Allez Startups

Summary
In this episode, I spoke with Margot Wuillaume, co-founder and CEO of eBloom, an HR tech startup. The core product is employee engagement software but they've expanded their offering to provide a broader suite of digital HR tools. 
I’ve tried several different tools in this space as a Head of People I can honestly say that I don’t think there’s another tool on the market that’s more customer centric than eBloom. 
We talk about many things in this episode, the two stand-out topics for me were eBloom’s contrarian approach to building a product in a crowded market and their journey fundraising in the early stages. Margot shares how they managed to close their first round in just 2 weeks.
We talk about many other things including hiring, finding customers, the help they received as a Brussels-based startup from local organisations. 

Chapters

02:07 Introduction to Margot and eBloom
04:10 EBloom’s origin story
05:32 Building a product in a crowded market space
09:30 Launching during covid and finding their first customers 
12:03 eBloom’s first hire
13:50 The power of meeting in person 
15:53 Building a company culture that optimises for employee happiness
18:75 How a Master’s in Entrepreneurship became eBloom’s launchpad 
20:06 The origins of Margot’s entrepreneurial itch
22:18 Writing a book about management 
24:29 eBloom’s fundraising journey 
28:35 eBloom’s key metrics that matter
31:32 The Belgian entrepreneurial support network

Link to Margot's book
You can buy a copy here

Brussels organisations mentioned in the episode
StartLab
Réseau Entreprendre
HubBrussels 

What is Allez Startups?

Behind-the-scenes interviews with Belgium’s startup founders, investors and local experts.

I’m Claudia, a Talent and People advisor for startups and a former founder. When I moved to Belgium in 2022, I explored the local startup scene. It seemed small, fragmented, full of complexities and hurdles.

Digging deeper, I realised Belgium is full of bold founders, scaling startups and an ecosystem that’s on the rise.

But most of its stories remain untold, or only shared in local networks.

This podcast aims to change that.

I’m pulling back the curtain to spotlight Belgium’s startup founders, investors and local experts. They’ll share real, personal stories about what happens behind-the-scenes, the knowledge they built and lessons learnt along the way.

Expect local inspiration and hands-on knowledge, in English, across regional barriers — so we can all learn from others' journeys.

Claudia Colvin:

Belgium is full of bold founders and scaling start ups with an ecosystem that's on the rise. But most of its stories remain untold or only shared in local networks. Welcome to Alist Startups, the podcast that aims to change that. I'm Claudia, your host, and I'm pulling back the curtain to spotlight Belgium's startup founders, investors, experts. You'll get local inspiration and hands on advice in English across regional barriers so we can all learn from each other's journeys.

Claudia Colvin:

In this episode, I spoke with Margot Wion, cofounder and CEO of e bloom, an HR tech startup. E bloom originally started as employee engagement software, which they still provide, but they've since expanded their offering to provide a broader suite of digital HR tools and solutions. I've been following e bloom's journey several years actually, and it's one of those Belgian startups that I truly believe deserves more credit and recognition, not just in Belgium, but within the international HR tech space. And I say this because in my role as head of people, I've been the person using employee engagement software, reading employee feedback, actioning it. And this means I've tried several different tools in this space.

Claudia Colvin:

And I can honestly say, I don't think there's another tool on the market that's more customer centric than eBloom. They have a 91% adoption rate, which proves this. 91% is way above industry average. Normally, you'd be looking at between 65 to 85% adoption rate. Adoption rate means the number of employees actually using the tool.

Claudia Colvin:

We talk about many things in this episode. The two topics that stood out for me were eBloom's contrarian approach to building a product in a crowded market, which is where they're operating in, and their journey fundraising in the early stages, how they managed to close their first round in just two weeks. We talk about many other things, including hiring, finding customers, the help they received as a Brussels based startup from local organizations. Here's the conversation with Marco. And by the way, congratulations to Iblum for winning bronze in the SAS category of the Belgian startup awards.

