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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 (00:00)
Hello, I'm joined today Castillo who is the co-founder of Prodi you so much for joining me Patricio, how are you?
Patricio (00:07)
Great, thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation and hello to everyone listening. Maybe I wanted to introduce a bit myself for those who don't know me yet. So I would like to think of myself as someone that likes a lot three things. I would say adventure, people and building things. And that actually led me to decide to do a bachelor and then a master in engineering
and I specialized particularly in electronics and ICT. And this was in Belgium because I'm actually from Mexico. I came here for my studies. I studied in the KU Leuven And then after that, I decided to pursue a career as an engineer. I workdd in Nokia in the research and development department. And after that, actually, together with Alexandria, I decided to start Prodi
So currently I'm actually the CTO of Prodi. We're still an early stage startup and what we do is we are helping big corporates to be able to engage more with their employees. Currently they rely mainly in written communications. So for example they have newsletters or they have blog posts where they share their strategy, maybe some customer success stories.
or new people are joining the team. But more often than not, these things go unnoticed. So what we're doing is we help them to have a weekly podcast where in five to 10 minutes, the employees can actually get to know all what they need to know about the company. So now the employees can choose whether they want to read or just play.
Claudia Colvin (01:32)
Super interesting. And where did the idea come from? Was one of you two part of a big company and just seeing newsletters coming in and nobody reading them?
Patricio (01:40)
Yeah, it was a combination of two things in January one year and a half ago Wait January 2024 Yeah, so at that time Alexandria and I we were both working in big corporates and So she was working for Atlas Copco and I was working in Nokia. They're both multinationals that make 20 billion in revenue And at that time We really felt how when we were just starting our jobs, we really had the time to be able to keep up with the communication of the company. But as we started to gain more responsibilities, at some point, we just didn't find the time to read anymore. Or maybe even like the energy and the enthusiasm to read. I personally am very big podcast lover and I always was thinking, why could someone not just make a podcast for all this valuable content? So that's a little bit where the curiosity started. And at the same time, text to speech, so the ability to change text to highly human-like voices with AI was starting to become a thing. Like it was starting to sound scarily good. So at that time we were starting to explore, is there a way how we could like overlap this problem that we're seeing with the technology that is existing? And as I mentioned in the beginning, Alexandria and I, we both really like to build and try things. So that's a little bit from where everything began.
Claudia Colvin (02:55)
And how did you meet your co-founder?
Patricio (02:57)
We go way back. We met in university and when we both studied in Leuven, both are engineers.in beginning we were just, it's not that we really work together, but in our last year we had the opportunity to collaborate on a course for UX development, user experience development and web app development. And I remember I always knew that she was a very talented person. So I asked her if she wanted to work with me. The fun thing is actually she didn't want to work with me. She rejected me. And because she said like, no, because we're friends, I don't want this to get messed up. But I was like in my mind, yeah, but you're so good. And I think that we can do something really cool.
Patricio (03:42)
Even more fun is actually turns out that for that project we couldn't choose the teams and we ended up together. So it was such a, I don't know, like coincidence in life. Long story short, the project went super well. And I think that we enjoy so much working that from there already we had like the seed.
Patricio (04:00)
Later on we did a hackathon following that spark that we we love to work together and we won the hackathon and again, super good experience. So I think that then we went both in our own paths for our work, but from that point onwards I always knew I could really collaborate with this person if I want to do something. Definitely she will be in the top of my list on who to call.
Claudia Colvin (04:21)
Interesting. And what is it that you think makes you work so well together?
Patricio (04:26)
I think that's-
There is several factors, like on one hand we inspire each other to be able to let's learn new things, tackle new things. I think that that's actually like a very big factor. Another one I think that is that inspired both of us having a study engineering, we have different skills. I am a bit more like a technical person and she's actually much more a sales profile, which is what we ended up doing in the company.
Although we didn't know that when we started. But we just had fun. I think that when we are working together, it feels like we are... I don't know if it's cheating, because it's very fun to work together. And we also feel this... Or it's us versus the world type of vibe. But we got it, you know? It's a strange, but just good collaboration, I would say.
Claudia Colvin (05:12)
Amazing. It's super important to have really good chemistry with the co-founder.
Patricio (05:16)
Oh my god, yeah. So much time spent together. Like, really. I always hear people when we were starting always saying co-founders are so important. It's almost like if you got like your wife. And I was like, I don't get this. But now having done this already for like, months full time, I really get spent so much time together, and there's a lot of pressure and that really becomes such an intrinsic part of your life.
Claudia Colvin (05:42)
So let's jump back a bit into the story of how you developed the company. So you talked a bit about where you got the idea from. Talk us through how did it go from idea into testing and then actually, you know, having customers.
Patricio (05:56)
Yes. So as I said, it was January 2024 when we were starting to be sparked by the technology that was coming out. And at a first glance, actually we did not have the concept that we currently more B2C. We first envisioned more for just people rather than companies. And then we really didn't know how to make a business, but we read a book called The Mom Test.
