From a shoebox of receipts to Visma: Alexis Eggermont on building Accountable

"To ship our first prototype, I had to show up unannounced at our Serbian dev agency's door. Today? I'd vibe code the whole thing." 

Alexis Eggermont co-founded Accountable. If you're a freelancer in Belgium or Germany, you probably know it. Visma owns it now, but Alexis has been with Syndicate One since day one. He sat down with Robin Wauters and walked through eight years of building from zero.

Here's what jumped out. 

• Alexis and Nicolas decided to start a company first, then came up with the idea later. They worked backward through three questions and landed on Accountable.
• Exits aren't a single moment. The Visma deal took four years to pull off. After the sale? Same team, same product, just a bigger family. More gradual than sudden. 
• And while AI is melting software moats, Alexis sees it growing the market, not killing it.

What is The Syndicate One Podcast?

Conversations with the founders, investors, and operators driving Belgium’s startup scene,
Exploring the ideas, stories, and strategies that accelerate the ecosystem flywheel 🚀.

Guest: Alexis Eggermont, Co-founder of Accountable
Host: Robin Wauters

Alexis Eggermont: Hi, I'm Alexis Eggermont. I'm 41, from Belgium, and I'm the co-founder of a company called Accountable, which is a financial assistant for the self-employed in Belgium and Germany.

Robin Wauters: Thank you, Alexis, for making time for our Syndicate One podcast. You've been a part of Syndicate One since the beginning, but you're also, of course, a very successful founder here in Belgium. Let's talk about your journey, how you got started, and what your backstory is, and take it from there. So maybe start from the beginning: how did you become an entrepreneur?

Alexis Eggermont: How far back do you want to go? What's the beginning?

Robin Wauters: As far as you'd like.

Alexis Eggermont: I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather was an entrepreneur. My father was an entrepreneur, a fintech software entrepreneur, which is extremely close to what I do. So there was definitely some inspiration there.

The first time I really got in contact with entrepreneurship was probably when I joined the very early team, I could say the founding team, of the company that's now called Riaktr. It was called Real Impact Analytics at the time. I came in when the team was three or four people, and we were building big data systems for mobile phone operators worldwide.

I did that for a couple of years, and frankly, the way of working, the culture, the pace, the impact that you have, and the speed at which you have that impact, that's something that stayed with me. I knew I wanted to start something or work in such a small, fast-working structure where you can have that type of impact.

So I did that for about two years, then I studied, I did a master's degree, and then went back to starting a company. The first company I really started myself was in China, in 2014: an analytics company working on the Internet of Things.

We worked with a company in China that manufactures hundreds of thousands of data-gathering machines, and I was building software to make sense of that data. I did that for two years and then realized that founder-market fit is extremely important but very difficult for me to achieve in China. I came back to Belgium, and that's when Accountable started. I reconnected with one of my very good friends, Nicolas, and we decided to start something together.

Robin Wauters: Great, and we'll talk about Accountable a bit deeper, of course. It's funny to me that you mention Riaktr, because I was here this morning recording a podcast interview with Sebastien, and he also spoke about this Riaktr Mafia that has produced quite a lot of entrepreneurs doing really amazing things now. You're part of that Riaktr Mafia. I'm interested in what kinds of lessons you remember learning there that, to this day, you'd say: "Okay, that's something I picked up at Riaktr that's still useful today."

Alexis Eggermont: That's a very good question. I don't think I've consciously introspected about this, but I think the learning experience really came from the people. There was a very inspiring group of people who taught me how to iterate quickly and build products that generate value for customers in B2B at the time.

I also got some inspiration on how you manage an institutional structure. Seb was a very charismatic leader, and he's probably still one at his current company, Rosa. The way that the company was managed, the way that we could very nimbly work around the problems we had, those are things I took lessons from in the next companies I was involved with.

Robin Wauters: Great. So, big data for telcos, then analytics for IoT, but then finally starting a company in the accountancy software space, which seems like a bit of a stretch. Where did the idea come from? Was it a problem you were facing, or one you identified as big enough to tackle?