Claudia Colvin:

I'm joined today by Margot Young. Thank you so much for joining. How are you?

Margot Wuillaume:

Really good. And you?

Claudia Colvin:

I'm good. Excited to talk to you. So Margot is the CEO and one of three co founders of eBloom, founded in 2019 a team of nine, including the three co founders. And I can see you're hiring. I saw five open roles on your careers page.

Claudia Colvin:

So exciting times.

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, we actually now we are 10 since Monday. Congratulations.

Claudia Colvin:

So Margot, what is eBloom?

Margot Wuillaume:

EBloom is a suite of HR tools to help companies connect better with how their team feels. Our mission is to help companies to create engaging and thriving workplaces.

Claudia Colvin:

And what are some of the core features around this?

Margot Wuillaume:

So, have a feedback tool that enables to collect anonymous and continuous feedback from people, and we have a real time dashboard for the managers and HR. We also promote everything about participative management. So, we have a collaborative area where people can share ideas and stuff. In Fresh News, we just launched a new talent development module to track OKRs, to assess skills, to understand ambitions and also to support professional growth through training plans.

Claudia Colvin:

And what's your role? What are the things that you take care of?

Margot Wuillaume:

I'm a bit I have multiple hats. So, main role is all about client success. So, I really support the client in the usage of the tool and help them to take the most value of the tool. Also, I'm in charge of the marketing. Now we are a team, so I'm not alone for that, but everything about communication, visibility, and the project management as well.

Margot Wuillaume:

So really to understand the key feature we should prioritize and to help design that. And yeah, a bit of the overall governance of the And

Claudia Colvin:

what do your co founders take care of? Quite often you see a dual co founder set up rather than three. So I'm curious to know what the two co founders are doing and how you sort of split the work between you.

Margot Wuillaume:

Sure. So, there is Marco. Marco is the CTO. Basically, he's taking care of all the developments on the tour, so crucial role. And we also have Jasper, who's in charge of the sales aspect.

Claudia Colvin:

Okay, perfect. Let's start from the beginning. How did you get the idea?

Margot Wuillaume:

We were students and we came across some shocking stats on Well-being at Work. It's from Gallup. Only 11% of people feel engaged in their jobs, so really low. And at the moment, we were doing a master in entrepreneurship and we decided to write our thesis on a startup ID to tackle this issue. That was the

Claudia Colvin:

Very interesting. And this 11%, is that in a Belgian

Margot Wuillaume:

Yes, that's Belgian statistic. But when you look, like France, it's even lower and worldwide it's 21, so it's still

Claudia Colvin:

a lot. So, from what you just said, it sounds like you already had your co founders from university, right?

Margot Wuillaume:

I met Jasper during the Master's programme, We worked on the thesis together. When we graduated, we felt like it was just the beginning for us. So, we launched the company and we started looking for third teammates with development skills. Actually, I knew Marco through mutual friends and he joined the adventure.

Claudia Colvin:

Quite often people wonder how do you find the first teammates and it's almost always through connections.

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, most of the time and university for Jasper.

Claudia Colvin:

What I find really interesting about eBloom is that at the time you launched the tool, so 2019, this was already a market space with quite big players and competitors, for example, Pecon, Culture Amps. What was your USP when you came to the market, your unique selling point and how did you feel about sort of entering this market space with the already big players present?

Margot Wuillaume:

Actually, we haven't really felt massive competition pressure. An important info is that the employee engagement software is really booming, so it's expected to quadruple in this decade. But when we launched six years ago, we were really not facing that much competition. I think it was 8% of the companies we met were already newer solutions or newer competitors, but for most of companies, we were really the innovation. Started we actually, we really haven't looked that much at competition.

Margot Wuillaume:

It looks like a bit unintuitive, but we focused on the clients from day one. We didn't start coding right away. We didn't start analyzing all the competition. We spent months meeting HR directors and CEOs to deeply understand the roots of disengagement. We asked like, yeah, what's going on?

