Allez Startups

#14 Ringtime with Diederik Syoen

Summary In this episode, I spoke with Diederik Syoen, co-founder of Ringtime [https://www.ringtime.ai/]. Founded in 2025 in Gent, Ringtime uses AI to speed up frontline hiring, screening blue collar candidates at scale via phone and WhatsApp. The AI handles live conversations in 22+ languages, also outside office hours. The inefficiencies of blue collar recruitment are at a scale that is unthinkable to someone with no context in this sector. Here’s some data to make this concrete: * During the early stages of Ringtime, Diederik spoke with a recruiter who had qualified 140,000 candidates in a year. Of those candidates, only 3% was placed.  * Behind those 140,000 candidates qualified, there’s hours and hours of more wasted work. Recruiters have cold targets that go up to 100, 120 calls a day. And 80% of the time they just land on voicemail. Imagine the scale of time wasted. Imagine the frustration of doing a job that requires so much effort, with such little impact. This is why large recruitment agencies in this industry need to hire thousands of recruiters per year. The average tenure in the role is 1-1.5 years. The data is telling us that humans aren't loving this job at the moment. Ringtime is fixing all of this. One of their customers went from a 35% conversion rate to 80% conversion rate. That's more than 2x of all the candidates coming in and it's only after a few weeks of using this tool.  A recruiter they spoke to said their job is finally starting to be fun again. They just raised a seed round led by Volta Ventures, also backed by Syndicate One. Keep watching this startup, they are going places! Listen to the episode to hear: * Why Ringtime killed deals outside staffing to focus on the blue collar recruitment vertical * What it’s like to build in a vertical that is new to the founding team  * How Ringtime is making recruiters’ jobs better, focusing their time on high impact work and removing the boring part, rather than replacing them  * The future of blue collar recruiting  * How customers doubled conversion rates in just a few weeks  * The founder rule they use for hiring early employees * And more...

#13 SuperNova Festival with Leen Anthuenis

This is a quick episode featuring Leen Anthuenis. She's the CEO of SuperNova, an Antwerp-based tech and innovation festival that has become Belgium's most prominent event of its kind — imagine the Belgian Slush or TNW. It takes place every year in March and is an unmissable event for anyone wanting to get a full-immersion into what's happening across Flanders in tech, startups and innovation. You'll get to see live pitches, expert talks, and not to mention exceptional food and drinks!  This is not a sponsored episode, I genuinely loved this event and wanted to highlight it for benefit of the Allez Startups listeners.

#12 Oper Credits with Geert Van Kerckhoven

Summary In this episode I spoke with Geert van Kerkhoven, CEO and co-founder of Oper Credits [https://www.opercredits.com/], an Antwerp-based startup on a mission to fix Europe's broken mortgage process. Founded in 2019, they raised a Series A of €11 million in 2022 and now count around 40 employees, active across multiple European markets. Oper Credits sells to banks, not borrowers. Their technology sits behind the scenes, making the mortgage journey faster and smarter for everyone involved. The numbers speak for themselves: 81% faster mortgage decisions and a 90% boost in first-time right scores. This is Geert's second venture in the mortgate space — he joined the first one as employee #2, back when there was no startup community or ecosystem in Belgium. Besides his role as a founder, he's also an active member of Syndicate One. In the podcast we discuss the difference between building now and building 10 years ago in Belgium. What I found most compelling in the Oper Credit story was the AI pivot. Geert walked me through how they went from building digital onboarding tools to going all-in on Agentic AI, and why that was the natural next step towards their original vision of real-time mortgage underwriting. We also talked about building a distributed team across Antwerp, Vienna and Zurich, how European mortgage regulation actually made international expansion easier, and more.

#11 Start it @KBC with Lode Uytterschaut

In this episode I spoke with Lode Uytterschaut, Co-Founder and CEO of Start it @KBC — Belgium's largest startup accelerator, with 9 locations in Belgium and 3 abroad, having coached over 3,500 founders since it launched from a single floor of an Art Deco tower in Antwerp. I cannot stress enough the monumental impact that Start it @KBC has had on the Belgian ecosystem. With no strings attached, no equity and no charges, the incentive to apply is strong, there is nothing for founders to lose and much to gain. Built from nothing, when there was no startup ecosystem in Belgium, it has created a flywheel of startups (eg. Conveo, Aikido, Loop Earplugs) and a thriving community. What struck me most was how Start it @KBC was built in the margins. When Lode joined KBC as an atypical hire, corporate life left him with more unstructured time than he was used to. He used it to go to events, meet people, and build relationships — which is ultimately how he found his two co-founders. How we use our free time can be a real differentiator for long-term impact. People who are hungry to build and learn do great things in their free time, they use it to push themselves, learn and create. We also talked about the flywheel effect the Belgian startup ecosystem has reached, the deliberate work Start it @KBC has done on gender inclusion and why it's still hard, what they look for in founders at jury stage, and why scaling a mistake is one of the most common ways startups fail. Chapters 01:00 From architecture to KBC — an unlikely pivot 05:00 Building in the margins: how the co-founding team came together 12:00 The first six startups and how the program was built from their feedback 20:00 Why Belgium sends more founders through accelerators than the rest of Europe 28:00 Gender inclusion: what works, what's still hard 38:00 Mental health, family and what founders take for granted 48:00 What Start it @KBC looks for: coachable, but not too much

#10 Maurice & Nora with Thomas Butstraen

Meet the deeply human startup whose product has been built entirely thanks to AI. In this episode, I’m joined by Thomas Butstraen, co-founder of Maurice & Nora, the Antwerp-based startup on a mission to become the “Uber for non-medical care.” Maurice & Nora connects seniors and busy families with reliable, vetted students who can help with everyday tasks, from gardening and companionship to after-school childcare and homework support. They’re tackling one of Europe’s biggest societal challenges: the growing care crisis. But what makes this story even more remarkable is how they’re building it. The entire platform was created using AI coding tools (without a traditional engineering team!) allowing them to move at extraordinary speed. We talk about: * The personal moment that sparked the idea * Why building B2C in Belgium is so hard * How they turned PR into a growth engine * Their bold B2B2C strategy, positioning care as an employee benefit * Winning major recognition within their first year * What it really means to build a “societal unicorn” * And the founder reality behind the ambition This is a conversation about speed, impact, and rethinking how we care for both older and younger generations: powered by AI, but built for humans. Keep listening to discover how Maurice & Nora plans to change the way Europe thinks about non-medical care.