And we were like, wow, that sounds so cool. So that's what we're going to do. And we started doing like a lot of interviews. We had a lot of people from all different sides trying just to see what were they thinking. But we were still working our jobs. So we will always just talk to them at 6 PM or in the weekend. Thankfully, people are super nice and we always could find a way. But the sad part is actually like we had so many interviews and no one really cared about what we were doing.
Like they were nice, but they always would be, yeah, you know, sounds interesting. Maybe if this were to happen or when this were to happen, like maybe you can contact me again. But you know that you really didn't trigger them. Like that, we went all the way to like May, perhaps almost June. And one time like we were talking to a company in this case, Delaware Consulting. We were talking to the L&D department because we already started shifting more into B2B.
And they said, guys, honestly, like you seem super enthusiastic, but I'm not interested about what you're saying. In short. But I know someone in the communication department that actually has been really looking for ways to do podcasts. So it seems that you guys could help her. Can you do that? We really didn't know what they were doing but we're like, yeah, 100 % we can do it. Let's schedule a meeting. And that's when we talked for the first time with the head of internal communications Delaware, Cathy and it was really the first time that we could understand her problems. And like what we were trying to do, it just made sense in the content she was telling us. So we got so excited. We were super unprepared and I think that they were also validating if this concept was something for them. So it didn't materialize rapidly, but we started looking for more people like Cathy.
Patricio (07:59)
And it was like black magic, like for the first time. Actually people, their problems would make sense for us with what we're trying. Yeah, I think that it was really like a breakthrough because after such a long time of three months just talking to people and nothing sticking, we were just thinking this is just something that like is not really possible. But Cathy motivated us even if she didn't became a customer at that point yet.
And then we also participated in KICK Leuven, a program to stimulate students and they also helped us a lot. And eventually, we just felt that our concept was growing, that we knew what we wanted to build. And that's when we decided, okay, we really need to just go full-time together.
Patricio (08:39)
and that was in October. We thought we had a customer that would convert, and an investor. Turns out that neither the investor, nor the customer converted. And we didn't have jobs anymore. So it was quite interesting! We then got accepted into Startit KBC. And then we have three months. Let's say like what was left on 2024 that we really started to pushing for the internal communications.
just trying to talk to all our network. Hey, do you know someone in internal communications? Hey, I know that you work in, I don't know, KPMG. Can I talk to the internal communication person? And really started every time, just seeing that there was traction, but for us converting them into sales was really difficult. So then we started exploring other areas as well where the technology perhaps could fit. Long story short,
19th of December we had a conversation again with Cathy the lady that we talked in June of 2024 and this time she was ready that we just talked to her and she was like, yeah, I'm ready guys So we actually like verbally agree on something and Then she just sends an email confirming that everything was gonna go through and I remember just being with Alexandria like We finished the call and we were like what?
Is this our first customer? We couldn't believe it because we never sold anything before in our life. We are not coming from a sales background. So yeah, was like, wow, they're paying for it as well. It was fantastic for us.
Claudia Colvin (10:05)
And also to have such a big name as a first customer, it's quite amazing.
Patricio (10:08)
Right, right. We also noticed with our interviews in those three months between November, October, till December, that our product really was meant for big companies. That over there we could provide the value that was needed to justify the effort and the technology. The business case made more sense for us. We talked to a lot of small companies. I remember Alexander said to why are you calling with the small company again, because you know, small companies, they're very prone to call with you. He said, we already figured out that they're not gonna buy. And I will say, yeah, but like, I don't know, have a good feeling. I would end up the call and be, Alexandria, Exactly the same thing that the previous 10 companies that we talked to said. But yeah, Delaware then started with us. And that was when we officially got incorporated. Maybe it's a little small.
that maybe not that many people know, but when Delaware accepted our proposal that we made for them, we actually were not even incorporated. So then we asked them if they could wait for us until we got incorporated, and after that was when actually only mid-January that we started working with them.
Claudia Colvin (11:13)
Super interesting. I'm going to pause because there's quite a few things you mentioned that I want to go back to and ask more about. And I'm actually going to start from this last one that you mentioned, because I think the decision to incorporate, when to incorporate, it's quite a big decision. And it's important to do it in the right moment.
Patricio (11:18)
Yeah.
Claudia Colvin (11:31)
So I was curious to know if you and Alexandria had had conversations about when would be the right moment to incorporate and what was it that, were you guys sort of waiting for the first customer to come in to be able to incorporate?
Patricio (11:43)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that for us, we quite early by talking to other founders, especially those that have been founders for like four years or something, they always mentioned to us like one of the mistakes that I did was incorporating too fast. Like really like, for example, I have a very good friend, his name is Ruland. He's the founder of ExpectMe.
Patricio (12:04)
I think that he incorporated one year before he had sales. And he said, a lot of responsibilities come with you incorporating. And yeah, like we just basically like needed to start paying an accountant. We also needed to pay for the notary to like be able to arrange everything. now you also need to responsibilities while you're actually not generating any revenue. So then he said like, you guys really just like wait as long as you can. And we definitely did.
We waited until like literally we just had our first customer
Claudia Colvin (12:31)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially because it's not a straightforward process to incorporate in Belgium. It's quite expensive and as you say, comes with a lot of paperwork and responsibilities.
