Maxim Sergeant

The through-line

Everything Maxim Sergeant says comes back to two convictions that reinforce each other. The first is that outcomes are chosen rather than allotted: "Alles is mindset. Je bepaalt zelf je succes, niet lot, niet geluk, gij zelf" [3], and its operating motto, "Gaat niet, bestaat niet" [3][4][5]. The second is that a founder's job is to enlarge the pie rather than to guard a percentage of it, which is why he will trade equity, merge with rivals and borrow against a target's own cash flow without much anguish: "Ik heb liever een kleine stuk van een taart die 300 miljoen euro waard is dan 100 procent van een taart die 1 miljoen euro waard is" [3]. Consolidation is the mechanism that connects the two. He believes every sector eventually gets rolled up and that the only real choice is whether you initiate it: "Het is eten of gegeten worden" [2].

What has shifted is the sophistication of the guardrails. The early stories are about nerve, the €400 bank balance, the bluff-poker ultimatum, the moped [3][4][5]. The later material is about protecting yourself from the consequences of that nerve: verifying investors before you take their money, insisting the upfront payment alone must be enough, refusing to sign clauses on the assumption they will never be enforced, and treating the shareholder relationship as binding for years [1][2].

On "gaat niet, bestaat niet"

The mindset material is the most repeated and the least negotiable. He describes entrepreneurship as "geen sprint. Dat is een aaneenschakeling van marathons" [3], insists giving up "staat niet in mijn woordenboek" [4], and frames problem-solving as a wiring difference: "Mensen denken allemaal in een probleem, ik denk alleen maar in een oplossing en opportuniteit" [3]. He is explicit that manifesting is worthless without deeds behind it: visualise the goal, then stack your daily actions and seconds against it [3]. And he is blunt about the personality cost, arguing that every top entrepreneur, like every top politician, has a screw loose: "Elke ondernemer heeft een vleugje narcisme" [3], a degree of radical self-belief that is necessary to take the required risks as long as it does not tip over. His own temperament he describes as "Ik ben meer alles of niks: quit your job, start tomorrow" [3] and "Ik heb een enorme rusteloosheid. Ik kan heel slecht kalm zijn" [3], with no nostalgia for comfort: "Steek mij morgen terug voor een jaar in een caravan, ik doe direct hè" [2].

The counterweight to the self-belief is his sense that most founders have too little of it. "Ik vind dat veel ondernemers zichzelf onderschatten" [5], he says, and he prices that conviction: "Voor mij is elk bedrijf minstens 1 miljoen euro waard. Gewoon al het idee, de creativiteit, de wilskracht om het te doen" [4]. The crisis story is the mindset in operational form. Three days from payroll with €400 on the account, he converted his entire sales pipeline with a pay-ten-months-get-twelve prepay promotion and had more than €25,000 in the bank inside three days, the point being that panic does not fix a company and sprinting does [3].

On owning a smaller slice of a bigger pie

He is unsentimental about dilution. "Ik heb veel liever 10% in een bedrijf dat 200 miljoen waard is, hè, dat is mijn stuk 20 miljoen waard, dan dat ik het 50% heb in een bedrijf van 5 miljoen" [2]. His Order Billy stake is now roughly three times smaller than at the start and he considers that entirely acceptable so long as the total value keeps compounding [2]. The same logic governed the mergers with competitors: combining Dorst, Order Billy and Mobile Menu ended triple spending on the same software and the same prospects, leaving one tech stack and three programmers instead of ten, but it only works if you put your ego away [3].

Money itself he treats as a by-product. "Geld mag nooit het doel zijn op zich. Geld is een resultaat van de toevoegwaarde dat creëert" [2]. That is consistent with how he financed the early years: no salary from 18 to 22 while living with his mother, every euro reinvested, a new hire with every chunk of extra revenue [3].

On founder-led sales

Nobody sells the product as convincingly as the person who built it, and only once the founder has cracked the sales process should salespeople be added [3]. "Ik heb mijn eerste 100 bakkers binnengehaald op mijn schamel brommer en die schamel brommer staat nu altijd bij mij op de bureau als museumstuk" [4][3]. The pitch itself was research, not charm: he had worked out that the average bakery customer aged eleven months per year, meaning almost no rejuvenation of the customer base, and sold digitisation as a survival argument [4]. He also insists on selling before the product is done, co-creating with paying pilot customers whose feedback and money fund the real v1, rather than polishing in private [3].