Margot Wuillaume:

What would be the ideal solution? And we let them provide us with the solution. Then we understood something Peter Drucker once said, the most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said. Basically, what companies need is a better way to connect with how the people feel.

Claudia Colvin:

Okay, so that's interesting. You were talking about how you spent a lot of time really listening to customers and customer needs. You were mentioning that only 8% were already using some kind of engagement tool. Did you get any information about the ones who weren't using it? Is it because they hadn't thought about the existence of a digital solution or because they had tried maybe something and they just didn't feel that it was right for them?

Margot Wuillaume:

Actually, most of them never ever tried anything. When we started, most companies actually were still doing the annual satisfaction survey, like the 120 questions once a year. Once a year was actually for the best, but for more companies, it was once every two or three or five years. So they really looked at our solution as an innovation, like how come you ask questions every month or even every week? But from them, we've seen that the frequency of connecting and asking how people feel has only increased over time.

Claudia Colvin:

I think a lesson to learn here is the fact of not being scared if there are already existing solutions out there and that you are able to find your space in the market. Do you think there's maybe an element of language around that, where perhaps tools like Pecorn or Culture Amp were maybe only available in English?

Margot Wuillaume:

Could be. The first thing is that it's good that there is competition. I would be scared if we had no competition because where there is competition, there is a market. So, that's a positive point. But the advice would be not to focus too much on them.

Margot Wuillaume:

For me, I just wanted to invest 100% of my energy on our tool, not looking at the rest. I think we've been quite creative and innovative in the way we designed it because we were only focused on our client and not on the competition. And the language could be as well more the proximity, I mean, we differentiate ourselves with the proximity we have with our clients. That was surely an advantage because, yeah, for a company, they are really happy to work with a Belgian startup next door and that we can really we develop, thanks to their feedback, so we took them into consideration in our development, and you don't have this impact when you work with more bigger companies in America, for Yeah,

Claudia Colvin:

of course. Who was your first client and how did you land them?

Margot Wuillaume:

It was back in the COVID days. So, as you said, we launched eBloom in the late twenty nineteen, and then COVID hit. And so, at first, we were a bit scared, a bit worried of the situation, but we quickly realized that actually it was an opportunity because a company never needed us more than during this lockdown period. So, we built our really basic first basic MVP that enabled people to answer one anonymous question per day on how they were feeling during lockdown. This was for free.

Margot Wuillaume:

Everything we asked for was feedback. And actually one of these free testers became our first paying client.

Claudia Colvin:

Very cool. And how did you convince people to test with you? How did they come your way? Was it through university network or did you kind of go out and hustle and cold contact people?

Margot Wuillaume:

First, it was university contact. So basically, we looked in LinkedIn at all our connections and friends working in companies that would fit with our tool. And we asked them to connect us with their HR and the first client we had was this way. So a friend of us who introduced us to his HR, so.

Claudia Colvin:

It might be too long ago to remember this, but more or less, how many people did you have to reach out to get someone who said, yes, here you go, here's my HR contact?

Margot Wuillaume:

I cannot say. Actually, to say. I think we should have done quite a lot, but we only had like four or five companies testing, but for us, it was already huge because we came from nothing. So it was just a three week development MVP, so we were really happy already to be using four or five companies and to collect that people, they want to help, but it's not always as easy as that, so you need to persevere.

Claudia Colvin:

And also HR managers, they're competing with many different tasks and there's all these different software tools that are trying to talk to them, so it's not easy to

Margot Wuillaume:

get And it was COVID, so yeah, it was also a particular period where they needed to take care of so many things.

Claudia Colvin:

And I'm curious to know, for how long was it the three of you, and at what point did you decide, okay, we need to start growing the team here, and who was the first person you hired and why?