Patricio (12:42)
Yeah,
I mean, actually it wasn't that difficult to incorporate, to be honest. So we incorporated over the Christmas break, which made it like more complex. And we also had such a time pressure because we wanted to be able to start with Delaware as soon as possible. But we actually just got someone that was in charge of basically navigating the environment with us. Because there is actually very concrete steps that you need to follow.
Claudia Colvin (12:48)
Thank
Patricio (13:03)
And if you know someone that just tells you, you need to do this for this part, you need this, it actually is quite smooth. Surprisingly, I was also very scared, but I think that if I needed to do the process again, it's very black and white. You need to do this, then you need to do this, then you need to do that.
Claudia Colvin (13:18)
The other thing I wanted to go back on is I was curious to know for how long, if I've sort of inferred correctly, you and Alexander worked on this project on the side of your job and then at some point you decided to quit your job. So for how many months were you doing it on the side and what was it that made you decide, okay, let's both quit and go on this full time now?
Patricio (13:38)
Yeah, I think that we started in January, these interviews which we would schedule always after hours. And then just very exploratory and at the same time on the weekends. So it was really like from January all the way to October, so it was like 10 months. 10 months where we were also building prototypes on the weekends.
trying to see what could stick but it was a very slow process actually now that I look back to it it was incredibly slow, incredibly tiring as well it's super tiring to have this context switch so yeah it was very tough
Claudia Colvin (14:05)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and what was it that made you decide to go full-time?
Patricio (14:17)
I think that at some point we just noticed that we're not gonna get anywhere with just having it on the side. That was the first thing that we were just like, this seems like something that is a very big challenge for us. We would really like to be able to put all our minds into it. And currently it's not possible. So that's when we really brainstorming.
okay, how could we make it that it will work out to go full time? And at the same time, for the first time, as I mentioned, in summer, we were starting to get some traction on the latest idea that we have been thinking of. And I think that's something that was very worrying. We were like, if one of our customers says, hey, I wanna actually work with you, it is just not possible. Like in terms of time to be able to do both things in parallel. So when we decided to do it on time,
It's because we actually watch a video, I watch a video from Y Combinator. Y Combinator for those who don't know it is an accelerator in San Francisco, quite known. And they said that if you wanted to, it's not advice by the way, but if you wanted to do a startup you needed three things. And this really resonated to me. They say you need to have enough money to survive for a year. Then you needed to have, full-time on your project. And last thing, if you're going to do something technical, you need to have a tech co-founder. And they really were appealing to, if you have those ingredients, even if they are not there yet, because you are putting so much resources and creativity, your ability to iterate through many ideas would just increase your likelihood to do it. And we had all those ingredients. So then we were like, OK, let's go for it.
Claudia Colvin (15:48)
Amazing. Yeah, Y Combinator is the best accelerator in the world and companies like Airbnb and Dropbox and very big names have come from that. I'm familiar with the talk you're mentioning. I'm going to link it in the show notes. What was it that gave you sort of confidence in the idea?
Patricio (15:59)
okay, fantastic.
I think that honestly, was just for the first time something that we were hoping to build someone in like these big companies were caring about. Like they were asking us more for it. And we really just understood the problem as well. Like from this very early conversations, we understood that like companies would like to have a podcast, but podcasts required consistency, meaning every single week you will be able to deliver high quality content.
Claudia Colvin (16:13)
Mm.
Patricio (16:30)
And the companies did not have the budget to be able to reliably provide this, not only in terms of like money, because this could be very expensive, but also time. it requires production to be able to make a podcast. And from our technological background, we knew that there was a good chance that actually this could be satisfied in a more automatic, efficient way.
And then we were just excited, okay, can we try it out? So I think that that's when we gained confidence in our idea that we said there is people in the market that would like to experiment with us, the feasibility of creating an AI podcast within their companies.
Claudia Colvin (17:08)
you mentioned your first customer, Katie, you had the conversation with her, you had the first conversation with her in June, she wasn't ready, then you spoke with her again in December, she was ready. What were the things that changed that made her ready there?
I mean, at that time, I actually didn't know. And we only knew these not that long ago when we were talking about the renewal with her. Because we first did a three month pilot program. And then in the renewal, we went again to their offices in Ghent. And we were talking about it. And now we were more comfortable. So I asked them, what changed between June to December? It was very interesting for us.
So there were two things that made them wait. The first thing was that they were not sure if this was something that their audience would like. So they run internal surveys. So this took some time. The second thing, there was another product out there that was in their opinion, potentially also a very strong fit for their problem. So they wanted it to test it. So for the first part, which was the survey, they did a survey internally and 50 % of the people that responded to the survey
were very interested in trying out the podcast. I think that I'm not super sure about the numbers, but that's what I roughly remember. And they got a very good response on the service. So that made them very enthusiastic about the podcast idea. Secondly, the second tool was Notebook LM. And Notebook LM is a tool from Google that is made for helping you to reason content. And they tried out that tool.
And basically they wanted to figure out, hey, do we actually want to do this with a startup or do we want to try it out with this external tool from Google? And I think that, I mean, I don't want to put words on other people, but what I perceived was that they noticed that external or generic AI tools did not have what they needed in the internal communication context.
which was that for them it was incredibly important that it was very efficient, that they could have highly customizable, repeatable style and tone that really matched their brand. And then it was secure for them as well. So all those things together were the things that we focused and how we managed to differentiate ourselves from even a big player that is just way more general, such Notebook from Google.