Alexis Eggermont: Nicolas and I knew we wanted to start a company before we knew what type of company. First of all, we wanted to start something, and we began thinking about what a good problem to work on is and what problem we're the right founders for. Quickly, the idea of Accountable came up, because we knew the problem. We were both self-employed, working for startups, but as is common in Belgium, through a management company. So we had to deal with this issue of accounting and taxes.

And we thought that at the time, 2017, 2018, a lot of that stuff should be automated. It was still very much: you have a shoebox in which you put all your receipts and your invoices, and then you bring them to your accountant. Your accountant looks at them much later, can't answer your questions until he's done that, and it takes three weeks to get an answer. You don't know how much you're earning. And we thought: okay, what the hell? That seems like a problem we have.

Then, of course, the next step is: is this a sufficiently big problem for a sufficiently large number of people that we can make it a fundable software company with VC? That's when we got into the market study. We realized this is a big problem for many people.

People pay a lot of money for accounting services, and there are many self-employed people in Belgium and across Europe. So it made a lot of sense. We explored a lot of other ideas, but this is the one that had the best founder fit: there was passion in solving the problem, having gone through the pain ourselves, and also the realism of the business plan.

Robin Wauters: Great. So you identified the problem, decided you could build a solution, and you could do it with your friends, which is amazing. But then of course, between theory and practice there's a big difference. What were your experiences in the first few years of Accountable? What kind of mistakes did you make, and what lessons did you learn?

Alexis Eggermont: We started with non-technical founders. There was Nicolas, myself, and Hassan, who's an accountant. None of us are coders, and this was before vibe coding, so we basically had to build a prototype externally. We hired a company.

We did a very small fundraiser with friends and family to pay for that prototype, which was done by an agency. At some point, I had to fly to Serbia and camp in front of their office to get the team we had hired to move and deliver. It's something we would do very differently today, of course. We have different tools with vibe coding. But there was a bit of risk there.

In terms of learnings, I think we've been quite lucky at Accountable to have many of our initial assumptions about the need confirmed. We didn't have to do a bunch of pivots. Not, I think, because we're particularly brilliant, but because we were a little bit lucky in finding product-market fit quite quickly, in identifying the problem quite quickly.

We may have done our first international go-to-market a little bit differently. Going to Germany was a learning experience because the differences in the product and the go-to-market were bigger than we thought. We lost a bit of time trying to replicate Belgium's success too closely in Germany, when in fact it's a very different country.

Robin Wauters: So, how many years into the Accountable story are we now?

Alexis Eggermont: Eight years.

Robin Wauters: Eight years and counting, and of course, the story's not over. But in the meantime, something eventful did happen: you were acquired, or at least majority acquired, by Visma, which has a track record of buying Belgian software companies at this point. A great exit for you, great for the ecosystem. I'd love for you to share more about how the deal came about and its impact on the company so far.

Alexis Eggermont: We've been in touch with, not just Visma, but other potential acquirers since almost the beginning. There's an ecosystem of companies talking to you just to see where you are and look at your metrics. VCs do that, but companies looking to acquire do that too. Visma was one of them. So we built a relationship over a few years.

For a long time, it wasn't planned; it's not really a good deal when you're too small. There's more value in a VC deal at the beginning, for sure. We built that relationship over four years, until it started to make a lot of sense, and then we went further into those options. We found a way to still benefit from Accountable's growth while locking in a partnership with Visma. That's what we did. So it was more gradual than sudden. And it's been more than a year now.

Robin Wauters: Going strong?

Alexis Eggermont: Going strong, yeah. Going strong means the relationship is still great. There's mutual benefit.

Robin Wauters: How does it work in practice? What does it mean?

Alexis Eggermont: Visma is an acquirer that likes to back teams and support them. They're not trying to change much. We very much feel that we're becoming part of an ecosystem. We are still Accountable. We're still the same team, the same product, and we're doubling down on our strengths. But we have a bigger family that we can rely on for support for some things.

