Allez Startups

In this episode I spoke with Manu Vanderveeren, co-founder of Spott, an AI native platform that is revolutionising CRM and ATS tooling for agency reciters. 

Founded in Leuven in 2024, Spot went through Y Combinator's winter 2025 batch and has grown fast since commercialising the current version of their product 10 months ago, now at 4.5 million in ARR with a team of over 40 people. They've just closed a 21 million Series A led by Balderton Capital. 

Listen to Manu for tips on how to get into Y-Combinator, how to think big and get results early. Behind the ambitious growth numbers there's real trust between co-founders, and some very human details, like a caring mother. 

In this episode I spoke with Ines Feytons, co-founder of Nascent, a science-based co-founder matchmaking platform spun out of UHasselt. A great episode for anyone currently looking for a co-founder.

Nascent uses an algorithm developed by two professors of entrepreneurship to measure fit between co-founders, going beyond hard skills to look at personality traits and entrepreneurial soft skills like passion and persistence. For €89 and 15 minutes, founders get matched with potential co-founders and a report flagging both the strengths and the friction points to expect.

Ines walked me through the spin-off process from university research to venture, how the matching algorithm actually works, and how Nascent compares to alternatives like Y Combinator's co-founder matching and imec.istart. We also got into the harder stuff: how to know when a co-founder relationship isn't working, and why - especially in a conflict-averse culture like Belgium's - the tough conversations you want to avoid are the ones that matter most.

Summary

In this episode, I spoke with Diederik Syoen, co-founder of Ringtime. Founded in 2025 in Gent, Ringtime uses AI to speed up frontline hiring, screening blue collar candidates at scale via phone and WhatsApp. The AI handles live conversations in 22+ languages, also outside office hours.

The inefficiencies of blue collar recruitment are at a scale that is unthinkable to someone with no context in this sector. Here’s some data to make this concrete:

• During the early stages of Ringtime, Diederik spoke with a recruiter who had qualified 140,000 candidates in a year. Of those candidates, only 3% was placed. 
• Behind those 140,000 candidates qualified, there’s hours and hours of more wasted work. Recruiters have cold targets that go up to 100, 120 calls a day. And 80% of the time they just land on voicemail.

Imagine the scale of time wasted. Imagine the frustration of doing a job that requires so much effort, with such little impact. This is why large recruitment agencies in this industry need to hire thousands of recruiters per year. The average tenure in the role is 1-1.5 years. The data is telling us that humans aren't loving this job at the moment.

Ringtime is fixing all of this.

One of their customers went from a 35% conversion rate to 80% conversion rate. That's more than 2x of all the candidates coming in and it's only after a few weeks of using this tool. 

A recruiter they spoke to said their job is finally starting to be fun again.

They just raised a seed round led by Volta Ventures, also backed by Syndicate One. Keep watching this startup, they are going places!

Listen to the episode to hear:

• Why Ringtime killed deals outside staffing to focus on the blue collar recruitment vertical
• What it’s like to build in a vertical that is new to the founding team 
• How Ringtime is making recruiters’ jobs better, focusing their time on high impact work and removing the boring part, rather than replacing them 
• The future of blue collar recruiting 
• How customers doubled conversion rates in just a few weeks 
• The founder rule they use for hiring early employees
• And more...

This is a quick episode featuring Leen Anthuenis. She's the CEO of SuperNova, an Antwerp-based tech and innovation festival that has become Belgium's most prominent event of its kind — imagine the Belgian Slush or TNW. It takes place every year in March and is an unmissable event for anyone wanting to get a full-immersion into what's happening across Flanders in tech, startups and innovation. You'll get to see live pitches, expert talks, and not to mention exceptional food and drinks! 

This is not a sponsored episode, I genuinely loved this event and wanted to highlight it for benefit of the Allez Startups listeners. 

Summary

In this episode I spoke with Geert van Kerkhoven, CEO and co-founder of Oper Credits, an Antwerp-based startup on a mission to fix Europe's broken mortgage process. Founded in 2019, they raised a Series A of €11 million in 2022 and now count around 40 employees, active across multiple European markets.

Oper Credits sells to banks, not borrowers. Their technology sits behind the scenes, making the mortgage journey faster and smarter for everyone involved. The numbers speak for themselves: 81% faster mortgage decisions and a 90% boost in first-time right scores.

This is Geert's second venture in the mortgate space — he joined the first one as employee #2, back when there was no startup community or ecosystem in Belgium. Besides his role as a founder, he's also an active member of Syndicate One. In the podcast we discuss the difference between building now and building 10 years ago in Belgium.

What I found most compelling in the Oper Credit story was the AI pivot. Geert walked me through how they went from building digital onboarding tools to going all-in on Agentic AI, and why that was the natural next step towards their original vision of real-time mortgage underwriting.

We also talked about building a distributed team across Antwerp, Vienna and Zurich, how European mortgage regulation actually made international expansion easier, and more.

In this episode I spoke with Lode Uytterschaut, Co-Founder and CEO of Start it @KBC — Belgium's largest startup accelerator, with 9 locations in Belgium and 3 abroad, having coached over 3,500 founders since it launched from a single floor of an Art Deco tower in Antwerp.

