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Conversations with the founders, investors, and operators driving Belgium’s startup scene,
Exploring the ideas, stories, and strategies that accelerate the ecosystem flywheel 🚀.
Tanguy Goretti: I'm Tanguy Goretti, I'm the CTO of Hexa, and before that, I was the CTO and co-founder of Cowboy for 10 years.
Robin Wauters: Great, Tanguy, so good to have you here. Thank you for taking the time to join us for the Syndicate One podcast. You're a serial entrepreneur, you're quite visible in the ecosystem, but in your own words, what has your entrepreneurial journey been so far?
Tanguy Goretti: It's been a rocky ride, to say the least. So a lot of highs, also a few lows. A lot of learning, a lot of amazing people along the way. I'm quite happy we've managed to find a solution for Cowboy, as it's been my main company for the last 10 years.
We found a buyer called Rebirth. And now I am in a new ecosystem called Hexa. I am lucky enough to talk to entrepreneurs every single day, so it gives me a lot of energy. They are all building amazing products, and I think it's an amazing time to build something new with everything happening with AI. I'm sure we're going to talk about it, but even OpenAI announcing $122 billion fundraising just today is insane. So yeah, quite excited.
Robin Wauters: Exciting times in general for entrepreneurs and developers and anyone in tech, really, at the moment. But maybe in terms of backstory, Cowboy wasn't your first company.
So, how did you end up becoming an entrepreneur in the first place? Was it always in you? How did that start? How did it come about? And how have you grown as an entrepreneur?
Tanguy Goretti: Yeah, sure. It could be a long story. I'll try to keep it short, but I was learning JavaScript when I was, I think, 13 or 14 years old, and super quickly, I had my first customer, I think, when I was like 15 or 16 years old.
It was the website of a lawyer, and I had my first check, which was maybe 25 euros at the time, so nothing much, but it gave me the drive and the envy to build something.
So I always knew I wanted to build my own company. That's why I went to university to study computer engineering. But at the same time, I was running my website agency as a student, and for my master's, I was taking entrepreneurship courses in the evenings.
We managed to win a few prizes for my thesis, and so I could go to the US in San Francisco, where I met Xavier Damont, maybe you remember him, but he was someone quite visible at the time in the tech ecosystem. He just raised a bit of money with Storify, a platform for managing social accounts on Twitter and the like.
And basically, I met the guy in San Francisco, and he did the same study that I did. And I was like, okay, if he can do it. I can do it. It was very naive, but when I came back to Belgium, I launched my first startup called Jump. It was a competitor of Uber in Belgium and France. We made a lot of mistakes. I was 22, super young. And actually, that's how we met, I think, for the first time.
Robin Wauters: True. You also came to my house to pitch it.
Tanguy Goretti: I came to your house to pitch it, exactly. And we made a lot of mistakes. We also wasted a lot of time in Belgium because launching a B2C product there was quite tough at the time.
It was 2011, 2012, so very, very early. But then, when we moved to Paris, it actually took off pretty quickly.
We did that for five years. Sadly, in the end, we had a huge strike by the cab companies against my
company. But it was an amazing ride, in that I had to learn a lot of things super quickly.
So I had to learn to compete against very big companies. I had to raise money. I had to talk to the
press almost all the time. Actually, it's a super useful skill, and it was very useful for Cowboy as
well for the next 10 years. And at the end, we had to sell the company to a competitor because we
had to stop the B2C activity and refocus on professional drivers.
After that, we launched Cowboy, and I worked on it for 10 years. Cowboy was also amazing. We grew like super quickly from zero to 43 million euros in revenue, in six or seven years, and then after Covid, you had many different crises, Covid obviously, but then you had a supply chain crisis. With too much stock on the market and a war on discounts, it was super, super difficult not only for Cowboy but also for every player in the industry.
