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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 🚀.
PEPIJN: My name is Pepijn Mores. I'm the founder of Prismos, and we help organizations stay ahead of regulatory change.
ROBIN: Great, fantastic. Pepijn, thank you so much for taking the time to respond positively to the invitation of the Syndicate One podcast.
PEPIJN: You're welcome.
ROBIN: I'm very interested in your journey. You had several roles at really big companies: ING, Amazon, Accenture. But now you've launched into the entrepreneurial world with your own company, Prismos. Can you give us a little backstory on how you got there?
PEPIJN: Of course. For me, it's been quite a journey from a large enterprise to entrepreneurship. I was always interested in innovation and in really applying technology in context. I had that at Amazon, because it's, of course, a very innovative company, but also at Accenture, trying to innovate from within large organizations. The last three years at Accenture, I was working mostly on consulting projects within European institutions, and that's where I noticed: there's so much data, so many insights, and in the name of transparency, it's all published on the internet, all over the place, in all kinds of formats, in huge volumes. If you're an organization that's heavily impacted by those regulations, even small bits, it's basically impossible to keep track. That's where I thought we could build something.
A good friend of mine, Christophe, has an academic background. He actually studied Greek and Latin, so very out there, and then went into a PhD in logic and worked at an AI lab in South Korea for some time. His wife works in policy, and we noticed she was struggling to figure out what information she needed to obtain and understand. So, together with her and her colleagues, we started building something, which led to Prismos.
ROBIN: Great. But did you ever do any proper market research? How big is this, how big can it get, what's the growth rate, is the need going to grow over time?
PEPIJN: No formal market research, but we were both based in Brussels, and we both had a lot of friends working in that policy area. Our market research mostly consisted of having beers with people. Luckily, it's a very small area in Brussels where you can meet people in coffee bars and really try to understand what they're doing. We talked to a lot of actors within the ecosystem: associations, large corporates, trade unions, to understand their perspective and what we could add. We asked for anecdotes and very specific pain points, started from those very specific stories, and then extrapolated to the broader market.
ROBIN: So, how did the product building actually come about? What did you set out to build, and if you look back now, are you there, or do you still have quite a journey ahead of you?
PEPIJN: I think any entrepreneur will tell you they're still building, there's still a vision to realize. We set out with a different vision than where we are now, but it's the same intuition: large amounts of data, no real, clear, personalized insights, and connecting the two. We've reiterated many scenarios. What's the real pain point, the real problem, the real buyer persona? We're still doing that in a certain way. We have a set of use cases we support, but we're still understanding who exactly benefits from this. Not only the specific person using the tool, but also their manager and their broader organization. Maybe that's a bit conceptual, but I can go into specifics if you want.
ROBIN: Actually, let's take a step back. Tell us in a nutshell what you're building, who you're building it for, and why.
PEPIJN: We're building a kind of workplace for policy workers: people who have to track regulations and understand the latest developments. We help them by filtering that information. We take in all the information, structure it, and we've built a personalized recommender system that sends them daily tailored reports. For your specific needs, we understand that this passage from a specific interview or debate is relevant to you. We do that for people within large corporations, so regulatory experts, associations, unions, these types of organizations.
ROBIN: Is that a big market? Educate me.
PEPIJN: It's a hidden market. Not a lot of companies talk about how many people they've put on regulation, because it's not their core business. But the regulatory risk is huge for them. Large energy companies will have 10 to 30 people per geography, depending on the geography's size, to understand what's coming in terms of new regulations and to catch those early signals. That's within corporations, but you also have associations and organizations that come together to represent their voices. They're often much bigger than you think. And worker unions have large research teams to ensure they're defending workers' rights. It's one of those areas that's really hidden. It's still a very traditional industry, still a people business, and an area where there's a lot of innovation left to be done.
ROBIN: Building this out of Brussels helps a lot, I'm sure. But do you specifically target the European policy world, or do you have aspirations to venture outside, to the US or Southeast Asia?
PEPIJN: We definitely have the ambition to grow globally. Currently, we primarily support Western European parliaments and governments, from the regional and national levels to the European level. But we're running proofs of concept with mostly state-level legislation in the US and with Korean legislation because of my co-founder's background. We see the same issue coming back: as long as you're a democracy, you're trying to be transparent and share information. But that information is all over the place. It's not built or shared in a format that's really usable for people working in regulation.
ROBIN: That creates opportunity for companies like yours. But what does the competitive landscape look like? Has anyone tried to solve this before, or on a larger scale?