I cannot stress enough the monumental impact that Start it @KBC has had on the Belgian ecosystem. With no strings attached, no equity and no charges, the incentive to apply is strong, there is nothing for founders to lose and much to gain. Built from nothing, when there was no startup ecosystem in Belgium, it has created a flywheel of startups (eg. Conveo, Aikido, Loop Earplugs) and a thriving community.

What struck me most was how Start it @KBC was built in the margins. When Lode joined KBC as an atypical hire, corporate life left him with more unstructured time than he was used to. He used it to go to events, meet people, and build relationships — which is ultimately how he found his two co-founders. How we use our free time can be a real differentiator for long-term impact. People who are hungry to build and learn do great things in their free time, they use it to push themselves, learn and create.

We also talked about the flywheel effect the Belgian startup ecosystem has reached, the deliberate work Start it @KBC has done on gender inclusion and why it's still hard, what they look for in founders at jury stage, and why scaling a mistake is one of the most common ways startups fail.

Chapters

01:00 From architecture to KBC — an unlikely pivot

05:00 Building in the margins: how the co-founding team came together

12:00 The first six startups and how the program was built from their feedback

20:00 Why Belgium sends more founders through accelerators than the rest of Europe

28:00 Gender inclusion: what works, what's still hard

38:00 Mental health, family and what founders take for granted

48:00 What Start it @KBC looks for: coachable, but not too much

Meet the deeply human startup whose product has been built entirely thanks to AI.

In this episode, I’m joined by Thomas Butstraen, co-founder of Maurice & Nora, the Antwerp-based startup on a mission to become the “Uber for non-medical care.” Maurice & Nora connects seniors and busy families with reliable, vetted students who can help with everyday tasks, from gardening and companionship to after-school childcare and homework support.

They’re tackling one of Europe’s biggest societal challenges: the growing care crisis. But what makes this story even more remarkable is how they’re building it. The entire platform was created using AI coding tools (without a traditional engineering team!) allowing them to move at extraordinary speed.

We talk about:

• The personal moment that sparked the idea
• Why building B2C in Belgium is so hard
• How they turned PR into a growth engine
• Their bold B2B2C strategy, positioning care as an employee benefit
• Winning major recognition within their first year
• What it really means to build a “societal unicorn”
• And the founder reality behind the ambition

This is a conversation about speed, impact, and rethinking how we care for both older and younger generations: powered by AI, but built for humans.

Keep listening to discover how Maurice & Nora plans to change the way Europe thinks about non-medical care.

My vision for this podcast was always for it to be highly practical and operational, not just inspirational. This is why I’m pairing founder interviews with expert advisor interviews, who share knowledge and insights that are relevant to people building in Belgium. 

This episode really delivers. It’s jam packed with practical, local advice, 100% tailored to startup founders building in Belgium. 

Dups is a legal and financial advice firm specialised in startups. Their team, approach and pricing is founder-centric and it’s visible from this interview. 

Check it out to learn: 

• Belgian specific dos and don’s for fundraising and exits
• Common mistakes seen in Belgian startup founders and how to avoid them
• Important things to look out for in the term sheets, specific to Belgium 

And more...

Check out their fundraising guide for a glossary of terms and for a structured, well-written read on the topic. 

In this episode I spoke with Rutger Bevers, founder and CEO of Conversation Starter, a matchmaking platform helping event participants and communities meet the right people and have meaningful 1-on-1 conversations. He's also co-founder of several communities, including Steward Owned and Long Term Society.

Based in Antwerp, founded in 2015, Conversation Starter is a Belgian startup born before the ecosystem had the support network it has now.

I found Rutger inspiring and impressive. I’ve heard people say that “Belgian founders aren’t ambitious enough”, but Rutger is deeply defying this stereotype. He started coding and teaching before he was even legally allowed to start a company. He has unstoppable ambition and high standards and it’s from these extremely high standards, that Conversation Starter was born. He built for Hasselt's first TEDx event, which Rutger co-organised, and the rest is history.

We talked about the tricky balance between working on vs working in your company. Rutger shared how he’s navigating that shift today, hiring his first salesperson, raising new funding, and trying not to get stuck in day-to-day operations.

We also explored why communities are moving away from social media and into smaller, curated spaces.

Resources
Conversation Starter
Steward Owned
imec.istart

Summary

In this episode I spoke with Vincent Declercq, CEO and Co Founder of Dalton, a startup revolutionizing website optimization through AI. Vincent shares his journey from previous ventures to the inception of Dalton, emphasizing the importance of validation and learning from past mistakes. He discusses the appeal of marketing and growth hacking, the impact of competitive sports on his entrepreneurial spirit, and the significance of finding the right co-founders. The conversation delves into Dalton's innovative approach to website performance, including a case study showcasing impressive conversion rate improvements. Vincent also addresses the technical challenges of building the product, market positioning, and future directions, including pricing strategies and customer engagement.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dalton and Its Vision
01:23 The Journey to Dalton's Creation
03:04 Lessons from Previous Ventures
05:34 Vincent's Background and Interest in Marketing
08:37 The Concept of Growth Hacking
10:14 The Impact of Competitive Swimming on Vincent's Career
13:34 Finding Co-Founders and Building the Team
15:51 Product Overview and Case Study of Dexter
21:17 The Technology Behind Dalton
24:31 Challenges and Market Positioning
27:22 Future Directions and Vision for Dalton
30:34 Pricing and Customer Engagement