Overview
Vincent Smedt is co-founder and chief executive of kliq-ai, a role he has held since April 2026. He is based in Antwerp. He has also been a manager at TERYA since March 2023 and a startup mentor at Start it @KBC since January 2020.
Between November 2021 and April 2026 he was entrepreneur in residence at VIXO, and from July 2022 to January 2023 he was a product owner at KPMG Belgium. He advised Voka - Kamer van Koophandel Limburg on its charter for sustainable entrepreneurship from September 2020 to June 2022. He founded HYGINN | reinventing hygiene in May 2018 and remained there until December 2022, co-founded Astrobot in 2016, and founded EDMIRE | circular design in February 2010, staying until July 2022. He began his career as a product design intern at Smart Design - Barcelona in 2008.
Smedt completed a master's in product development at the University of Antwerp in 2008, with an Erasmus period in product design at Politecnico di Milano, followed by postgraduate study in corporate identity strategy and management at Elisava School of Design and Engineering. He later studied business sustainability management at the University of Cambridge and finance at Syntra Antwerpen en Vlaams Brabant. His stated areas of expertise include new business ventures, product launch, product innovation, business strategy and product development.
Career history
In the news
- Part ✋ — How do you count something that isn't there? We sat down with sales reps from one of Belgium's most iconic breweries to understand how they actually track shelf evolution. One answer stopped me mid-sentence. "How many facings does this product have on the shelf?" "Five." "And is the product actually on the shelf right now?" "...Not necessarily." Read that again. A facing count, reported with a straight face, for a product that might not physically be there. Not because anyone's cutting corners. Because "facings" get logged
- Part ☘️ -- STOP the manual inputs My last post I promised "to tell you more on what we're building." Well, here it is. In every demo, pitch, and pilot conversation over the past weeks, the same moment keeps happening. When I start explaining what KLIQ AI does, before I finish, someone from the customer's field team interrupts: "𝘞𝘢𝘪𝘵, 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨?" That question taught me more about enterprise adoption than any book ever did. The problem in most companies isn't
- Part 🥫 — Why we choose a fight over the aisle "Unlimited possibilities" sounds great until you have to actually build something. That is what we are dealing with at KLIQ AI right now. So here's the first honest answer to where we're starting: CPG 🛒 Not because it's glamorous, but because there is competition. Yes, competition is the prior reason of choice for Consumer Goods, because it makes our lives 'easier'. See, prospects already know the technology, we just have to explain them how we can deliver the same quality as the
- 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 ✌️ — 𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐬 Taking a fresh start is not easy. It literally means throwing all your accustomed comfort over board, tighten your seatbelt and take a mindset that this ride will take a very long time. Luckily there are some savings and some very brave people that are convinced we could make this work. But yes, this is the uncomfortable feeling of taking a rollercoaster for the first, tenth or thousandth time🎢 with high highs and low lows, is completely back on a daily basis.
- 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 1️⃣ — 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 So, FERNANDO built a computer vision pipeline to identify tree species, count them, calculate the trunk width, the total height, canopy width, ... We tested this extensively in Belgium, Spain, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, receiving up to ~40k photos in a single day. Based on these experiences, and many discussions with experts and potential customers, we were convinced that what we have built has a lot of value
- In 2023 we started building TERYA.co with a bigger and bolder idea than most people know: building a financial product backed by nature itself. We went very deep into multiple rabbit holes and we solved the hardest problems and overcame very high barriers, yet, we decided to put that story on hold for 2 reasons: 1️⃣ Climate change has lost a lot of traction. (It's still growing under the surface, and I'm convinced it will reappear very soon bigger and brighter) and 2️⃣ Blockchain is in a deep winter and thus also lost a lot of
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