PEPIJN: It's a very traditional business, very human, in the sense that a lot of human interpretation is needed for the political discourse that needs to be analyzed. The technology stayed the same over the last 10 to 15 years. Now, with the advent of natural language processing in the last two to three years, you see a lot of different businesses coming up and working on this problem. It's really interesting to understand, from a competitive landscape, how we position ourselves. Not only against our little bubble of competitors, but against the broader AI ecosystem, where your moat changes every three months. You really have to rethink your business: how do we make sure we remain relevant? We're building technology that can, in the long term, really support this use case.
ROBIN: A beautiful segue into my next question. I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and in 2018, you already had a role with "AI" in the title, which is quite rare. That means you were early on that train of data processing and AI. Did that give you an edge in building Prismos?
PEPIJN: For sure. At Accenture, we were applying AI with the latest techniques, working with a research group within the company to innovate within the EU institutions. One of the projects I worked on, quite a niche problem, was around fisheries: fishing data that had to be validated against tens of thousands of rules defined in regulation. What we built was an early coding mechanism that interpreted the law and started writing code from it. These were the early GPT models, GPT-2, and the quality was not great, but it was already helpful as a framework for developers. You could give them the first ideas: this legislation means this logic, and they'd implement it afterward. That was the early days, of course.
ROBIN: You've already hinted at this. Everything's moving at such speed now, new models coming out and improving so rapidly. How do you cope with that from a development perspective, but also just building the company without being distracted by everything out there? Maybe also competitors gaining an edge, since it's become easier to build at speed and at scale. How has it changed your daily life?
PEPIJN: I think it made me even more customer-centric. There are a lot of distractions and a lot of opportunities. Still, you only truly differentiate by understanding the problem the customer is trying to solve, and by making sure you're not in the way between the customer and the solution. One of the things we're really considering, for example, is further integrations into AI. If a customer is already used to working with Anthropic or OpenAI services, why would we rebuild something like that? So the question we ask ourselves is: how can we be the infrastructure on top of which the customer runs their workflows? And how can we accelerate that as much as possible?
ROBIN: It's an exciting place to be. But you're doing this from Brussels, which, as an ecosystem, still has room for improvement, let's say. We find it difficult to find the right investors, talent, and partners. Love your take on Brussels as an ecosystem.
PEPIJN: I think Brussels is a beautiful city. I really love living here, and I'm quite positive about the way the ecosystem is developing. Maybe a parallel: when I was a teenager, I actually wanted to become a jazz musician. I noticed that in Belgium, when I was playing with other musicians, we were very connected as a Belgian ecosystem. I was playing with people from Wallonia; we had a stage in a forest in Wallonia, and I was meeting people from Ghent, Bruges, and Liège. That's something we can learn as a startup ecosystem in Belgium: not only looking at our own city and our own specific thing, but playing and improvising together, just like you can with music. In innovation, there are many parallels to draw. And there's already a lot happening. Supernova last week, for example, is an amazing festival that brings the community together and fosters the exchange of ideas. So I'm really positive on the evolution of the ecosystem in general.
ROBIN: Definitely a few initiatives and workspaces and festivals, Syndicate One being one of them, to the degree that we're a very network-driven fund. We involve many entrepreneurs, operators, and investors from across Belgium to help level up the ecosystem and ensure we also find good investment opportunities. To what degree were you already aware of what Syndicate One is doing? And do you think we need more of that to get to the next stage?
PEPIJN: I think you're really adding value to the ecosystem. The feedback I hear from other founders, especially in the early stages, really makes a difference in supporting them. We had a similar experience with our early-stage investor, imec, which really helped us understand the business problem and how to get started. They had a pre-launch program where we shared our first ideas, then we joined the actual accelerator, and now their follow-up fund has also invested in us, which gives us a nice progression within that ecosystem and that group of founders. I hear the same about Syndicate One: the support, definitely in the beginning, but also in the growth stages whenever it's relevant.
ROBIN: You've also raised investment from Seeder Fund and others. How have they helped you scale more efficiently?
PEPIJN: The choice for Seeder Fund was a very conscious one, because of their network and their early-stage support. Being in Brussels and having a Brussels-based VC helped us really understand the market and its networks, and use them where needed. That's also why we're in touch now, via Isabelle Tennstedt, one of their Managing Partners. We have a very good understanding with them.
ROBIN: Correct. But the moment you raise investment, it sets expectations. Do you think you'll reach a point where you'll need a larger round to support your growth?
PEPIJN: For sure. We're now at the stage where we've mostly delivered on the promises we made in the beginning. We raised a very small pre-seed round to make sure we could build a product and prove there's a business here. Now we're coming to the point where we're building a long-term growth plan, focusing on go-to-market and building different funnels. For that, we have a different set of assumptions to validate, a different set of bets to make. The next growth round definitely makes sense for us, but with the right partner. That's what we're looking for. We're talking with different people, both within Belgium and outside, who really understand what we do because we're working in a niche and can support us on that growth trajectory.