Robin Wauters: I mean, from my perspective and everyone at Syndicate One, I think we followed the Cowboy journey quite closely. But there seem to be so many opinions about Cowboy from the outside about what happened and the journey. I'd love to get some insights from you, like how you experienced that, because at some point it felt like it was going from crisis to crisis, but not always of your own making, right? So even if you did everything right, it couldn't still... could have failed miserably, so in the end, I don't know how you look at that now?
Tanguy Goretti: Look, I think if you look at what happened on the market, every single big player went down, and not i'm not even talking about startups, but if you look at KKR buying Axel, which was the biggest group in the bike industry, they just lost, I think, 95% of their investment over the last five years, so it just shows how it is difficult to operate in that market; every single startup went bust.
Vanmoof, Angel, Hardpower Bike, they all raised, I think, accumulated maybe 400 million euros, two of them more than Cowboy, they all went bust, and actually, if you look at it, we were like the only ones to manage to find a proper exit to actually deliver all our customers and make sure that the company can survive and can continue to thrive, hopefully, in a better market. We don't see all the signs yet of the market recovering, but at some point it will, I don't know when, but I'm quite hopeful about the future.
And then yes, I mean, we leveraged the press to be visible and to sell more bikes, and so obviously, when you have a lot of coverage, at some point, when you have bad news. You still have a lot of coverage. So I'm not angry or bitter about that. It's just part of the game. And to be honest, everyone in the tech ecosystem really knew the story; we knew the company. Everyone was supportive. I never had someone, you know...criticizing the company or me in a bad way. It was mostly people who don't really know what it takes to be in the startups in that space. And it's okay, it's just part of the game.
I mean, if you do that kind of company, you know, B2C, being exposed to the public, on top of that, like a bike, it's super easy to understand. So everyone has an opinion on the bike, you know, it's not like you're building, I don't know, a B2B SaaS at the frontier of AI, like it's more difficult to have an opinion on that in a bar. But if I talk to you about a bike, yeah, you will have an opinion on whatever. But yeah, I mean, it's just part of the game. I think as an entrepreneur, you have to accept that. And again, you have to play by the rules of the game. And today I'm still playing by those rules. I mean, I'm talking to you to be more
visible. I was talking to other journalists earlier today. It's just part of the game.
Robin Wauters: Yeah, it's not like you're hiding. And if anything, your role now as CTO of Hexa, the learnings you've had, like both from mistakes, but also the positive things about being able to scale a company, and fundraising and dealing with the press, things that you can take away and actually share with the next generation of entrepreneurs within the HEXA ecosystem. You're the CTO, so I guess that's not your main role, but it comes with the territory, right?
Tanguy Goretti: Yeah, and I think that's something I can bring to those CTOs. So I was always a technical person, but I really liked the business and storytelling sides of the business, which I think are important for you as a CTO and entrepreneur, and for your company.
It was always easier, for instance, to attract talent. I think at Cowboy we had such an amazing density of talent, and the proof is that most of our employees, when they left, became C-level at other startups or launched their own companies.
So it really showed that we had amazing people working for us, and we still have amazing people working for the company today. My point is, getting your story out there is always super important. And on top of that, for Cowboy specifically, if we didn't do it ourselves, then someone would tell that story for us, and that's also difficult.
So I'm trying to do that, I'm trying to get them to pitch their vision so they can attract talent, but they can also close more deals in the future, and you know, find more partners. I think that's important and that's
part of the role. So maybe at the beginning you have to build, obviously, focus, and avoid too many distractions. Still, as you grow, when you raise money, for instance, it's very important to be somehow visible, like not all the time, but most of the time, it really helps when you have some contacts already in the ecosystem.
Robin Wauters: So speaking of the ecosystem, you already alluded to this, but the journey of Cowboy was within the Belgian tech ecosystem, at least from my perspective, also quite positive, right? You received a lot of support—people who've built and scaled companies know how difficult it can be. But the ecosystem itself must have been a lot different when you started, Cowboy, you know, this is more than a decade ago compared to what it is now. So how do you, from your vantage point, have seen sort of the evolution of the Belgian and by extension, maybe the Brussels ecosystem?
