Belgium can be a good place to start and grow a business for several reasons: (1) it provides many resources and support for startups including government subsidies, innovation centers, and business angels; (2) it is easier to stand out with unique business ideas compared to larger countries; and (3) Belgium has a talented workforce with many highly educated entrepreneurs and world-class universities that collaborate with industry.
2. My credentials
I am not a Belgian (I am American)
But I have built 10 companies in 6 countries (UK,
Belgium, USA, Poland, Morocco, Czech Republic)
Director of the Founder Institute Brussels, 5 years
teaching ( KU Leuven and Solvay)
3. The 30 second message…
Belgium is a lot better place to start/grow a
business than you would think…
There are people, resources and support, but if you
are successful you will probably need to go outside
Belgium to get “real” funding
8. Start-up support
• Administrative : 3-4 days
• A wealth of gov’t subsidies
– Wallonia
– Flanders
– Brussels
– Europe
• Business angels (as good as any country)
• VC (sort of)
• More orgs to help start-up than start-ups
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13. What you can expect
From government sources:
• Feasibility studies: up to 75%
• Innovation center support: 50%
• Internationalization: 40-60%
Angel investors:
About the same as the rest of the world
(but somewhat easier due to early matching
investments)
15. • 16 high-level universities. Among them, seven are listed
top 100 World Universities.
• The highest proportion of highly-educated entrepreneurs
of any EC country
(http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/files/survey/static2008/belgium_static_en.pdf )
• Overall high capacity to innovate (10th) according to the
Global Competitiveness Report 2013 - 2014.
• University-industry collaboration is ranked 6th worldwide
17. • 3 markets / 3 places to test
• Risk adverse
“ if you can sell it in Belgium you can sell it
anywhere”
• Center of the action
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18. 18
80% of Europe’s purchasing power lies within a radius of 500
miles (± 800 km) from Brussels
19. More international organisations are located in Brussels than Washington D.C., along with
about 120 international government organisations, 181 embassies, over 5,000 diplomats
and 1,000 lobby groups.
21. • Belgium is the most globalized country in the world.
• Exports amount to more than 80% of national GDP
• Belgium is the 10th largest exporting country in the world.
• Belgium ranks 5th in the their European Attractiveness
Survey for new investment projects
Source: Ernst and Young
28. Watch outs …
• Finding people ready to take the risk
• Scaling: Belgium isn’t really a market
• Multi-lingual/ multi-administration complexity
• An eco-system (make sure you’re challenged)
• Round 2 funding
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29. Moving forwards
Some of you may have noticed, only 7 reasons
were listed in this presentation…
Now we have an eighth…
30. Brussels will be the place
for the world premiere of
scaleupweekend
June 12-14
31. Scaling up and building new businesses is hard.
The Startup Weekends have proven how much
people can get done in 54 hours.
Using a similar formula, we will focus on how to
expand on existing ideas, how to communicate
better, how to sell more effectively, and how to
set up systems for scaling a business.
32. Our Promise
“Bring in a good idea and
you’ll leave with a better
business!”
Learn more
www.scaleupweekend.co
m
World Premiere Event. Brussels June 12-15