-up rather than strategic-top-down. As a mentor at Start it @KBC, Smet kept seeing startups get rejected by local branches and began experimenting with financing them himself, first locking in credit-policy backing before building out a full unit around it — his own rule was that if he couldn't get them a loan, he shouldn't start the conversation at all ². The personal, almost improvised nature of that beginning comes through in how he describes pitching the idea internally: "Dag Alexander, ik ben Thomas en ik heb een idee" ². That founder-to-founder informality carries into how he wants entrepreneurs to treat the bank once they're in: "Als er een probleem is, kom het mij alstublieft vertellen. Ik kan niet garanderen dat ik het kan oplossen, maar ik kan één ding garanderen: als ik het niet weet, zal ik het niet kunnen oplossen" ². Communication, not perfection, is the operating expectation.

Once a startup is in the program, the relationship functions more like a quasi-investor than a traditional lender. Smet runs quarterly review meetings with every founder, tracking sales and runway, and has built in an explicit traffic-light system: a company goes "orange" at six months of runway remaining and "red" at three ¹. Financial plans submitted to the bank should sit deliberately in a middle ground, "something in between" a single A4 summary and a sprawling Excel model, anchored on month-by-month income and cost structure rather than a classic P&L ². The goal is not exhaustive documentation but a live, ongoing signal of trajectory.

The one non-negotiable filter, in his own words, is commercial traction: "Er moet commerciële tractie zijn... ergens in de verte moet er een inkomstenstroom beginnen komen die ons toelaat om onze kredieten op termijn af te betalen" ². Without an emerging revenue stream capable of eventually servicing the credit, a startup isn't a fit for Innovation Banking and gets redirected to Start it @KBC first ². This same logic explains why he excludes pure early-stage biotech from the unit: the long, flat revenue period before FDA approval can't be bridged with a coherent financing structure, whereas mature, cash-generating biotech belongs in ordinary corporate banking ². The line he draws is consistently about visible, servicing-capable cash flow, not about company age or ambition.

Smet frames the incubator and the bank as reinforcing parts of the same machine, describing KBC's scale bluntly: "Wij zijn de grootste incubator van Europa, wij zijn de vijfde grootste ter wereld" ². Start it @KBC funnels promising startups toward the bank, and the bank has, in at least one case, redeployed five or six employees from a startup that ran out of runway into other startups within the same network ². He also points to a compounding information advantage as a structural benefit of the model: after checking in on a startup every three months for three years, the bank is in a far stronger position to underwrite that company's larger follow-on financing rounds ².

For founders, his practical advice runs in two directions. First, he tells them to treat banks the way they'd vet investors, pushing for what he calls "Smart Bank Money": "Er is zoiets als Smart Bank Money. Vraag dat ook, los van bij welke bank dat je gaat: wat doen jullie voor ons?" ². Concrete commercial signals matter more than founders realize here too — he flags pilot and proof-of-concept contracts with blue-chip OEMs, even ones as small as a €200,000 commitment, as materially underestimated tools for strengthening a bank dossier ². Second, on timing, his position is that startups shouldn't raise too early: bootstrap to an MVP with paying customers first, then raise enough for 18-24 months of runway, since early valuations are lower and premature fundraising means giving away more of the company than necessary ¹.

Taken together, Smet's thinking is less a pitch for a novel financial product than an argument for changing what banks are willing to look at. Cash flow projections, founder capability, commercial traction, and ongoing dialogue replace historical profit as the load-bearing elements of a credit decision, and the bank positions itself as a recurring presence in a startup's life rather than a one-time gatekeeper ¹². The consistent thread across both conversations is that this only works if it stays conc