Robin Wauters: Sounds great. I'm an Accountable user and customer, as you know. I've always loved the UX, and the value-add was pretty clear for me from the beginning.

You also implemented AI relatively early in the product's development, so you've clearly been dealing with this in a very proactive way. From a company perspective, though, eight years into the journey, which means AI wasn't that much of a thing in the beginning, if you were to start Accountable today, how much would AI change the process of building the company, the product, and the distribution?

Alexis Eggermont: It would be extremely different. Extremely different. I mentioned that we hired an agency at the beginning to build a prototype. That's not needed at all anymore. I would entirely vibe code it, or use one of these tools that allow you to build functional prototypes at a very high level, tools that today are working.

When it comes to the development process, you're able to do much more. I think you'll still need a development team at some point to go beyond your MVP, but that team, if they're using the right tools, can be much more productive.

Today, we're at a stage where we are setting up agents that can make a technical plan for a feature. They can write user stories, make a technical plan, code, and review code. They can make everybody go much faster. A lot of companies are going through that transformation now. And obviously, if you were starting today, you'd use these kinds of tools, and you'd be able to build a product with a much broader scope in the same amount of time.

Of course, you then probably have lower moats. That's the reality: the moats in software are going down. There are still moats, but the product's complexity is not the kind of moat it used to be.

Robin Wauters: Not that I'm expecting you to speak for Visma here, but if I were in their shoes, looking at what's happening in the market and the acquisitions they've made, I'd be quite nervous. Or do they perceive this more as an opportunity than a threat?

Alexis Eggermont: I don't know, I can't speak for Visma. I think AI is both an opportunity and a threat for SaaS in general. You can build much faster; competition can build much faster. And I think the quantity of software that people consume is going to go up tremendously.

That's what happens historically: the price of something goes down, and the size of the market goes up, because there's just a lot more consumption. So I'm not necessarily super bearish on SaaS. It's possible that multiples will go down for M&A. But there will be much more software, maybe more specialized, maybe with lower moats or lower barriers to entry. I think software as a category still has a great future.

Robin Wauters: And what about the pricing of software? The typical SaaS model, mostly recurring or per-seat pricing, is being replaced by more value-based pricing, as they say, with AI. Is that something you think about a lot?

Alexis Eggermont: At Accountable, it's not a B2B SaaS where you have a bunch of seats. We sell pretty much the same product to everyone. We have different plans that also reflect a bit of the value you get, but the pricing is the same for everyone. I don't think that's going to change.

There might be a little bit of downward pressure on prices in the industry, but it's still our job to find a way to deliver value: to create software that makes your life easier, that you're very happy to pay 30 euros a month for because it saves you time. There will probably be more options in the future, but I don't think people will spend less on software. Overall, I don't think there's going to be huge downward pressure on this kind of revenue.

Robin Wauters: Leaving aside the relationship and the deal you've made with Visma, would you consider running Accountable for the rest of your career, or do you see yourself starting another company at some point?

Alexis Eggermont: I'm open to both. I love Accountable, I love the job I'm doing, I love building the product. I'm also keen to start something new at some point. It depends on the ideas I come across and the people I have around me. If at some point there's a wonderful opportunity that I want to explore, I might do it. But so far, I'm very happy building here, and I'm not keen to jump off tomorrow.

Robin Wauters: Moving on to Syndicate One: You've been part of Syndicate One since the beginning. I'd love to learn what attracted you to Syndicate One in the first place, and how you've perceived the evolution of Syndicate One itself over the last four or five years. What's your take on it?

Alexis Eggermont: There were two things that attracted me to Syndicate One. The first one was that I wanted to have a positive impact on the ecosystem. I felt like we had many of the ingredients in Belgium to build a great ecosystem, but we didn't really have the ecosystem; we didn't have the startups we should have. When we started four years ago... actually, I think it's changed quite a bit since. So I was attracted to the mission.