ROBIN: Exciting times. And you're right, the intersection of tech and policy is still quite niche. Super interesting though, also from my perspective, obviously. If you look at the Belgian national policy world, federal or regional government, do you find that policymakers in Belgium understand the needs and desires of entrepreneurs today?
PEPIJN: I think so, yeah. I think they're doing their best, but of course, they're politicians and need to cater to a very broad audience. As entrepreneurs, we need to raise our voices and voice our concerns to the government, especially in Belgium now, amid rising debt and the measures being taken. We really need to position ourselves as the key driver of growth that can help stabilize our economy and make it more robust in the long term.
ROBIN: Makes sense. From your vantage point, if you're a founder in Slovenia or Portugal, it doesn't really matter; you're building your company and focused on that. Does that person need to know what's happening in Brussels regarding policymaking, digital tech sovereignty, and whatnot? Should they be paying attention, or is it not yet relevant for early-stage founders?
PEPIJN: There's a big gap between doing your work as an early-stage founder, listening to customers and iterating, and whatever is being said in Brussels. The timelines are completely different. You have to deliver something next week, whereas policy people in Brussels have to deliver something in the next five to ten years. Who knows when EU Inc will go live, for example. That's where trade associations can really make a difference. Startup associations are doing a great job at the national level, informing people about what they need to do. I have some good connections with the EU startup association, and I think they're doing a great job informing and involving startups in that policy debate. But early-stage founders should focus on their customer, not on policy.
ROBIN: Sure. But from your perspective, is there anything on the EU level being decided or talked about, you mentioned EU Inc, that could impact entrepreneurs down the line and might be worth paying attention to?
PEPIJN: It depends on the industry they're working in, but regulation has an impact on everybody. There's a difference between paying attention to the early signals, the first moments people talk about something, and what's already been decided, which has a certain timeline to implement. As an entrepreneur, it's good to raise your voice as early as possible, but there's still so much noise and so much work to be done that I think it's too far-fetched. It's mostly the large corporations and large associations that have the time and capacity to do that. Small entrepreneurs are, unfortunately, a bit too far from it. In Belgium, we have UNIZO and VOKA that do this type of work for them and involve them in it. But as an entrepreneur, it's probably too complex and too far.
ROBIN: Makes sense. In Brussels, there's quite a lot of momentum at the moment around GovTech and RegTech, creating a movement, even physical spaces for it. I'm sure you've heard about that as well. For you, that's ultimately quite relevant. What do you make of it? Do you think it's going to happen, and will it move the needle?
PEPIJN: For sure, and I think we have an obligation to do it, because there's so much innovation and optimization we can still do within governments. Bringing people and government together is a positive thing, and technology can be a bridge between them. Especially in a geopolitical context where sovereignty and technology are very hot topics, GovTech plays a central role.
ROBIN: Do you think Brussels can be a platform for that?
PEPIJN: Definitely. Brussels is where governance is done in Europe, so we could definitely play at the forefront of GovTech and RegTech in the startup scene. It would be great if we could brand ourselves more like that, and I think we can communicate more about it, in Brussels and outside.
ROBIN: Going back to Prismos. Is it a SaaS model? How do you price it? Do the developments in the AI world have an impact on how you think about pricing, maybe more value-based pricing instead of per seat or per month?
PEPIJN: For sure. We're a SaaS-based, subscription-based business, but we're looking at different pricing models. We keep iterating to find models where the incentives are aligned between what the customer ultimately wants and what we can deliver, and to build a fair model that we can scale across their organization. Especially because we have a highly scalable solution: we can scale to different institutions within one country and across countries, and we're working across industries. The pricing model needs to be adaptable to all those factors.
ROBIN: In more general terms, what are some of the learnings? It's your first venture, but I'm sure you've already made a few mistakes you wouldn't make again if you started over.
PEPIJN: When I was working in consulting, I had a big brand behind me. Selling and delivering projects was much easier because the customer trusted the larger firm. The biggest learning is that you start from nothing. You have a small company, and people don't necessarily trust that small company, so you really have to earn that trust. It's a completely different perspective, and I'm still learning a lot about building that trust, that positioning in the market, and the communication we need to do. It's not something I had to do before. Also, because Christophe and I, as co-founders, are very product people, very hands-on in our software work. Go-to-market is something we both had to discover, and are still discovering as we go.
ROBIN: Sounds like you're in an interesting space and at the right place. Any final thoughts you want to share with the audience?
PEPIJN: When I was working in a large corporation, I had a lot of fun. But starting a startup is so much more fun. There are so many more challenges, and it's so much more fun to work closely with the customer. If I had any advice for people listening: make the jump. Quit your job and jump into that venture you've always wanted to do. Because what's the worst that can happen?