Tanguy Goretti: No, I think what changed in those 10 years is that we have known more and more companies being super ambitious. That said, I still think we have a lot to improve, to say the least. And the good news is, I really believe AI will facilitate and amplify the change: compared to before, you don't need as much money to build and ship something to the public.
So my point is, you have many entrepreneurs today doing amazing things, and if they can prove to the market that they have a product that works, for sure, today in Belgium, in Brussels, they will find investors to help them go to the Series A.
It wasn't the case before. Before I think the... investment space in Belgium, I mean, it was there, but it was not that developed. I think it's also easier for companies in Belgium today to raise money outside the country, and Kaba is a prime example.
We had a few investors in Belgium, but most were based in the UK or the US. I think it's even easier today to do that, mostly because we have those people inside the ecosystem who can make the right introduction, and I mean, you are part of those people, but Syndicate One is a prime example of that.
And so I would say we should allow ourselves to dream bigger in Belgium. Nothing is blocking us from building an amazing product today. And then, when you need the money, you will find people to help you get that money in Belgium. So on that point, I am super optimistic, but we need more people. We need more companies to get that ecosystem going and be at the level of Paris, Berlin, London, or even the US.
Robin Wauters: Good observations. You mentioned AI. Of course, we're going to talk a bit more about AI. You already mentioned that it's getting easier to start a company, build a product, ship, and get feedback. It's all becoming a lot faster to do things right and to try things. But it also impacts how companies and products are built.
So how do you think AI is going to have... an impact on that aspect? Okay, you can ship faster and build companies faster, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can build solid or sustainable companies faster. So how do you see that relationship between everything getting easier and faster, and the barrier to entry getting lower?
Tanguy Goretti: Yeah, that's true. And I think that's why I believe the kind of profile being a CTPO, so someone technical but also product, will be super important in the next 5 to 10 years.
It's going to be very difficult to know what to build. If you can build something, it doesn't mean you have to build it. Most of the time, it can be a skill in code or in a... into a GPT, and if it's just a workflow, it doesn't make sense to do that today as a B2B.
And that's the kind of question we are asking ourselves at HEXA, and I cannot give you all the details, but that's also why we are building more and more relationships with those labs to understand where things are going, so we can then position ourselves in the best possible way. So that not all startups will be killed in the future.
So my advice to entrepreneurs is to look at what's happening with Anthropic and OpenAI, and to understand whether what they are doing today will still be relevant tomorrow, as the models keep getting better.
And they should engage with the ecosystem of those big labs to really understand the insights and direction. At the same time, we have many opportunities to build with those people. For instance, at Hexa, we have a company called Waniwani, and they build on top of what we call MCP apps, so those applications that you can now have in ChatGPT are a huge opportunity.
If you look at it, it's like the App Store at the time when Apple launched the new iPhone; you have a new distribution channel as a company, and this is super exciting, so you have this huge opportunity that you can see, but you have to know how to navigate that space.
I wouldn't build something in my basement without talking to anyone today, that's for sure. I would really make sure to engage with that AI community so I can better understand the market's direction.
Robin Wauters: That's a very good point. I didn't ask you this yet. How did you actually end up at Hexa? Because I'm guessing you knew the guys when they were still e-founders, and you know Thibaut and you know Quentin. But was it something in particular that attracted you to this role, or was it just sort of an organic process?
Tanguy Goretti: I think that's a prime example of the ecosystem supporting our journey at Cowboy, so Thibaut, who was the company's first investor, was very active for the first 10 years of the company's history. And basically, when we closed the deal with Rebirth, he just asked me, "Okay, what's gonna be
Next for you? We have this open position, it's gonna be a CTO at Xexa, and we should talk".
And so we started talking, and it was very exciting because they didn't have anyone in that position
in the studio, and at the same time, they were also launching a new activity called Sprint, which
It is a new investment activity that we now have in the studio. We have already invested in 10 companies, some of them in Belgium, actually, and a few of them in AI, so again, it's quite cool to see the Belgian ecosystem also being part of HEXA, and it was very exciting to me to basically be able to help other entrepreneurs.