Claudia Colvin (19:14)
Yeah, and I think there's a really important lesson there for anyone maybe looking for startup ideas or who's working on something and then realize there's like a big competitor out there that in the end, technology can do many things, but it's also the context in which you use the technology where really a solution and a product lie. And so just because there's someone out there who's already using the technology, even if it's a huge player like Google, if you find a use case where the generic option doesn't work, then there's something there. So many of these technologies can be applied in so many different use cases. And if you're able to provide something that's really hyper-customized for a specific use case, then there's something with legs there. And what you're building really proves that.
Patricio (20:03)
Yeah, 100%. 100%. I think that's something that I believe more and more every time the more we dive into this project.
Claudia Colvin (20:11)
There was another thing I wanted to go back on. You mentioned earlier Startit KBC. Can you walk me through a bit? How did you get involved and what's it been like being involved with them? I'll actually maybe just quickly mention what it is because there might be someone listening who doesn't know.
Patricio (20:21)
Yeah, maybe a small...
Yeah, for sure. It's called a Startit @KBC. And this is an accelerator in Belgium. It's a one year accelerator where they provide coaching offices and other benefits without needing to take. They don't ask for equity or any compensation from the companies. So they really work based on partners such as the bank or other partners. And we got into the accelerator in November 2024. And since then, they have been greatly helping us in terms of like, have office space in Antwerp Also we have coaching. We have also a great community. We have met many, many other great founders in here. So it has been really fantastic.
Claudia Colvin (20:55)
Mm-hmm. And whose idea was it to sort of get involved with them? Was it kind of a no-brainer for both of you or did someone intro you?
Patricio (21:17)
I think that we got to hear about them from, in LinkedIn. We got, we heard about them on LinkedIn and we just asked around. happened to have like some friend that had a friend that was in here and they always spoke highly of it. The interesting thing is that we try applying in February, 2024 and we went to some of the stages, but eventually we got rejected. But From that moment we knew, okay, this is super fun. When we got rejected, they gave us some feedback, which actually helped us to be able to, well, we're still just like working on the idea. And then in October we applied again and thankfully we managed.
Claudia Colvin (21:56)
That's another very important lesson, it does often take a few tries before you get in
Patricio (22:02)
Yeah.
Claudia Colvin (22:03)
And actually one of the companies that went to, so there's a Belgian company called Conveo that was in Y Combinator last year and they also went to Startit KBC. So it's interesting to see kind of the connections of the different accelerators you're mentioning and KBC definitely has a very good reputation, not just in Belgium, but also in Europe. It's a very, very good accelerator.
Patricio (22:24)
Yeah, actually just talking to Conveo, I actually used to sit like just one desk away from Hendrik, one of the founders of Conveo. So yeah, it's amazing. And just like them, there's other very exciting startups. And I think that when you talk to these founders that have already a lot of experience in certain fields, it's super interesting. I always say to Hendrik whenever I meet him, it's very annoying to see you but at the same time like exciting because he always challenged me on something and I know that it's true but it's so uncomfortable the way how he's challenging me so it's always very nice.
Claudia Colvin (22:56)
Do you have an example?
Patricio (22:57)
Yeah, I think that for him one thing that he always asks is pricing. So he always challenges on pricing. Like for example in the beginning when we wanted to do our pilots he was like yeah but guys you should try to actually get pilot periods that are paid and then always ask yourself okay how could you derive more value for the customers? So then also your company can add more value.
That's something that for him always is like a priority to not be scared to ask if you could derive more value for them.
Claudia Colvin (23:26)
Mm. Yeah. And did you apply that? How did it go?
Patricio (23:29)
Yeah, definitely. mean, am not in charge of that specific aspect of the company, but Alexandria is. And she and Hendrik always have fun in these conversations. And I think that has been going great, it has helped us to be able to to build better negotiations, I would say, like agreements with our customers that came after that.
Claudia Colvin (23:49)
Something else I wanted to ask you about, I was looking on LinkedIn and I saw a couple of other projects that you sort of went through mentioned. So one of them is Future Five and another one is Seeding Growth for Media. So can you talk those are and how your company got involved with them?
Patricio (24:05)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They're actually related. So when we just started with the idea in January, we got invited by Glenn, who is one of the organizers of the future to the 2024 edition. Our idea was very young and I remember such an imposter syndrome when I went, but he was always super encouraging. And we went to the the pitch and we had a great time.
It was in Supernova, but the 2024 edition. We didn't make it through the next rounds. In that case, there was multiple stages, but we had a great time. And again, we were just starting, so for us just to show up was amazing. And during that event, actually, we met another incredible lady. Her name is Natalie Schappers, and I hope that I pronounced her name correctly. Sorry, Natalie.
We met her because she gave us a workshop on how to pitch for the future. But then she said, hey guys, I really like what you guys are doing and I think that Seeds and Growth for Media will be something for you. So then she refers to Seeds and Growth for Media, which is an accelerator that is mainly sponsored by the VRT, a very big channel on media in Belgium. And she caught our curiosity.