Margot Wuillaume:

So, we bootstrapped for three years, and when we decided to have a first hire, it was still during this bootstrapping period. So it was without any external founding. We just wanted to give a boost in the sales. So the first person we hired was a sales champion, Henry, and we found him by ourselves on LinkedIn actually. But from the beginning, we've been lucky to be surrounded by amazing people who coached us at every step, so including this one.

Margot Wuillaume:

They also helped defining what would be the best moment to expand the team. And for us, the first hire was important to be in the sales aspect, because we were really in the growing phase.

Claudia Colvin:

Yeah. I actually met Angi really at the time when he had started talking to you. It wasn't a decision made yet. I'm curious to know, it sounds like you didn't know him in advance, right? So, how did you reach out to him and how did you convince him to come and work for you?

Margot Wuillaume:

So, we haven't ever met him before. We just looked on LinkedIn on people with some sales experience, and that was his case. We contacted him just by direct message. Hey, we're a startup, we are hiring, you look like a great person to join the team. And we proposed him to come to the office to drink a coffee together.

Margot Wuillaume:

So he came after work, we met, we discussed. It was really smooth and really transparent on the situation. And yeah, he asked, he could ask all the questions he has, and then I was just saying, okay, ask us everything, and if you decide to apply, then we're going to start the process. And then he applied.

Claudia Colvin:

It sounds like it was the fact that you met in person

Margot Wuillaume:

that you went

Claudia Colvin:

through before putting kind of any pressure in a similar way to how you built the connections with the first customers. Building the relationship in person is part of what helped, right?

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, exactly. And we did the same because now we just hired a few people and we did the same during the recruitment process. We were like, okay, if you apply, you can send a motivation letter or video, but you can also just come by and take a coffee and discuss. Actually, we had quite some visits and it's good because it's two people meeting after all.

Claudia Colvin:

It's really important to sell, you know, when you're small, you're a startup and you need to recruit. Of course, you need to select candidates and go to them, but they also need to be able to filter you. If you can meet them in the office and show them the office and the vibe and the people, it's really an opportunity for you to sell and let them feel in person the magic of what you can offer, that is something that is so much harder to do just in an email?

Margot Wuillaume:

No, it's a two ways process for me, the main thing is to provide the most immersive experience during the process. People need to feel who we are, what drives us, where do we work. I think it's really important. And also as a startup, it's a way to differentiate yourselves because surely we cannot afford the same packages as other companies, but we have so many things that makes us unique and you can show that by meeting people in person. That's some stuff you cannot demonstrate by an email, I think.

Claudia Colvin:

Yeah, absolutely. I had a look at the open roles that you have, and you mentioned as part of what you offer this 100% happiness rating, so that told me two things. The first one is that you use your own product as a company. And the second one is that there's something special going on in the company culture. So the first question I have around this is how do you use your product as a small company in a way that is effective, especially considering that you mentioned earlier the anonymity of the feedback?

Claudia Colvin:

So, how does using your product as a nine person company differ to maybe a larger company using it?

Margot Wuillaume:

That's always been a challenge because actually with the anonymity restriction, we cannot be our own clients. So, that's really frustrating, but can't wait to grow and to be able to fully use our tool. But we already have the collaborative area, so that we use example, there is always an ID box open. Anyone can provide some ideas, some initiatives they want to launch in the company or anything. And we have a debriefing meeting every Friday, where we open the box and see, okay, is there any idea we want to discuss?

Margot Wuillaume:

So, we really promote all the participative spirit in the company. We wanted to have feedback because it's our conviction. Anonymity is really important and we didn't want to make people uncomfortable to share on eBloom because we have the access and it's a small team. So at the point, we also worked with an external consultant and he conducted a survey on the eBloom team to gather feedback on the co founders and the culture and stuff, and then he anonymously give tests the result.

Claudia Colvin:

It's great that you did that. There's not many companies of your team size that would do something like that, but obviously, the field that you're working in, it makes a lot of sense. And so, what feedback did you get from employees and what do you think is the driver of that 100% happiness rating?

