Gunther Ghysels

The through-line

Ghysels builds platforms in markets where being fast and being visible matters more than being technically defensible, and he keeps arriving at the same conclusion: the software is not the moat, so capital, network and execution speed are. "Ik denk dat je zeer moeilijk nog iets kunt bootstrappen op vandaag omdat je gewoon heel snel gekopieerd wordt" [7], and earlier, in digital winner-takes-all platform markets, going it alone is close to impossible because competitors get pumped full of VC money [9]. That reading of the world explains most of his decisions: selling a large stake very early, raising €1.6M from angels after four Belgian funds passed, refusing soft launches, and pivoting hard seven months into a product rather than waiting for the market to reward patience [7][3][9].

The temperament underneath it is consistent and self-described. "Ik ben een man van extremen. Het is van mij all in or all out" [8], and "Ik word snel verveeld, dus voor mij moet het nieuw zijn en ook snel gaan" [9]. What has shifted is what he is all-in on. In 2022 and 2023 the subject is Get Driven, ownership structure and how to run a company you no longer majority-own [9][8]; by 2026 it is Tinrate, the economics of paid advice, and a public, unusually candid account of discovering that his original idea did not have the recurrence to survive [7][3].

On why people should pay for expertise

The founding thesis is that advice given for free is advice given badly. A paid transaction dramatically raises the quality and engagement on both sides: the provider prepares properly, the buyer turns up committed, an effect he says he had not written into either his pitch or his business plan [7]. The pricing objection he expected never materialised. "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" [7]. He frames the whole category as revenue that simply did not exist before: "Die omzet is iets die niet bestond vroeger hè. Ofwel was het gratis ofwel hebben ze het niet gedaan. Dus it's new economy" [7]. The consumer-side pitch is blunt in the same way: if you want to tap someone's expertise, "just pay for it en bespaar de 'zin in een koffietje?'" [3].

On the pivot, and admitting the model was broken

Seven months in he published the diagnosis rather than the spin. "Recurrentie en willingness to pay is het grootste probleem met het initiële idee" [3]. The mechanics of the failure are precise: once a buyer has absorbed years of insight in thirty or sixty minutes for €100, €200 or €300, the customer cycle is over [3]. Worse, the market runs on personal brand, so demand concentrates on a handful of visible names like Maxim Sergeant, Serge Lamoral and Thomas Guenter while everyone else stalls [3]. He notes the gap between public perception and reality directly: people keep asking him how Tinrate is going, "top idee he!", while the recurrence problem sits underneath [3].

He also has a view on how to talk about this. Videos about the pivot performed poorly, and "Mn eerlijke founder stories deden het in het algemeen beter dus here we go" [3], which is why the pivot was narrated in the open rather than announced once it was finished [6][3].

On Tinrate concierge and the B2B answer

The pivot's centrepiece is the piece the team worked on longest: Tinrate concierge, described not as just another agent but as "uw eigen chat gpt" that gives website visitors the right information faster than ever and connects them to the right person inside the organisation [4]. The argument for it is a behavioural one. Nobody browses search results any more, you ask a question and get an answer, so why does every website still run on tabs and contact forms [5]. The promised outcome is the removal of a whole layer of friction: "Byebye websiteforms, hello@ mails en backoffice vertraging" [4].

That leaves three routes to the same goal of sharing knowledge: the tool, where you register and share your Tinrate link with existing clients or your socials and paid calls are automated end to end across planning, billing and payment; the concierge on your own website; and the search, where you check who has an account and book a call with someone holding practical expertise [5]. The distribution logic is now partnership-shaped, with a dedicated Tinrate page built for a specific audience through Tinrate x Dexxter, and an explicit expectation of more cases where Tinrate becomes an extension of an existing business [1].

On marketplace cold starts and monetisation design

He refuses to launch a full marketplace before the supply side can carry it. "Een zoekmachine is maar zo goed als de zoekresultaten die eruit komen" [7], and 1500 experts is not enough to feed demand-side discovery, so the build order is supply-side verticals first [7]. The fee design follows the same sequencing logic: the 5% transaction fee sits with the buyer, not the seller, because the long-term monetisation is a SaaS subscription for sellers, and you cannot charge a seller a subscription while that seller is still bringing their own audience to your platform [7]. His reference case is OnlyFans, originally conceived as a knowledge-sharing and subscription platform where adult content became an accidental vertical that exploded, and whose 50% commission with no real marketplace discovery he reads as a strategic vulnerability a competitor could undercut [7].

On launching, he has no patience for gradualism: "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" [7].

On capital, rejection and why bootstrapping is over

Four Belgian VC funds turned Tinrate down, citing no market validation, non-cutting-edge software and execution risk concentrated in the founder [7]. "Ik heb bij drie of bij vier Belgische fondsen aangeklopt die allemaal zeer enthousiast waren over mijn verhaal en die allemaal hebben bedankt. Heeft dat mij tegengehouden? Neen" [7]. He raised €1.6M from angels instead, largely on the Get Driven track record, and is honest that this validates him rather than the idea, which converts into pressure rather than reassurance [7]. The motivation is openly competitive: "Ik heb heel veel goesting en honger om die mensen binnen vijf jaar te bewijzen van goh, ga toch beter een ticketje gepakt" [7].

The capital argument is not that money buys technology, it is that money buys positioning, marketing and speed in a market where anything relatively new is copied fast [7]. Get Driven, by contrast, was bootstrapped for an unglamorous reason: extra capital would not have accelerated it, because they never had a validated equation where you spend €1 and get €3 back, the way companies with a proven marketing engine do [7].