So then we reached out to Mattias who is in charge of Seeds and Growth for Media and over there we started also at the same time with the Start It KBC November. And since then it has been amazing like they have like a lot of workshops and a lot of interactions with the big media companies in Belgium. So it has helped a lot to give a lot of exposure and good feedback for our company since we were in a very early stage. and then funny enough
Claudia Colvin (25:37)
Mm-hmm.
Patricio (25:39)
The next year, Glenn reached out to us again if we wanted to participate in the future, this time 2025, and this time we won. So again, it was one more time, one thing that we did twice, and the second time we had a better outcome.
Claudia Colvin (25:52)
That's a great success story and also shows sort of the power of just keeping at it. So in terms of the story, we kind of reached the point of closing your first customer, Delaware. Let's continue. So you close your first customer, Delaware, and from then on, what happened next? How did your next customers come? And also, how did you continue iterating on and improving the product?
Patricio (26:14)
Yeah. So from that, from that moment, we, we actually have been able to onboard other four fantastic companies. they are MediaHus and Rularta who are two very important media players in Belgium. Then we also onboarded EntityData who is, the fourth largest telecommunication company in the world. So also we're super happy to be able to be collaborating with them.
And then Lineas, who is a very large, Belgian, privately owned train operator. So also fantastic. We onboarded all those four clients and that's where we are right now, commercially speaking. And at the same time, we have been working really hard to be able to improve our technology from the day we onboarded Delaware till right now.
Claudia Colvin (27:00)
Tell me a bit more. you've been working hard to improve this technology. I can imagine. What does that look like?
Patricio (27:05)
Yeah, when it comes to our deliverables to our clients, what we do is we take a raw piece of content that they have. So it could be, for example, like five to 10 minutes read article on, let's say a client that they work incredibly with and they go over like the technology that they use and why this client was so good. And then we need to transform it into a one minute snippet where two voices will be chatting, discussing over what they heard in a style and tone that the client chose. For example, it could be, okay, let's talk about it as if we were like in a coffee corner. So maybe a bit more informal, just like, did you hear about this, this customer we had? There will be like, no, no, no, no. Like everyone keeps talking about it, but I don't get it. So very conversational friendly, more like in a podcast format.
So that's where we start and where we end. Of course, a lot of things need to happen in between. And that's where we have been putting a lot of effort. When we started with Delaware, actually our first episode took us 15 hours to make. Yeah, everything was so manual. Like so, so manual. We would do the scripting by hand. Like we would then use audio editing tools to be able to like...
Claudia Colvin (28:03)
Wow.
Patricio (28:14)
move the voices and overlap them correctly, like really so manual. But from the very beginning, Alexander and I, we always decided we want to like really be able to provide like extremely high quality because we're working with these incredibly important companies and they're giving us the chance. So we don't want to compromise in quality at all. And at the end for them, what is important is we were able to deliver in the time fashion that we agreed upon. So from that point, we have been able to
Claudia Colvin (28:28)
and
Patricio (28:39)
incredibly reduce that time.
Claudia Colvin (28:54)
And what was it that helps you reduce the time, what were the different automations or technologies that you used to get there?
Patricio (29:02)
Yeah, I think that we have two parts of our process. The first one is to transform the written content into a script that basically just has like, okay, character one says this, character two says that. That part, we didn't touch it within the first three months, but we focused a lot on how do we convert those finished scripts into actually voices interacting with each other. And for that, we worked in an internal tool.
Claudia Colvin (29:09)
Mm-hmm.
Patricio (29:27)
that basically allows us to be able to automatically manipulate the way how the audio overlaps and control in a very easy way things like the pause between two people, which is surprisingly important. Like how long is the space between one dialogue and the next one? So yeah, that's the part that we improved and that was the most time consuming part and also annoying to do to be honest.
Claudia Colvin (29:38)
Mm-hmm.
And in terms of who's been collaborating on the project, has it been just you and Alexandria or have you had other people helping as well?
Patricio (29:59)
Yeah, mean like full time is Alexandria and I. And then we have had the incredible chance to have two interns. Well, actually like three interns because we had a friend as well that went before we even started just in 2024, a very good friend of mine called Jonathan. He helped us just when we were like, just, let's just try to play with the technology. Super talented. We did a demo, unfortunately didn't work.
Claudia Colvin (30:16)
Mm-hmm.
Patricio (30:24)
out. And then another front of our school, Ivan, came, very technical guy, and he really helped us to be able to create this automatization of the collection of the voices as an intern. And then Carlos, another intern by this time in marketing, and he also as part of his studies, joined us. As part of his master thesis, I think, joined us, and he's helping much more in the commercial aspect.
Claudia Colvin (30:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And how did you find these people? You mentioned one of them was a friend. Did you meet them through this? okay.
Patricio (30:52)
Two of them were friends,
Jonathan and Ivan, well not where they are friends, and Carlos, we actually met him in Antwerp, there is something called the Brain AI community, organized in the Brain Embassy. And over there, I was invited to give a talk on AI, and then within the networking, Carlos approached me and we had a good match.