Margot Wuillaume:

What really gathers us all together is the mission of ibloom. Everyone in the company is truly aligned and derived by our mission. Like the fact that, okay, I want to have an impact on well-being at work. And that's something which is really strong. Also the culture, we have really informal culture with strong values like conviviality.

Margot Wuillaume:

For example, we spend much time together. We are really close to each other. It's like a family. And I think that's something that is really important for the team, this proximity we have. We feel like we are one team and we have the same goal.

Margot Wuillaume:

There is no internal competition at all. We are all there for the same thing and we have fun spending time together. So that's something we really want to preserve as we grow.

Speaker 3:

I want to go back

Claudia Colvin:

to something you were saying earlier. You mentioned that the university had a lot of contacts and it facilitated you. Could you expand a little bit? When we prepared for the interview, you told me a bit about the key role that the Masters that you did had in helping launch eBloom. Tell me a bit more about that.

Claudia Colvin:

So, what did it mean for you professionally to be part of that Master's and how did it help in setting up the company?

Margot Wuillaume:

This Master's really helped us, but first of all, it enabled me to meet my co founder. Also, it's an amazing opportunity to have one year and a half dedicated to creating your own business plan. I mean, it's amazing because when you're a student, you have more time, let's say. So, we really took the time to meet many people, to conduct market surveys. So, that was really interesting, also to have some connections.

Margot Wuillaume:

Met during this program some people who are still part of our advisory board today.

Claudia Colvin:

Wow.

Margot Wuillaume:

So, that's powerful. And the course you have during the program is everything you need to know to launch a business, so really interesting as well. One particular course that really caught my attention when I was a student is that every Tuesday, we had an entrepreneur coming in the class who were explaining his journey and I thought that was really inspiring. It surely increased my willingness to launch a business.

Claudia Colvin:

Have you gone back there to share your journey?

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, sure. Twice already.

Claudia Colvin:

When you joined the Masters, you joined knowing, okay, I want to start a company?

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, that was the goal. Remember my what point

Claudia Colvin:

did you come to that realization?

Margot Wuillaume:

Already in high school. Yeah, since high school, I wanted to launch something. That's always been part of my motivation. When I started my studies, I was already aware of this program and I remember when I met the director of the program and he was interviewing me to know, okay, should I take her in the program? I remember I was really saying my goal to join is to leave it with a project and someone to launch a business with, so, goal achieved.

Claudia Colvin:

And do you remember in high school, was it that made you realize that you really want to become a founder?

Margot Wuillaume:

Not really. My parents are both independent. My mother launched her own business as well, so it wasn't something that scared me at all. I'm also someone really creative. So for me, entrepreneurship was a way to express my creativity because actually you create something, you create a solution, everything, like you start with a blank page and everything still needs to be done.

Margot Wuillaume:

And so when you look at business engineering path, entrepreneurship looked at me as the more creative path to follow. I've always been driven by the fact to create employment. Something that's really important to me. I think it's really rewarding to be able to create jobs.

Claudia Colvin:

And how does it feel for you now having people in the team and hiring more? How is it similar and how is it different to what you expected?

Margot Wuillaume:

I think it's amazing. Every time someone joins, it's a new personality joining. It's really nice to see our business grow and to attract people who share the same value and spirit as us. But also, it's a responsibility. I think, for me, it's really important to make sure everyone feels good and to provide the best experience.

Margot Wuillaume:

So that's always a challenge, of course, because it's still a startup, so there is some pressure. We need to be agile and to develop fast, you have a pressure, but you want to make sure everyone feels great, so that's a challenge and a responsibility.

Claudia Colvin:

I can see you care a lot about management, to the point that you've also written a book about it, so I wanted to talk about that. Can you tell me a bit about the book you wrote, what it covers and beliefs around management?

