From startups to scaleups

The Belgian tech startup ecosystem (or at least the Flemish part) is maturing more and more. While we had adhoc Webmissions to get inspired abroad (mostly in Silicon Valley) a bit more than only five years ago, we now have governments and big corporates creating special programs and cooperate to support startups (and regular SMBs as well). Belgian government agencies are starting to #buyfromstartups (pioneered by VDAB and now improved upon by Digipolis), while big corporates such as KBC and Telenet are working together with their Start it @kbc and Kickstart programs.

The question of course is: is the ecosystem really maturing because corporates are not only launching their own supportive programs but also starting to consolidate their efforts by working together or is it maturing because some of "our" startups are transitioning to scaleups?

Two weeks ago, belgian startup Showpad raised 50 million dollars in their series C round. Yesterday Unizo, UCM and Graydon announced that 2015 saw the highest number of newly founded startups in Belgium (82.571 new businesses). Of the 81.220  businesses started in 2011 70% are still alive. So it's safe to expect at least a few of those to reach a series C funding.

It's also safe to expect to see the supporting organizations pivot along: they no longer focus on just startups but now on scaleups as well. Even companies like Microsoft are doing this. After all, scaleups have found product-market fit while startups are still looking for it.

Nevertheless, startups will remain important: as a society we constantly need to innovate and entrepreneurs are the prime actors in the field of innovation. Their only problem is they are resource constrained, be it in time, talent or good old cold cash. It takes pure perseverence to ignore these constraints and get from stupidly simple yet genius idea to product-market fit.

With StartupBus we want to give you a small hint of what founding a startup is about: during a three day road trip on a bus with other hackers, designers & hustlers we want you all to conceive, build and launch new startups while competing against other buses from all over the continent. We focus on having you

1. create a nice pitch,
2. an awesome product and
3. getting traction for that awesome product

in just a mere 72 hours.

After those 72 hours, all the participating buses (we've got buses from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK) meet at Corda INCubator in Hasselt for demo day (Monday 5 September 2016). Of all the demos at Corda INCubator, a jury will choose 10 startups that can pitch during the StartupBus finals at Pirate Summit in Cologne.

So if you're stuck in a boring job but you've got an awesome idea that has the potential to change the world or make our lives easier, or if you're an epic hacker that knows how to build a spaceship that can do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs, or if you're an amazing UX designer then definitely check out https://europe.startupbus.com for more and reach out to me to get an invite code!