Claudia Colvin (31:13)
Mm-hmm. I'm curious to know what's the impact that the product has been having, what kind of feedback have you been getting from customers?
Patricio (31:21)
Yeah, there is a lot of things for our most of our customers are quite early. So it's still difficult to tell. But one of the most beautiful moments I think that we have in our let's say entrepreneurial career. It's during the future. The last edition in 2025, one of the judges, was Christophe, who's a partner of Delaware.
But we didn't know if he liked our product or if he did not like our product. We didn't have any contact before with him. And when we were pitching, I remember that there was another judge who did not really understand our concept. And what happened after that was, it almost brought us to tears because we were in this high pressure moment and then Kristoff...
Claudia Colvin (31:55)
Mm.
Patricio (32:04)
just started explaining the other person what our product did for them. But in a quite like, emphatic and passionate manner, he started explaining how for the people in Delaware, the leadership team is so important to be able to bring the message down to everyone. Because this helps them to, just be more oriented. It can also lead to maybe learning from one customer's story to be able to provide it to another customer.
just being inspired and being engaged and feeling proud of where they're working. But all of this was what he was saying. And that was just a massive validation that someone that we didn't know in a company that was working with us could speak that way to That was more a qualitative, I would say. Also, mean, with Cathy, we work very close to the numbers with Cathy and Elke. Those are the people that we work with.
And then we have been tracking the metrics. And so far, we have been able to accomplish a very similar reach out or close to a reach out to the written communications. So that's also very interesting. It is still early to know exactly who are we reaching and to what extent will things like churn will play a role. But the metrics so far are quite promising.
Claudia Colvin (33:14)
Yeah. And do you have any metrics on it? Because you were mentioning at the beginning, sort of part of the problem you're trying to solve is that these news, the written newsletters, they, you know, they reach the whole company, but most people don't read them. Do you have any metrics on how many people are sort of listening to the podcast versus who's reading or not reading the newsletter? And also if it's like the same people reading versus listening.
Patricio (33:38)
it's more qualitative, I would say, but Delaware has run surveys on what people do think about the podcast. And over there we have people that are commenting, okay, great, finally now there is something that I can listen in the car. Or I never liked to read something, now I can actually listen to it. And although the data, say, is not conclusive,
Claudia Colvin (33:42)
Hmm.
Mm.
Patricio (34:01)
it does
give us an indication that the audience that listens is not necessarily the same the audience that writes. But of course, constantly trying to collect data with the customers so we can understand better the audience and how to be able to reach them better.
Claudia Colvin (34:08)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's kind of good indications coming from qualitative data and still quite early to say on a quantitative side, but it's still, it looks very encouraging on the qualitative side.
Patricio (34:28)
Yeah, I think that also something that we actually run our product on our customers platform. So in internal communications is a very heterogeneous market. So each company has their own, let's say a strategy platform. So that means that being able to sometimes get the metrics that we would like to is not as straightforward.
Claudia Colvin (34:35)
Mm.
Patricio (34:51)
And also like in this stage of the company, we decided together with our clients, okay, let's just focus on volume first and how many people are we reaching. And then we kind of start learning deeper things. For example, for how long who's coming back as we move forward with the project.
Claudia Colvin (35:07)
Mm-hmm, that makes sense. There's something that you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that I want to go back to because it's really important. So you mentioned a book called The Mum Test. I love this book. it's the book that I've recommended the most to the most amount of people. So it's by Rob Fitzpatrick. Can you...
a little bit about sort of why this book was really important for you, what are the core concepts and how did you apply them.
Patricio (35:33)
Yeah, absolutely. Maybe before I want to do a preamble, because before reading the mom text, I read another book. Well, it's more like 10 pages called Talking to Humans, which I think that really encompasses what mom test is, but just in 10 pages. And this was recommended by our first mentor, which was a former professor called Mark Van Aken, who just said, guys, before you build something, just understand for who are you building and like what is behind their heads.
Claudia Colvin (35:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Patricio (35:58)
Then we go introduce to the mom test a bit later. And it makes so much sense for us because a previous experience that I had. Before when I was a student, I wanted to develop a mobile app for my family to help them to be able to keep track with their accounting. And together with Jonathan, my friend that we did a prototype in the very early stages, we worked for one year and a half on this app.
We worked really hard. It was super fun, but a lot of hours went into it. Long story short, no one ever used this app. Like no one, no one. And I think that that really like, I mean, it was hurtful, but also was a super powerful lesson. So when we were starting this project, Alexandria and I, I was quite skeptical about just starting building. Even though that as someone that loves to build things,
I really just like to jump and start creating things. So when Mark when I mentioned to us this part, resonated a lot and I was like, okay, finally I have like a framework that I can follow to help me to understand more or de-risk what I want to build. And when I read MomTest, something that I like is the author actually is also a software engineer, so it has like a technical mind. So it felt like for me, it was very logical what he was saying, almost like mathematical.
And just like, yeah, this is the way how you can just understand and derisk the assumptions that you have without even building something. And he's quite structured. And that just clicked a lot with my brain and Alexandria's brain. So that's exactly what we do with our customers.
