Anais De Boulle

The through-line

Everything here circles one preoccupation: the Belgian start-up and scale-up ecosystem, and the gap between founding a company and actually growing one. The diagnosis is blunt on the numbers, with only 5% of Belgian tech companies reaching €10M revenue and European startups repeatedly failing at valorisation [7]. The remedies she returns to are rarely about the product. They are about the unglamorous groundwork of shareholder agreements and contracts, about the discipline of the founder, about commercial nerve, and about putting founders in a room with each other often enough that the learning compounds [4][7].

The second, closely linked strand is that a network is not the goal. The stated ambition is "to build more than a network. We want to build a community where #founders inspire one another, learn from each other and create meaningful connections that last well beyond a single event" [4]. Most of the activity documented here, summits, ecosystem evenings, legal innovation gatherings, is that ambition being executed rather than described [1][2][4].

On regulating the divorce before the marriage

Founder conflict without a founders' agreement is named as one of the most common startup killers, and the fix is meant to happen early, while everyone still likes each other. The formulation is deliberately uncomfortable: "We drukken het in juristen vaak zo uit van regel al uw scheiding voordat je getrouwd bent" [7]. Practically, that means shareholder agreements, IP anchoring and consistent contracts, and the reason it is urgent is that these things surface later at the worst possible moment. Skip them and due diligence and seed rounds will fail [7]. The legal layer is treated as growth infrastructure rather than paperwork, which is also why protecting innovation sits on the same agenda as AI adoption and scaling, with "AI & IP: how to protect your innovation" listed alongside AI assurance and sector trends [1][2].

On negotiating from your own terms

The commercial counterpart to the legal argument is that startups routinely give away leverage they still hold. Letting big enterprise customers impose their contracts weakens the company, and even early-stage scale-ups can push back and negotiate from their own terms [7]. The claimed payoff is twofold and worth noting because it runs against the instinct to accommodate: pushing back shortens sales cycles and earns respect [7].

On what separates the founders who scale

Sales ability is placed at the centre of the scale-up profile, not delegated: "Voor mij zo de star scale-uppers, dat zijn de grootste sales guys die er zijn" [7]. Around that sits a description of Fast 50 winners that reads as a character sketch more than a business model. They share long-term passion and discipline, they treat their bodies like top athletes, they know when to say no, and they surround themselves with people better than themselves [7]. The last of those connects directly to the community work, since a founder who wants to be around better people needs somewhere to find them [4][7].

On product-market fit and the valorisation gap

Product-market fit is given three testable rules rather than left as a feeling: roughly 40% retention, two to three cost-effective acquisition channels, and readiness for the next order of magnitude [7]. The third rule is the one that separates a working business from a scaling one, and it explains the framing of the whole problem as valorisation, the failure of European startups to turn what they have built into scale [7]. The 5% of Belgian tech companies that reach €10M revenue is the number that makes the point stick [7].

On community as the delivery mechanism

The Founder Summit, run with SuperNova, Leen Anthuenis and Jürgen Ingels, brought together the founders behind the Deloitte Fast 50 and Rising Star community to "reconnect, exchange experiences, challenge ideas and strengthen a community that continues to grow" [4]. The pattern repeats at smaller scale: an evening at Corda Campus in Hasselt built around the Deloitte Scale-ups Confidence Survey 2026, real-life AI assurance examples, AI and IP, "a great opportunity to exchange ideas, learn from one another, and reconnect with the start-up & scale-up community", and beers and burgers [1]. The informality is not incidental. Two days of the summit produced "countless conversations and even more energy for what's ahead" [4], and the follow-on at Love Tomorrow was framed as exploring emerging technologies and reflecting on "how today's innovations are shaping the world of tomorrow" [4]. Legal peers get their own version of the same invitation around the future of legal innovation [2].

On celebrating the ecosystem's milestones

Individual company wins are treated as ecosystem evidence rather than client news. BrightAnalytics reaching a milestone is framed as "another great milestone within our Belgian scale-up ecoystem", with credit named to Lode Bogaert, Olivier Seynhaeve and Merijn Demuynck [6], and Kando Care gets the same short, public push [5]. The habit is consistent with the community argument: visible progress by one company is part of what draws the others in [4][5][6].

Takeaways

• Settle the founders' agreement, shareholder agreements, IP anchoring and contract consistency before you need them, because unresolved founder conflict and messy paperwork are what break due diligence and seed rounds [7].
• Do not sign the enterprise customer's contract by default; negotiating from your own terms shortens sales cycles and earns respect, even at early stage [7].
• Test product-market fit against three things: about 40% retention, two to three cost-effective channels, and readiness for the next order of magnitude [7].
• Only 5% of Belgian tech companies reach €10M revenue, which reframes the problem from starting up to valorisation [7].
• The best scale-up founders are the strongest salespeople in the building, and they pair that with athlete-level discipline, the ability to say no, and a habit of hiring people better than themselves [7].
• Aim for a community rather than a network, one where "#founders inspire one another, learn from each other and create meaningful connections that last well beyond a single event" [4].
• Put AI on the practical agenda: real-life assurance examples, sector confidence data, and how to protect the innovation through IP [1].