Overview
De Mesmaeker is from Londerzeel and took an undergraduate degree in software engineering at KU Leuven. Hendrik Van Hove applied to Y Combinator in October 2023 with only the idea, while still working at McKinsey & Company, and a group partner encouraged him to apply again. He left McKinsey, was connected to De Mesmaeker through a mutual friend, and the two incorporated the company in April 2024 and were accepted into the Summer 2024 batch. Conveo has since added Niels Schillewaert, co-founder of Human8, formerly InSites Consulting, as head of research and methods.
He founded it in April 2024 with Hendrik Van Hove, now co-founder and chief product officer, and the company went through Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch. In March 2025 Conveo announced a seed round of 5.3 million dollars, reported in euros as 4.9 million, backed by Y Combinator, 6 Degrees Capital, Entourage Capital, Pitchdrive and Syndicate One, raised to expand in its core US and European markets. Customers named by the company include Unilever, AB InBev, Google, Canva, Procter & Gamble, Orange and Sanofi. In July 2026 Conveo launched StoryLines, a continuous programme that runs recurring interview waves weekly, biweekly or monthly across brand health, advertising and creative, innovation and product launches. On that launch De Mesmaeker said the company built StoryLines so consumer understanding stops being a service you buy and becomes a system the company runs on.
Career history
In the news
- Hearing directly from your consumers often changes brand direction. And it should. 👇 My favorite part about this is that it came from an onboarding study. Everyone who joins Conveo runs one, whether they’re in sales, engineering, marketing or finance. They pick something they’re curious about, launch it and hear what people actually think. It’s the quickest way to understand what we build. In her first month, one of our teammates looked into people’s exercise habits. She thought a contact at one of the best-known consumer brands
- Every engineer has the same AI tools now. The gap between the best engineers and everyone else has never been bigger. A really good engineer who applies AI well can now produce 100x, even 1,000x what they used to. The ones who get there stop being the bottleneck. They set up loops that run on their own. On our team, AI agents keep shipping code around the clock, even while we sleep. That's pushed our engineering talent bar way, way up. It's also what tips people our way when an offer is close. If you're an engineer and you're
- Our UK customer base grew 4x this year. And this week, the government here put £700m behind AI. Yesterday, I joined AI and tech leaders at 11 Downing Street, hosted by the Chancellor. Phones stayed at the door, so a room full of people building the future of AI had no way to AirDrop contact info. Just lots of, “I’ll remember you and reach out.” Old-school networking aside, it was great to see the government taking AI this seriously. But what matters most to me is building AI that helps companies truly understand people. That’s why
- We ran 12x more video conversations on Conveo last quarter than five quarters ago. Up every single quarter, and 4.3x in the last year alone. Companies always wanted to hear from their customers more often. It was just too slow and too expensive, so they saved research for a few big bets a year. Last quarter, consumers on Conveo weighed in on a storyboard for a 15-second ad, packaging for a limited edition, the name of a loyalty tier and a promo line for a phone contract. Those decisions used to go to whoever argued best in the
- When Conveo was just a handful of people, we all worked side by side and moved super fast. Our engineering team has grown 4x in the last year, but that closeness is one thing we want to keep. Our recent hackathon showed us what that looks like at our size today. The collaboration between our in-house researchers, engineers and customers was so tight that everyone left feeling energized. So at our engineering offsite this week, Maarten and I asked: why should this only last a few days? We came up with a new way for the team to work
- HeliosX Group got only 48 hours' notice to launch generic GLP-1s in Canada. They didn't have time for a new study. But they didn't panic. A few months earlier they'd run one with us on something completely different, and they'd asked Canadians about generics in it. So they went back to those interviews. Turns out Canadians hear "cheap" as "worth less." They went with "more affordable," and customers trusted it straight away. That same study has now settled three decisions, and it's how new colleagues get up to speed on Canada. They
- Not long ago, Conveo was a handful of people in Antwerp. Today, we have offices across Europe and the U.S., and we work with more than 400 enterprises, including 50+ of the Fortune 500. This week at Tectonic in Ghent, I swapped founder stories with Manu Vanderveeren from Spott. Thanks to Jorn Vanysacker from 100IN for moderating. Here are three things I’d tell any founder starting out. 👉 Early on, hire people who can grow into the job, because nobody knows yet what the job will look like next year. Later, add people who’ve done it
- While I was in SF, I heard "make something people want" on repeat. Meanwhile back in London, our team was doing it. We’ve had hackathons before, but never like this. 2 days. 14 researchers and engineers flown in from NYC, SF and Antwerp. 8 features live. Every one started with something a client asked for. Some of my favorites: ✅ Question bank: save screener and study questions once, reuse them across your org. ✅ Slider questions: rate items with a sliding scale, then dig into the answers. ✅ A redesigned stimulus library and
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