Claudia Colvin (37:26)
And just to quickly kind of summarize the core concept of the book, the idea is that it's really important when you ask questions to not ask them in a way where you sort of lead them on and lead them in a specific direction. You also need to be quite sort of indirect in a way where you just, you don't really say, hey,
I'm building this thing, what do you think about it? But you just pretend that you're kind of casually mentioning the topic, right? So in your case, it would be like, hey, so do you read the company newsletter? why not? Kind of this. And if you start by saying, I'm building this solution to why people don't read the company newsletter, then the information you'll get will be.
really biased and the reason it's called the mum test is the idea of you know if you for example are building mum loves cooking and you're building an app for recipes if you go to your mum and you say hey mum i'm building an app for recipes what do you think about it do you want to use it your mum is your mum and she likes you and she's going to say oh of course honey and and then you know you leave it there on the table and you see that she ignores it and just reads her books so then clearly something's wrong so it's the idea of like really
being very sort of super focused on what's the customer problem and just asking questions about exactly that without giving any sort of ideas of like, what's your opinion and what you're trying to build so that the data that you get and the answers that you get are really stripped back and real. And I think something else that's important because this is something that you mentioned at the beginning when you were saying you knew that you didn't have
the product market fit yet when the people you were speaking to was replying saying, okay, well, if when it's ready, get in touch with me. Part of what the book says is, you the word if, when it's hypothetical, right? So the instant that you're talking in hypotheticals, you don't have real data. So for example, you should never ask, you know, would you use this? You put it in front of them and you see if they actually use it.
And so if you've presented something that people really want, then people are gonna say, when is it ready? I need it now. And so all the data that's accurate is the one that's in the now. Anything that's in the future and hypothetical, it's just not relevant.
Patricio (39:34)
be able to summarize it that well.
Claudia Colvin (39:36)
I've been recommending this book for nine years, so that's how I...
Patricio (39:39)
Yeah,
actually in a Start it KBC they're also super enthusiastic about this book. We have a coach called Dries and he's a big fan of it. And then there's another coach called Andy and we receive workshops as well on how to try to use these principles. So highly recommend it. I think that just by reading the introduction of the book, you really get a grasp. And I think that most likely will hook you to read the rest of the book.
Claudia Colvin (40:01)
Yeah, and the book has really good frameworks on how to ask the questions and how to give the prompts and follow ups and so on. So yeah, big, big recommend. Next topic is funding. So I was curious to know how have you funded the project so far?
Patricio (40:14)
Yeah, so we have been bootstrapping this project with personal funds in the beginning and then also with the sales with our customers. And on top of that, we received the support of is an organization from the Flemish government that supports innovative ideas in Belgium. And they have a program called ISS.
Claudia Colvin (40:27)
Mm-hmm.
Patricio (40:36)
for any founder doing something innovative, I highly recommend it. We have only had good experiences with them. With our coach, they still help us right now because we're still doing the process of the money that they have provided us to boost our project.
Claudia Colvin (40:50)
Perfect. And for anyone who hasn't heard of it before, so the money that comes from Vlajo, what's sort of the, is it a loan? Is it, do they take equity? What's the attachment there?
Patricio (40:59)
Yeah, it's something called a subsidy. And I'm not like a legal or financial expert, but at very high level what it means just to meet a project, stipulating what you want to accomplish. It could be either a proof of concept or a proof of business. And then you explain them how much money you need. It's up to 50K. It doesn't need to be 50K. And then it has a duration. And then
The agreement is you're going to fulfill this case. We're going to give you the first half of the money in the beginning and then at the end if you accomplish what you have mentioned that you will accomplish or agree with us, then we'll give you the other half of the money. And it's something that actually is not a loan It doesn't need to be repaid by the company.
Claudia Colvin (41:46)
Amazing. So it's effectively money where you don't have to pay it back and you don't have to give up equity. So super interesting.
Patricio (41:52)
Correct,
it's a stimuli of the Belgian government to support early stage innovative startups.
Claudia Colvin (41:59)
That's quite amazing. this me back to something else that I wanted to ask. the very beginning, you mentioned you're Mexican, you came to Belgium for your studies. What was it that made you pick Belgium? And did you already have in mind the idea of maybe wanting to start a company in the future in Belgium?
Patricio (42:14)
Definitely didn't have a plan to start a company here, probably anywhere when I started as an student. But when I was in Mexico, I already had an experience of studying abroad for high school in the UK. And it was such a life-changing thing for me traveling. Because when we're in Mexico, we mainly just stay in Mexico. And Mexico is really big.
You can really travel and meet so many different cultures just within your country. But when I was able to go to Europe, thanks to the incredible support of my parents, I was so shocked about how different things and how much I was able to learn in such a short span of time. So then when I wanted to go for university, for me it was a very high priority if I was able to just get out of Mexico.
In Mexico there are fantastic universities, but for the extra factor of just being outside learning something new. Plus in my mind was if I am outside of Mexico, that means I want to be able to work anywhere where I want. If I want to go back to Mexico, I can. But if I want to work in, I don't know, Australia, I have a better chance. So after that was a bit of an optimization problem, maybe just my engineering brain, I started just ranking all the universities that
are in Europe, I like Europe, so I wanted to go back to Europe. So I ranked all of them in terms of how good were they for engineering, and then I compared a ratio with their price. So which was the best university for the best price? And Belgium far is the best one. The KU Leuven is an incredible good university for an incredibly reasonable price. My parents were also very happy with my strategy, and they did not...