Founder selling never stops, it only changes altitude, moving from end customers to resellers, distributors and acquisition targets met at trade fairs across Europe [2]. He also thinks commercial weight is chronically underestimated: half of the six-person team that opened the Netherlands was sales, and underinvesting in sales later was a mistake he made himself [5]. Alongside him, De Snackcentrale's approach made the same point from another angle, staffing sales with students paid by the hour because frituren are only open part of the day, which reached more than 1,000 Belgian frituren with no marketing budget [2].

On buy-and-build

"Ik geloof zo hard in groeien door overnames" [5]. The argument starts with the market: every industry will see a roll-up, so be its initiator or be outcompeted by whoever starts consolidating first [2]. Six acquisitions later, Order Billy grows 47% a year in a sector that grows 10 to 15% [2], and the stated ambition is European: "Ik wil de markt consolideren in Europa. Ik wil alle QR ordering en kiosk ordering bedrijven in de hospitality markt samenvoegen" [4].

He buys for three reasons, customer portfolio, team and product, and the price he will pay scales with how many of the three apply [2]. Valuation should be judged purely on the multiple against EBITDA or recurring revenue; get the multiple right and investors and banks follow regardless of the absolute size of the deal [2]. The arithmetic that motivates all of it is multiple arbitrage: merge five companies at €300k EBITDA each and the combined business is valued on a far higher multiple, a difference in personal exit proceeds that "kan een verschil van factor 20 zijn: uw bedrijf verkopen en bij wijze van spreken een half miljoen op uw rekening hebben of 10 miljoen op uw rekening hebben" [5]. In software the synergies arrive almost immediately: migrate acquired customers onto one stack, shut the old one down, cut hosting and developer cost, spread technology cost over many more customers [5]. Buying an underpricing competitor also lets you raise its customers to your market-conform price, €100 to €120, a 20% increase that funds the loan repayment [2]. The financing point he thinks founders get most wrong: "Gij moet dat bedrijf niet kopen, uw bedrijf kan dat bedrijf kopen" [5], with typically 60 to 70% externally financed and the rest split between upfront cash, earn-outs and vendor loans [5]. In this financing debate, a 12-month grace period on capital repayments is treated as crucial, because integration and price increases only produce scale advantages after the first year [2]. Banks will lend into it, and lenders such as KBC's Innovation Banking unit will extend credit to loss-making startups [2]; KBC financed his first Dutch acquisition 100% without personal guarantee [4].

Cross-border, acquisition is mostly a risk removal tool. Entering a foreign market as an outsider means competing without knowing the local rules, while buying a local competitor removes roughly 90% of the risk and hands you local people [5]. His own version at 21 was blufpoker with the money not yet on the account: "Ofwel koop ik u, ofwel ga ik de markt zelf betreden, maar ga ik vooral targetten op uw klanten" [5], with the goal of "Ik ga hier groen in Nederland, ik ga in één handtekening marktleider worden in Nederland" [5]. The two disciplines afterwards are integration and people. Never migrate a customer to a system where they lose functionality; migrate only when they gain features, because churn destroys the value you just bought [2]. And the acquired founders are part of the prize: Order Billy's leadership team is now made up of ex-competitor founders, David, Raf, Louis and the CTO, a group you could never assemble on the open labour market [2].

On investors, smart money and inverse due diligence

His most insistent fundraising message is that founders should investigate investors as hard as investors investigate them. Do inverse due diligence: call the other portfolio companies and check whether the smart money claims are real, and if they are not, refuse to give a valuation discount for supposed added value [1][2]. He thinks the promise of advice and networks is often bait to win the deal, after which the investor disappears once the money is wired [2]. The rule he states plainly: "Nooit geld aanvaarden van iemand die er niet vertrouwt. Dat is hetzelfde als kind. Geen snoepje aanvaarden van een rare meneer" [2]. Where added value is genuinely promised, treat it contractually: if a business angel offers introductions to large customers in exchange for a lower valuation, those introductions are a deliverable that must actually be delivered [5].

