Thomas Hysselinckx

The through-line

One question runs under everything: where did the money go. Running his first horeca business he kept hitting the same wall, "Mijn zaak draait goed en toch zat er nooit geld op de rekening. Mijn boekhouder zegt dat ik winst maak en toch zat er nooit geld op de rekening. Wat doe ik verkeerd?" [6]. The fix was mundane, an Excel habit of listing what was coming in against what was going out, and that habit is the seed the whole company grew from [6]. Everything since is an elaboration of it: the product logic that looks for the deepest trough rather than today's balance [4], the ambition to be the global reference for mapping the financial future of a growing kmo [6], the distribution moves that take that logic into other people's software and other markets [1].

The second thread is a willingness to let his own identity be rewritten by whatever the work actually requires. He walked away from a business he had already outgrown and calls it the best decision of his life [6]. He took the CEO title without believing he is the CEO type [6]. He hated agentic development because it took the part of the job he loved, then concluded the craft had moved rather than disappeared [5]. The pattern is consistent: attachment to a role is treated as the thing most likely to be wrong.

On profit versus cash, and what you can actually spend

The dangerous number is the one on the screen. €40.000 on the account makes you feel invincible for a moment, so a €10.000 investment looks obviously fine, "Misschien. Misschien ook niet. Want dat saldo van vandaag heeft nog nooit gehoord van de lonen op het einde van de maand. Van de btw die in september aanklopt. Van die grote factuur die je klant betaalt 'zodra het hem uitkomt'" [4]. Subtracting known liabilities from the balance is a start, but he insists the real risk is not today at all, it sits at the lowest point some months out, "wanneer al die uitgaven besluiten om samen op café te gaan" [4]. So the calculation runs the cashflow forward day by day, finds the deepest trough in the coming months, subtracts the buffer there, and reports what remains as what is safe to spend today without ever dipping below the safety line [4]. The alternative he rejects by name is the default posture of most owners: "het komt wel goed" [4]. His own experience is the proof case, a business that looked profitable to the accountant and was never liquid [6].

On knowing when to quit, and quitting late

He knew after two and a half years that the horeca business was not for him, and ran it for close to seven because of loans and obligations, roughly four years longer than he should have [6]. When he finally stopped, "Ik heb de deur toegetrokken en bij wijze van spreken nooit meer open gedaan en dat was de beste beslissing uit mijn leven" [6]. His reasoning for why the exit worked is not that the problems went away but that problems become surmountable once you are doing work you love [6]. The corollary he holds alongside it is that persistence still matters where belief survives: "Poin n'est besoin d'espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour persévérer... het komt er eigenlijk op neer: zolang dat je gelooft, doe dan door" [6]. The two positions sit together because the test is belief, not sunk cost.

On problems, and why they stop being problems

Entrepreneurship works like progressive overload in weightlifting: you keep adding weight in the form of new problems, and once you have solved one you can carry it permanently [6]. "Als ondernemer zijn er altijd nieuwe problemen op te lossen. Maar van zodra je dat afgetikt hebt, dan kun je die opnieuw dragen, dus het is geen uitdaging meer" [6]. The capacity, not the problem count, is what changes. Failure belongs inside the same frame rather than outside it: "Falen denk ik een noodzakelijk onderdeel van succes is" [6].

On cofounders and why three beats two

He stopped deliberately hunting for a cofounder and posted a business developer vacancy instead; Dylan came in and converted organically from volunteer to payroll to cofounder on the strength of demonstrated enthusiasm rather than a search process [6]. On composition he is blunt that three is much easier than two: with two opposing opinions you deadlock and keep reopening the same discussion, while a third breaks ties, forces clarity on role division, and absorbs bandwidth when everything lands on the founders [6].

On being coachable, and the trap inside it

Being coachable is what got him selected for The Birdhouse, and it is also a trap [6]. Once people sense it, everyone offers unsolicited advice, much of it contradictory, and it is only at that point that you are forced to learn how to find your own way [6]. The same self-assessment runs into his view of his own role: before starting he asked friends whether they saw him as a CEO and they said no, and a Belbin test put him as a 'plant', the creative firestarter rather than the rational decisive CEO type [6]. He carries the role out of responsibility and says he would gladly hand it to someone better suited [6].

On competitors, timing and building on gut feeling

A faster-growing competitor doing the same thing is a David-versus-Goliath position, and the seniority argument is worthless: "Ja maar wij waren eerst — ja maar dat doet er niet meer toe. Vandaag doet ertoe, de situatie zoals vandaag is" [6]. What matters is positioning on how you are different and better now [6]. Growth was very slow, and only after years of talking to many types of entrepreneurs did the team come to understand why they had built what they built on instinct in the first place; parts of the tool have since been rolled back, but now with an articulated rationale rather than a hunch [6]. Market timing did much of the rest: the 2022 crisis put real pressure on cash and made the story land far harder than it did at the start in 2020 [6]. The ambition attached to all of it is explicit, "Ik ben van overtuigd dat wij binnen nu en vijf jaar de mogelijkheid hebben om wereldwijd eigenlijk de referentie te zijn om de financiële toekomst van een groeiende kmo in kaart te brengen" [6], with the near-term steps being presence in Exact's app store and then the Netherlands [1].

On agents, and the craft moving rather than disappearing

His first encounter with agentic development, twelve to fifteen months back, produced hatred, a word he says he does not use lightly [5]. The reason was identity rather than quality: he loves programming, taking a problem apart, thinking logically until it holds, the satisfaction of something working that did not exist before, and the agents took exactly that part [5]. "Ik zat te kijken hoe een machine de code schreef die ik zelf wilde schrijven. Sneller dan ik. Het werkte, maar ik miste iets" [5]. What he did not see at first is that "het ambacht is niet verdwenen, het is verschoven" [5]. He no longer writes the function, but he still reasons about the problem, the structure, and why something has to be one way and not another; only the execution has moved [5]. He stays close to the tooling around it, flagging small utilities like HaptifyClaude, which gives haptic trackpad feedback when Claude Code needs attention or has finished a job [3].

On using the feed to be useful

His public posting is mostly a circulation mechanism rather than a broadcast one: passing on a small tool he thinks other product builders should know about [3], relaying an acquaintance's search for a Plant Manager for a maakindustrie company in the Oudenaarde region [2], and naming Mathias, Roel, Henk and Bas when a milestone lands rather than claiming it [1].

Takeaways

• Judge liquidity at the lowest forward point, not today's balance: project cashflow day by day, find the deepest trough in the coming months, subtract your buffer there, and treat what remains as today's safe spend [4].
• "Winst" on the accountant's report and money on the account are different things, and a simple inflow-versus-outflow planning habit is enough to close the gap [6].
• If you already know the business is not for you, obligations will keep you in it for years longer than is rational; leaving is what makes problems carryable again [6].
• Prefer three cofounders to two: two opposing views deadlock and reopen the same discussion, a third breaks ties and clarifies roles [6].
• Do not run a cofounder search; hire for the role and let the strongest demonstrated enthusiasm convert into partnership [6].
• Coachability wins you a place in a programme and then buries you in contradictory advice, at which point you have to learn to choose for yourself [6].
• "Ja maar wij waren eerst — ja maar dat doet er niet meer toe" [6]: against a faster-growing competitor, argue only from how you are different and better today.
• Agents take the writing, not the thinking: "het ambacht is niet verdwenen, het is verschoven" [5].