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, sure. So, actually, in my job, I meet every day almost HR and CEOs to speak about their their HR challenges. I think for me, it's a huge opportunity because I understand that gives me so many information on the trends of what is going on in the markets, but also that showed me so many inspiring examples of things you can do in your business to improve the workplace. And when we look at the stats, I mean, the five hundred thousand people in sick leave, long term sick leave today, felt like I want to share all of these learnings and stats and info I had the chance to gather in a book. And this book is addressed mainly to leaders, because I think leaders are the ones with the biggest impact on on engagement at work.

Margot Wuillaume:

We cannot just give this responsibility to HR, they can facilitate in federating, but the leaders and managers have the biggest impact on well-being at So I wanted to write a book for them to understand how they can act to play this role and to understand the bits or the transition we're going through because the expectation with the new generation is really changing. The COVID also changed a lot, the way of working. And so the book was an opportunity to take a step back and to look at four big transitions that are operating today in the market, in the work environment, and to understand how we can adapt our people management accordingly.

Claudia Colvin:

And what's the book called and where can people find it?

Margot Wuillaume:

The book is called Leader Next Gen and we can find it at Filigrane, the library, but it just moved and on Amazon.

Speaker 3:

Perfect. I wanted to go back

Claudia Colvin:

to another thing you said earlier around bootstrapping. So, I'm curious to know how long has the company been bootstrapped? It sounds like you're in the process of raising funds. So, tell me a bit more about where did the decision to raise funds come from and how has it been for you to bootstrap until now?

Margot Wuillaume:

So, yeah, we bootstrapped for three years. At this point, we were helped by a lot of generous help actually, from free workspace to mentoring. For example, we were a part of the incubator Start Lab. Basically, it's a place where you come with an ID and we live with a few clients, and that's what happened to us. You can access to free training, coaching, mentoring.

Margot Wuillaume:

It's really amazing. At the point, we just felt like we needed a first boost. So, we raised 170 ks from FFF mainly, and that enabled us to invest in sales, marketing and to hire also a second developer, because for the first three years, Marco was the only developer in the team. And now, two years later, we are raising funds, 500 ks, mainly from business angels with strong expertise. What really matters to us is to have people we trust and who really support us.

Claudia Colvin:

I just wanted to go back to the first round you raised. So, what was the process of raising this cheque like? How long did it take? And besides sort of the cash, what else did you get from that funding round?

Margot Wuillaume:

It was super fast. I think it took like two weeks.

Claudia Colvin:

That's amazing.

Margot Wuillaume:

Actually, over the three first years, we built quite a community around us. People, we were really following the journey and from the beginning, we communicated a lot on the entrepreneurial journey, the challenges, the success. We had quite a nice client base already. And so when we wanted to give this first boost, we just sent a few emails to people who were really following the journey and we proposed them to lend some money with interest rates. At the beginning, we were just looking for 150, but in two weeks we had more than the expected budgets.

Margot Wuillaume:

So it was really fast and amazing. It was, as I said, FFF, but also clients.

Claudia Colvin:

Yeah, and just in case there's someone listening who doesn't know what FFF is?

Margot Wuillaume:

Family, friends, fools.

Claudia Colvin:

And through that, did you also find that the people who invested in you also gave, for example, advice or time or sort of supported in different ways, or it was really more the cash that helped?

Margot Wuillaume:

At this point, it was more the cash. We did some investor meetings and we were always transparent in the challenges. Every advice is always welcome, that's for sure. But we haven't processed a way to get coaching or advice from them. Also, because we already have this advisory from the beginning, we see them every three months.

Margot Wuillaume:

So that was something we already had at this point.

Claudia Colvin:

And with this second check that you went along with, what about that? Was there sort of a trade off also with equity? Are you able to share sort of a bit more about who invested and how did it work?

Margot Wuillaume:

Now, it's a comfortable loan. Most of people from the first round are still joining the second fundraise and also external business angels that we are meeting now for the first time. That's also nice to get external expertise and different expertise.

Claudia Colvin:

And the connections with the business angels, is it people who have been following your journey for some time? Was there someone who introduced them to you? How did you find them?