He prefers family offices to VCs, because they invest their own money on long horizons and remain entrepreneurs, while funds have to exit within five to seven years for their LPs and the collaboration can feel hostile and numbers-driven [4]. He also thinks refusal is negotiable. After a family office said no three times, he demanded lunch with the patriarch: "Ik wil dat je aan uw papa vraagt wanneer dat hij volgende week met mij kan gaan lunchen. Ik ga hem zelf overtuigen" [4], using an existing yes from two business angels to create FOMO and defend his valuation [4]. On governance he is equally direct, arguing that pushing back against investors who behave as though it is permanently an investor's market earns respect, and that most professional funds appreciate a founder who holds the line [1]. The underlying stance: "Het is uw bedrijf en ge hebt maar een minderheid van de aandelen verkocht om uw idee, uw passie groter te kunnen maken. En zij mogen blij zijn dat ze erin mogen zitten" [1]. Loyalty compounds in the other direction too. Repaying everyone from the first venture, investors, PMV and the bank, made the second raise far easier [4]. He now declines direct angel tickets because he cannot give founders enough time, investing through funds and structures such as Pitchdrive so no startup depends on him alone [4].

On selling a company

He builds for the exit from day one. At incorporation of a new company he deposits two notes with the notary: the minimum he would ever accept for a 100% exit, and three names of likely acquirers, so the company can be shaped to appeal to those buyers [3]. He also thinks founders wear blinders, considering only buyers inside their own sector; he dreamed of Amazon or private equity and never once considered an ingredients player until Puratos called [5]. The strategic fit turned out to be exact, spotted by an analyst who noticed all of Puratos' A-clients were Bakeronline bakers, so more digital bakery sales meant more ingredient sales [4], and the alignment was visible in the decks: "Mijn laatste slide was 'I want to help the artisan baker to grow their business'... en de eerste slide van Puratos was 'With Puratos we want to help the artisan baker to grow their business'. Ik dacht: is mijn computer gehackt of zo?" [5]. He was 18 when he started and 23 at the time of the deal [1], and he is clear about what it bought him: "Het is dankzij die transactie dat ik de financiële vrijheid heb gekregen en niet meer wakker lig over geld" [4].

The deal mechanics he treats as rules. The upfront payment must already feel sufficient on the day of signing, with the earnout counted as a bonus; if part one is not enough on its own, do not do the deal [1]. Waiting too long can mean missing the window entirely, since a buyer will build or buy something else, and if someone appears at a market-conform valuation he rarely hesitates [1]. And the terms should be ones you can live with: "Ge moet gewoon uw eigen in de spiegel kunnen blijven kijken en er geen clausules in fietsen om een ander te naaien" [1]. Never sign on the theory that a counterparty could do something but never will, because the person you trust changes jobs; his key contact at Puratos, the reason he chose them, left after three years [1]. The relationship that follows is long: "Dat is bijna gelijk trouwen hè. Het moment dat die getekend wordt zit ge wel gebonden mee aan elkaar" [1].

On corporate venturing

His corporate venturing lessons are specific and mostly about not being the underdog. Define crystal-clear roles, responsibilities and commitments between scale-up and corporate from day one, so it is explicit that Bakeronline owned the product while Puratos delivered its 2,000-strong global sales force and market knowledge [5]. Set KPIs and OKRs for both shareholders, not only for the startup, and dare to challenge the corporate on its deliverables, because as the minority founder you are otherwise outmatched by a billion-euro company with 10,000 employees [5]. The reason this matters is the distribution assumption that failed: "Een ingrediëntenverkoper is geen software verkoper" [1]. The financial plan looked conservative at one bakery per salesperson per month, implying 24,000 new customers a year, and the salesforce never sold it [1].

On integration he holds both sides of the tension. A corporate acquirer should keep a scale-up as a separate speedboat during hypergrowth and only integrate fully once growth flattens into the late majority of the adoption curve [4]. Judged against his own case, though, he thinks he stayed an island too long and should have integrated faster, capturing the group's benefits while remaining the fast speedboat and avoiding the corporate burdens [5]. What did work was cultural restraint on the buyer's side: "Ik ben wel heel content met hoe dat zij mij nooit hebben gepuratoriseerd. Zij hebben hun cultuur nooit opgedrongen bij ons" [1].