And I was also attracted to the group. Syndicate One brought together a bunch of entrepreneurs, and it was a great opportunity to meet people. You're always a little bit in your bubble, and this is a way to reach out to people in other bubbles. There's a bit of a divide in Belgium between the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking parts, and this is also one way to bridge that divide, which I thought was great. I'm super happy about the people I've met. It's a fantastic crew, very ambitious and energetic. So yeah, I'm very happy I joined.

Robin Wauters: Thanks for all the praise. But I'd also love to hear, based on your experience, what more we can do at Syndicate One? What more can we achieve, what should we improve, and what should we still fix, or at least try to fix, here in Belgium?

Alexis Eggermont: That's a tough question. The ecosystem has changed so much, and Syndicate One has changed so much, right? It used to be a 600,000 euro fund. Now it's in the twenties of millions. I think continuing that impulse would be a fantastic achievement.

If we can continue that growth for the next few years, if Syndicate One can be one of the drivers behind the Belgian tech scene continuing to grow, and there's another unicorn announced this week, it seems like the level of maturity of Belgium in tech has gone up fivefold in five years, something like that. Syndicate One has been one of the drivers of that change. If we can continue to do that for another five years, another ten years, it would be an incredible achievement.

Robin Wauters: You mention this unicorn, which is, of course, Keyrock, announced this week as we're recording the podcast. Keyrock, being a Brussels-based company, leads me to the question of how you perceive Brussels as an ecosystem, both the positive and the negative, from your vantage point.

Alexis Eggermont: I'm not sure that I think of a Brussels ecosystem. Belgium is not big enough to have these different ecosystems.

Robin Wauters: That's sort of the reality of it, though. That's what everyone always tells me: it's still quite fragmented.

Alexis Eggermont: There's still some fragmentation. You're more likely, as a Ghent startup, to know other Ghent startups, and so on. But I still go to startup events in Ghent, and there are events in Brussels that bring people together from Wallonia and Flanders. So I don't think too much of Brussels as an ecosystem; I try to think of Belgium as an ecosystem. And that ecosystem has grown massively in maturity. Belgium has grown, and Brussels, as part of that Belgian ecosystem, has grown massively.

There are way more early-stage startups, way more rounds, and the rounds are bigger. You see people raising 5 million on a seed or pre-seed, whereas Sebastien told me this morning, Riaktr raised 12 million at some point, and it was one of the largest software VC deals in Europe that year. Which is crazy. So the ecosystem has come a very long way. Brussels has been part of that, and Ghent has maybe risen to be a bit of a star in the ecosystem. But I don't generally think of a Brussels ecosystem, or a Liege ecosystem, or an Antwerp ecosystem. There's a Belgian ecosystem, with maybe Ghent as the spearhead.

Robin Wauters: Makes sense. But this maturation is on the startup side: founders getting stronger, investors getting smarter and more knowledgeable. What about everything else, though? The support network is growing; you see all these incubators and programs. But on the policy side, do you have an opinion? Should we have more constructive dialogue with the governments in this country?

Alexis Eggermont: Yeah, there are some things that could be done. Stock option taxation could be improved. Having an actual single market in the EU, EU Inc, that kind of stuff. We've seen the first steps taken in that direction; of course, it's still early, and more can be done. I'm not necessarily a fan of subsidies going to startups.

Generally, you need to find your product-market fit, and you find it better if you're not pushed by that kind of help. But having the right legal frameworks on taxation, on making it easy to hire talent across countries, for example, that's something that can still be improved. And I think the EU is probably the important level for that, rather than Belgium. The single market is probably the biggest issue in terms of how policy can help startups.

Robin Wauters: Preaching to the choir, but yes, I agree. Maybe a final question on Accountable. Would you be extremely happy if, at some point, there's also an Accountable Mafia, where a lot of the people you've worked with start their own ventures and maybe become even bigger success stories down the line?

Alexis Eggermont: I would love that, yeah. It would be a huge achievement. We have a fantastic team, and a lot of them can definitely build great things. I hope they will.