Margot Wuillaume:

It's more difficult. The first part of the fundraise, did with also the network. It was quite fast. But now, to close the second part, we passed through a different network. You have program when you can apply and they introduce you to some investors, so we use this kind of program to help us.

Claudia Colvin:

Yeah, that's great. I think what's really nice about this story is that often the fundraisers that you hear are the ones with the really big checks, And I think it's important to show that there are other options. It's really important to highlight these stories, I think. Moving to I want to go back to your products and the users. Can you share a little bit some metrics of what you track, what's important, and a bit more also around your users and your growth and sort of some key metrics there?

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, of course. So, currently, we have 5,000 users among about 50 companies. One metric that really matters to us is the number of feelings collected on the platform. And actually, we recently reached a new milestone because now we collected 300,000 feelings on e room. So that's we are really proud of, because it means that, yeah, 300,000 times someone trusted us to collect his feedback and to help him improve his work life.

Margot Wuillaume:

So, that's great.

Claudia Colvin:

What does it mean to collect a feeling? That's like a piece of feedback from a user? Is that what feeling means?

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, exactly. So they can express like how they feel on a specific situation or topic, and this happened 300 times. Another key metric is the adoption rate. We have 91% of adoption in the company.

Claudia Colvin:

Wow! That's really high.

Margot Wuillaume:

It looks like it's also an indicator that people want to take part of this, and when the company decided to launch e bloom to all their employees, for 90% of them, they are happy to join and to subscribe.

Claudia Colvin:

This is above industry average.

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, I know that it's quite difficult for this kind of tool, but that's also something we really differentiate from classical survey by the fact to have something way more agile and user friendly and regular. We really want to be part of the company culture. It's difficult to explain, but for our client, we are really their weekly resource, we are with their team to connect and to share stuff. I think that's how we manage.

Claudia Colvin:

And what has your growth looked like year on year?

Margot Wuillaume:

From the beginning, we more or less had 100% yearly growth, so that's also very nice and we Something

Speaker 3:

to be proud of.

Margot Wuillaume:

Yeah, and our ambition is to follow the same track for the next year, so this ambition is more and more challenging.

Claudia Colvin:

And where has most of that growth come from? How much of it has been word-of-mouth versus other channels?

Margot Wuillaume:

75% of our clients, it's really us who had to contact them. We are making contact and we present them e bloom. And for the 25 other percent that they came to us. So, it can be communication, marketing, but also clients' recommendation, and yeah, the worst two months.

Claudia Colvin:

Let's talk about Belgium. So, you started this company in Belgium. How much did that impact the company and what were the main challenges What were the main opportunities that came from that?

Margot Wuillaume:

I think Belgium is a great place to launch business. There is really a supportive culture towards entrepreneurs and startups. For example, StoothLab, AB Brussels, Zointre Pond, we're part of many programs to help. Also, it's a country where you have many subsidies to help you invest in your early stages. The mindset is really people are happy to help, and that's great.

Margot Wuillaume:

Another opportunity in Belgium is that the country is quite small and that enables us to meet most of our clients and prospects in person. And as we talked before, it's quite important to build a strong relationship with them. But Belgium is also challenging, especially with the language. So we had to be three lingual from day one. That pushed us to be directly inclusive and adaptive.

Margot Wuillaume:

That's for sure a challenge.

Claudia Colvin:

Yeah. And what advice would you have for anyone starting a startup in Belgium?

Margot Wuillaume:

It would be really to surround himself with good people. People, as I said, are really happy to help, but sometimes we just don't dare to ask. So I would say, do not hesitate to ask for help and to meet other entrepreneurs, to join some program, really to connect with people who already launched a business in this market, to get the best practice and the best advice. And yeah, that would be my advice.

Claudia Colvin:

Amazing. Thank you so much. It was really insightful and interesting. Thank you so much for joining.

Margot Wuillaume:

Thank you.