Claudia Colvin (43:37)
Thank
Patricio (43:45)
Because, for example, other great universities in the UK would cost, I think, like four times more per year. So it's a no-brainer. When I came here, I didn't know anything about Belgium. So it really was just, was, is Belgium is in the middle of Europe? It must be good. It cannot be that bad. So I took a little bit of like a gamble there, but let's say I calculated risk. And thankfully I fell in love with the country.
Claudia Colvin (43:51)
Wow.
Patricio (44:08)
I met my fiancee in this country as well. I really bonded with the people here, their culture, the beautiful, let's say, extravagant weather, because for me coming from Mexico, having season is actually a highlight. I really appreciate So yeah, then when I decided to start a company, I have been building a network my study years, throughout my working year. So then,
it makes sense to do it in here. Plus we also noticed that Belgium, for example, via Vlaio via Startup KBC had certain facilitators that could speed up the beginning that I just didn't know in other places. So that's why for us Belgium was the right place to start also our startup.
Claudia Colvin (44:43)
Mm.
Yeah, it sounds from what you said now that for you, it's been a very positive experience to be in Belgium as someone who's starting their company.
Patricio (45:00)
I think that for the most part, yes, immigration could be a little bit tricky and it's something that we're still working on. But definitely there is a lot of things that are positives in Belgium. Of course, there's things that like regulations and maybe high taxation that are also things that perhaps could be more beneficial in other places. But overall for us has been the right place to start.
Claudia Colvin (45:22)
to hear that. Do you have any final words of advice for Belgian founders or future Belgian founders? And by Belgian I mean anyone who's starting a company in Belgium rather than only Belgian people.
Patricio (45:34)
I think that, I mean it's hard to give advice because I really believe that there is so much still that I'm going to learn in the future. So if I give advice, I'm going to regret about it. And in 10 years it's going to be, why did I say that? But what I could say is when Alexander and I, started in October, I always say that we just had a lot of enthusiasm. We really didn't know how to do anything. Not the technology that we were using, not the accounting, not...
Claudia Colvin (45:54)
you
Patricio (45:59)
all the complexities come with a company. We just had a lot of enthusiasm and we were very keen to ask people how to help us. I've mentioned a lot of people that have helped us, some in a more formal, some in a more informal coffee corner. And I think that what, I don't know how it's everywhere else, but I have seen that people in Belgium are really keen to be able to take some time to guide you through something that for them is way more natural than for you. So...
My recommendation would be whatever you're doing, look for someone that has experience in it and ask them how have I done it and then do the mom test so then you end up building something that other people would like. So just talk to people. That would be my advice and work hard, very hard.
Claudia Colvin (46:39)
Yeah, I have to really echo what you said there about the kind of general Belgian responsiveness and willingness to help. Previously, I worked in London, then in Barcelona, and as someone who's relatively new to being in Belgium as a working professional, I really haven't seen anywhere else the amount of...
people that you reach out to that have never heard of you before and who actually reply and say sure let's meet for a coffee. is really something quite unique and so especially as someone sort of building a startup from nothing this is really something to leverage from the Belgian ecosystem that might not necessarily be as high conversion in terms of outreach if you're building somewhere else.
Patricio (47:16)
Yeah, which actually like I was like to stress on this point because when I come here and I talk to like a lot of Belgian people, they actually think that they are not very like there is this stigma that Belgian people are not that warm, perhaps as like southern countries and I think that there maybe there is some truth or not on that. But really people when you talk to them and when you ask for help, they will help you, which I think that is fantastic. Like the example of Hendrik.
Hendrik went to YC Combinator, I think that right now they raised their second round in the millions. Really, he doesn't have a reason to talk to me besides just wanting to help and maybe exchange some ideas. So it's a great example of just the willingness of people to help.
Claudia Colvin (47:59)
really final question. What's next for Prodi? I keep pronouncing it like it's an Italian word. I'm not sure how you pronounce it
Patricio (48:06)
You do great, actually. That's the way how we pronounce it ourselves. What's next? That's super interesting question. So currently, we're working in two, let's say two boats at the same time. We're taking our tech to the next level. So as I mentioned, we're working towards those 15 minutes of production while keeping the same amazing quality that we like. And on the other hand Sales, we want to be able to see how can we reach at the end of the year to have 10 to 20 customers working with us. That would be our, let's say commercial goal. In the meanwhile, we are actually evaluating whether fundraising could be something for us or not. If it is, we will be going also quite hard on that.
End of Q3, I would say.
Claudia Colvin (48:50)
Very exciting. Well, I'm going to keep following your journey. Very curious to see where it ends up and definitely very impressive so far considering you've been operating for less than a year and already have achieved these big name customers and exciting results. So thank you so much for your time. This was a really interesting conversation, and I look forward to seeing how everything evolves.
Patricio (49:10)
Thank you, talk to you soon then.
Claudia Colvin (49:12)
Thanks.