On choosing an investor and what selling shares is actually for

He sold a large stake to Steve very early, straight out of school with a new product and no business network, on gut feeling and personal click rather than terms: a West-Flemish entrepreneur who backed the founder instead of the spreadsheet [9]. "Hij geloofde in mij en die dacht van oké, ik doe die gast van aan" [9]. What the investor supplied first was reach, not cash: "Netwerk is vaak belangrijker in begin dan middelen", because unless you have hundreds of millions to buy your way in, organic traction runs on ambassadors and connections rather than a marketing budget [9]. The relationship reads as father-and-son, where the handshake counts for more than the contract [9].

He insists founders name their reason for selling equity, because there are three distinct ones: cashing out, raising growth capital, or getting someone next to you on the ride. "Ik heb iemand nodig die met mij mee in de rollercoaster, bij wijze van spreken" [9]. Ownership and control he treats as separable: "Ik denk dat het runnen en aandeelhouder of eigenaar zijn van het bedrijf los van elkaar staan", and conflicts only surface when things go badly [9]. In practice, as a minority shareholder he keeps operational carte blanche plus majority control on certain matters: "Ook al zit ik nu in de minderheid, hij laat mij 100% carte blanche" [9]. The same instinct made him decline an acquisition and partnership approach from a multinational whose structure he was not comfortable with, even knowing they could copy him with fifteen times his budget. The market turned out to be big enough for both [9].

The partial cash-out he defends on psychological grounds. Paying yourself a minimum wage while being worth millions on paper is uncomfortable, and a founder on €1,400 a month worrying about private finances loses focus on the business; de-risking privately is what let him stay aggressive on international growth and negotiate from strength, because he no longer had to sell [9]. The reserve also mattered operationally: when COVID collapsed on-demand revenue to nearly zero, he and Steve personally funded continued development, bringing five developers in-house to rebuild the platform, instead of taking bank debt or selling equity at a depressed price [9].

On expanding abroad, and why software scales further than trust does

Germany was the expensive lesson. Six months living in Berlin and fifty nights in Munich were not enough against complex labour law, language and culture, down to drivers wanting lawyers to review their contracts [7]. The takeaway is that marketplace scaling still needs local reach and local faces even when the software itself scales perfectly [7]. Hence his preference for local co-investors over Belgian capital in new countries: a trust-based service business needs local entrepreneurs with large networks acting as ambassadors to spread the first oil slick of traction [9]. The structural version of the same idea is the concession model at Get Driven, a kapstok model where local managers own their pool of drivers and are paid on the quality and volume they deliver, keeping operational responsibility separate from the financial investors [9].

The same proof-first principle governs how he brings people in. In the ETB Drivers acquisition the incoming founder got no equity upfront: people prove themselves before earning a stake, which is what kept the deal frictionless despite the two companies having been fierce copycat rivals [9].

On how to run a team

His management position is that measuring hours is beside the point. "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" [8]. Get Driven has no clock-in system and no strict leave policy, people work where and when they want, and abuse surfaces quickly through the culture itself [8]. Accountability comes from structure rather than surveillance: weekly and monthly meetings with targets make undone work impossible to hide [8]. "Ik denk eerlijk gezegd dat het in badgen en uit badgen, dat dat niet meer van 2023 is" [8].

Incentives he prefers loud and visible. Get Driven once ran trophy cars as a reward for hitting results, and when a new sales hire, Bastien Ronneau, arrived with a record of twice being the first employee who built a sales organisation past twenty people, and a developer, Yorg Pauwels, insisted he could sell the product alongside his engineering job, Ghysels made the contest official by writing it on the whiteboard [2]. He hires for appetite as much as track record, singling out "veel goesting zelf op pad te gaan" [2].

On work, appetite and the myth of easy entrepreneurship

The energy argument is moral as much as practical. "Ik vind het zo zonde dat je 40 jaar tegen uw goesting zou moeten gaan werken" [8], and too many people work jobs they hate, which shows up directly as much worse performance [8]. His own version is total: even after stepping back from operations he still worked on Get Driven seven days a week [8], and on Tinrate, "nu werk ik veel liever dan dat ik op congé moet gaan, omdat ik gewoon zoveel goesting heb om dat van de grond te krijgen" [7]. "Do what you love, love what you do. Dat is allemaal zo cheesy en whatever, maar het is wel zo" [8].

Against that he sets a Belgian misconception he finds corrosive: that entrepreneurship is easy money. Candidates ask for €200k salaries plus 3% equity without putting in any investment, underestimating that the founder carries the risk and that getting to €500k of annual profit is genuinely rare and genuinely hard [7].

Takeaways

• Design the fee where the incentive is, not where the value sits: Tinrate charges its 5% to the buyer because the seller subscription comes later, and you cannot bill sellers who are still bringing their own audience [7].
• Do not open a marketplace before supply can answer demand, because "een zoekmachine is maar zo goed als de zoekresultaten die eruit komen" [7]; build supply-side verticals first [7].
• Test for recurrence before scaling: one-off expert calls end the customer cycle the moment the insight transfers, and demand concentrates on a few personal brands [3].
• Name your reason for selling equity, cash-out, growth capital, or a partner on the rollercoaster, and expect network to matter more than money early on [9].
• De-risk yourself privately: a founder on €1,400 a month who worries about personal finances loses focus, and a partial cash-out lets you negotiate from strength because you no longer have to sell [9].
• Replace time-tracking with target-tracking; weekly and monthly meetings make undone work visible, and "in badgen en uit badgen" is obsolete [8].
• Assume you will be copied, so budget for positioning, marketing and speed rather than technical defensibility, and drop the soft launch [7].
• Scalable software does not scale trust: foreign expansion in a service business needs local faces and local co-investors as ambassadors [7][9].