“From March 3 tot April 1, I will post every day some achievements, ideas or thoughts about life, company or some random trivialities”


Day1: It’s around midnight, and I was looking back at the day. Some stuff that comes to mind.

* startup culture: we just hired 2 new persons to manage the artist, repertoires and labels at SonicAngel. Both have a different background, but will bring a lot of expertise, dynamism but also structure at SonicAngel. However, we still needed to find the proper desks, since our space is kinda filling up (we’re currently 12 FTE’s, 2 stagiaires and a load of freelancers). However, they took the initiative to go to ikea, to buy some desks and office material and install it themselves. Yep, it’s part of the startup culture! Thanks and welcome in the team natalie & bart.

* VRT made a newsitem about Dries Buytart (@dries), the founder of drupal and acquia (Acquia is for Drupal what Redhat was for Linux, proving services and support mainly for midsize and large enterprizes). Dries is a true thoughtleader, and someone I respect a lot! He’s also the very first FanShare buyer of Tom Dice (about a year ago!). Last time we had lunch (somewhere in Antwerp) he had just decided to move to Boston. Rightfully so. It’s very unfortunate that ‘Belgium’ lost this amazing talent, who might even become our most famous Belgian entrepreneur. It made me think of 2 things, which are on my mind since quite a long time:

  1. why the hell don’t we foster entrepreneurship more in Belgium ?? From university to (seed) funding, to media support. Ofcourse, Belgium cannot compete with the US because of the size of the market and the access to capital, but there is a new vague of entrepreneurship with youngsters. You should check the enthousiam at the betagroup or during Startup Week-ends (like this one). Also, a US based initiative named Founders Institute is open for enrollment again, you can apply here until March 6 (and yes, I’m also mentoring). Looking at ‘the’ startup cities in SanFrancisco (linked to the universities Stanford and Berkeley) or Boston (Harvard or MIT), IBBT can and should play a major role in enabling world class research via our universities in combination with leading innovation driven companies, should push venturing and accelerating growth companies in the ICT and media domains. People ask me ‘why the hell did you become chairman of the IBBT?’, and the only reason is that I think Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia all have unique assets to become a huge entrepreneurial startup pole, and I think the entire board and team at IBBT have the ambition to create something outstanding.
  2. the second thought, which is kindof ‘dounting’ me already since quite a long time was ‘shouldn’t we move (part of) our team to the US. I don’t think that moving the entire team is needed, but the mentality to grow and scale and the access to talent is so much larger. We are coming in a crucial phase of our company, and I pretty much agree with this interview from the founder of Foursquare ‘“The Hard Part Is Building The Machine That Builds The Product”

* today I enjoyed a lot the interview I had with Lieve Verstraeten, a Belgian journalist for VRT’s Terzake. The topic was SonicAngel, and more specifically how we relate to the ‘fluid society’, as defined by the British-Polish sociologist Bauman. Made me think. And thank you @bnox (clo willaerts) for the book :)

* while working on our planning of the year, I realized that we will be releasing work from more than 10 (ten!) new artists before summer. It’s amazing that we were able to fan-fund 10 artists in January 2011 alone, but it’s even more amazing what incredible talent we have. Someone asked me yesterday if there is so much talent in Belgium ? My answer is simple: some years ago, all major labels launched 5 or 6 new or emerging bands every year. now they stop at 1, and we’re doing a large part of the rest. There’s not less talent, there’s more than ever!

* but my main thoughts lie with Guillaume Van Der Stighelen. Yesterdag I heard the news that his son Mattias lost his life. When someone called me, I had to stop my car. And still today when I read or hear about it, I become very quiet. A friend of mine who suffered a tragedy with his son too, told me some time ago that there are 2 kinds of problems: the ones you can solve, and the ones you cannot solve. It sounds so simple, but it places a lot of our daily troubles into perspective. I guess every parent who hears about what happened to Guillaume and his partner Kris and their daughter Joline – also has this auto-projected ‘what if this happens to our kid’, and it becomes unbearable. “Guillaume, Kris and Jolien. Though words will not be able to ease any pain, all our thoughts are with you. ” Femke, Charlie and Bart.