Again, as I said, it gives me a lot of energy, and, you know, when you wake up, you talk to those people like you cannot be excited, like those guys are fighting for their lives daily. I was in the same position. I fully understand the challenges they have, and I'm just trying to help in the best possible way.
Yeah, it just made sense to join them, to be honest.
Robin Wauters: Did you take at least something of a break between Cowboy and Hexa?
Tanguy Goretti: You know what, not really. And it's because I was like, I cannot stop now with everything that was happening in the space. Again, like, I've never been so excited. I think... I have never worked that much, just because I'm always building something in the evenings and on weekends. The space is moving so fast that if you want to be relevant when you talk to founders, you have to stay up to date. Still, I'm just a builder, so I'm just in love with the process of creating new things. And so yeah, I mean, it's work, but it's not, like, work for me. I love what I do.
Robin Wauters: But then the follow-up question, if you're a builder at heart, is whether to start a new company or your own venture. But that's not what happened.
Tanguy Goretti: That's not what happened. But part of the deal is that I can launch one startup per year in the HEXA ecosystem.
Robin Wauters: That's very cool, actually.
Tanguy Goretti: That's super cool. So I don't know when this will be published, but I will most likely be looking for founders. So don't hesitate to ping me.
Robin Wauters: Fantastic. It's a really good deal.
Tanguy Goretti: Yeah, it's a good deal.
Robin Wauters: Nice. So, maybe going back to the ecosystem and Brussels in particular, I want to touch on what is happening here and what is not, compared to other places in Belgium. It's still quite fragmented as an ecosystem. We at Syndicate One are trying to do our part, but of course, more needs to be done. Do you also feel strongly about trying to position Brussels again as an innovative ecosystem, where it currently lacks? Do you feel strongly about that at all, or do you have an affinity with
The Brussels or Belgian tech scene that you feel a sense of pride to lift up?
Tanguy Goretti: Look, I've always been an ambassador, I think of the tech and Belgian ecosystem, I have been super engaged and vocal, for instance, with politics when I thought that, okay, maybe we can change things for the best in the tech ecosystem in Belgium. I really want to see people succeed.
Like, I love this city, even though I lived in Paris for quite a few years. Now I'm back in Paris two or three days a week with Hexa. But my point is that I really want this ecosystem to succeed because we have so many amazing entrepreneurs. And sometimes I see them, and I'm like, those guys in Paris or in San Francisco would have been so much more successful.
You know, just talking to other entrepreneurs who are successful before you, it really helps you elevate your level of ambition. And I can really see that in the HEXA ecosystem, for instance. And that's also what we are trying to do in Brussels, for instance, with Watt and the SPRINT program. But yeah, of course, I want Brussels to succeed.
Robin Wauters: Fantastic. Maybe as a final takeaway for the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, you're a serial entrepreneur, what would be your advice to people who are just on the edge of maybe I should start, maybe I should not? Of course, it's a very big opportunity with AI now, but what else would you
share with them? Go for it, or try not to do this, or don't make that mistake that I've made too many
times. What would it be?
Tanguy Goretti: I think you have to surround yourself with amazing people, so you have to find an ecosystem. It can be in Brussels, at the Winter Circus, in Paris, or in the US, but make sure you also have very ambitious people building, because it will help you go faster.
At the same time, as I said, I've never been so excited about what's happening in the industry. I know everyone is saying SaaS is dead, software is dead, whatever. Still, it's also super easy today to get traction, get real customers, and go from zero to one to three million in revenue without raising a single euro.
I've seen that a few times now since the beginning of this year in startups. My point is that, compared to just a few years ago, it has never been easier to build something. So go for it. Maybe the window of opportunity will close in two, three, four, or five years. I don't know. But today is a good time to build, that's for sure.
Robin Wauters: Fantastic. Tanguy, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your insights. Love that you're still building and building at scale, and so looking forward to what comes next.
Tanguy Goretti: Yeah, me too. Me too.