On timing the market and picking the niche

Being early is a real risk, not a badge. Between 2012 and 2016 Bakeronline grew far too slowly because bakers and consumers were not ready: "Als ik dat opnieuw zou mogen doen, dan zou ik vier jaar later beginnen. Ik was veel te vroeg in de markt" [4]. He applied the lesson directly to Dorst, deliberately holding back and running small MVP pilots from 2016 to 2019, including a QR-only summer bar with 200 tables, until the market was ready [4]. Before founding anything he validates three things: is the addressable market big enough, is the problem big enough, and what is the willingness to pay [3]. His preference is a dominant position in a narrow market, 30 to 40% of a niche over 5% of a giant one [3].

The internationalisation verdict follows the same depth-over-breadth instinct. Given the chance again he would operate in roughly 10 countries instead of 23, and be bigger in each [3][4]. He would skip Wallonia, culturally different, with lower willingness to pay and closer to northern France, and go to the Netherlands first, because expanding into French-speaking Belgium meant dual-language branding, customer success and invoicing for a worse economic return than a same-language market [4][5].

On building a team around strengths

He works with a natural, vulnerable and developable strengths framework, and the part he stresses is that some weaknesses genuinely cannot be developed and should not be: hire someone whose natural strength it is instead, and build every employee's career path around their strengths at each evaluation [3]. Co-founders should have strengths that overlap only partially with yours, after which you hire into the zones where both of you are weak, which he sums up as recruiting on your vulnerable strength [2]. In every evaluation he asks the same question, "if you were CEO, what would you do differently?", and a top developer once answered with brutally accurate firing and reorganisation advice, half of which he implemented [3].

He also draws a hard line on where entrepreneurial risk sits. "Ik ben een ondernemer en ik ben degene die het risico wil nemen. Mensen die kiezen bij mij te werken, die kiezen niet om risico te nemen, anders waren ze ondernemer geworden" [4]. Despite coming close to bankruptcy several times, he never paid wages a day late [4]. The same instinct for clean incentives appeared in the Studio 100 licensing negotiations discussed alongside him, deliberately kept away from the founder who would win on both sides of the deal, so the licence fee stayed market-conform [2].

On pricing and not earning off your customer

He rejected the commission model used by Deliveroo and Takeaway and charged a flat fee of around €100 per shop per month plus transaction costs [4]. The reasoning is a values statement about where margin belongs: "Ik wil niet op kap van mijn klant geld verdienen. Wij zorgen voor goede technologie en als zij daarmee een half miljoen euro per jaar aan online sales doen, dan zijn de verdiensten niet de mijne" [4].

On time, and honest rooms

He manages his calendar by weighing the day's 86,400 seconds, skipping internal meetings where his marginal impact is low and spending the time on strategic growth questions instead [3], because "Ik wil vooral creëren en werken aan mijn bedrijf in plaats van werken in mijn bedrijf" [3]. He values Netwerk Ondernemen for the same reason he distrusts most networking: it is the only Belgian entrepreneur network with zero commercial incentive, which is what makes it possible for a founder to admit honestly that things are going badly rather than performing fake it till you make it [3].

Takeaways

• Do inverse due diligence on any investor: call their portfolio founders to test the smart money claim, and give no valuation discount for added value that has not been verified [1][2].
• Structure a sale so the upfront payment alone is enough on signing day, and treat the earnout purely as a bonus; if part one is insufficient, walk [1].
• Never sign a clause on the assumption it will never be used, because your trusted contact can leave, as his key contact at Puratos did after three years [1].
• Acquire for customer portfolio, team or product, price the deal on the multiple against EBITDA or recurring revenue, and remember that the company buys the company: 60 to 70% is typically externally financed [2][5].
• After an acquisition, only migrate customers to a system where they gain functionality, and use the freedom to raise underpriced customers to market rates, for example €100 to €120, to service the debt [2].
• Sell the MVP before it is finished and close the first customers yourself; he signed his first 100 bakers on a moped, and founder selling never stops, it just moves up to resellers, distributors and acquisition targets [3][4][2].
• At incorporation, deposit two notes with the notary: the minimum acceptable price for a 100% exit and three likely acquirers, then build toward them [3].
• Validate market size, problem size and willingness to pay before founding, and prefer 30 to 40% of a niche over 5% of a giant market, in roughly 10 countries rather than 23 [3][4].
• Being too early is a real failure mode: he would start Bakeronline four years later, and deliberately piloted Dorst quietly from 2016 to 2019 until the market was ready [4].
• Hire against the weaknesses you and your co-founder share, build career paths on natural strengths, and ask every employee what they would do differently as CEO [2][3].