The Syndicate One Podcast

Why AI Interviewers get better answers than humans?

What if your AI interviewers are pulling better answers than your human team, just because people aren't worried about being judged? Filip Schouwenaars has been building in AI since 2013, back when it was neither cool nor easy. He was DataCamp's first hire, rose to VP of Engineering, then moved to ML research at VITO. In January 2026, he joined Conveo, a Y Combinator S24-backed AI research platform that lets companies run qualitative interviews 10 times faster than before. He's also one of us at Syndicate One. Filip sat down with Robin Wauters to talk about what actually works (and what doesn't) when you bring AI into a startup moving at speed. * He breaks down why people give answers that are three times as long to an AI interviewer as they do to a human interviewer. * He shares what we learned at the S1 portfolio AI meetup about where Belgian companies really stand on adoption. * Filip says Belgium's biggest missed shot isn't the capital. It's deep tech that never makes it out of academia. * And he gives the most honest answer we've heard yet to the classic founder question: Would you ever start your own company? * Six weeks at Conveo. Filip hasn't written a single line of code. That's exactly how it should be. Recorded following Conveo's $5.3M seed round. Listen. Share it. Building something big from Belgium? You know where to find us.

Can Your Customers Vibe Code You Out of Business?

Spentys had customers walk out to build their own thing. Six months later, they showed up again. So what does that really say about the whole 'vibe coding' threat to SaaS? Louis-Philippe Broze co-founded Spentys in Brussels while still in his master's. He'd just wrapped a full-time internship at Wooclap. Now he's on Forbes 30 Under 30, and Spentys has 24 people split between Brussels and Georgia. Half their revenue comes from the US. They use 3D scanning, modeling, and printing to digitize custom orthoses and prosthetics. Louis-Philippe sat down with Robin Wauters to break down what really happened when customers tried to roll their own solution, and why they came back. He gets into: * How Spentys is building AI modules so tailored to orthopedics that nobody else can touch them.  * How raising money too early burned 18 months they could've kept. * Why you should bring on an independent US board member from day one, not years down the line.  * Why Belgium's political setup is slowing down the whole ecosystem. You'll also hear about the lasagne-and-burger theory for staying sane as a founder, why 80% of patients choose 3D-printed devices, and what Materialise taught him about getting hospitals on board. Listen in, pass it on, and if you're building something big from Belgium, reach out.

From a shoebox of receipts to Visma: Alexis Eggermont on building Accountable

"To ship our first prototype, I had to show up unannounced at our Serbian dev agency's door. Today? I'd vibe code the whole thing."  Alexis Eggermont co-founded Accountable. If you're a freelancer in Belgium or Germany, you probably know it. Visma owns it now, but Alexis has been with Syndicate One since day one. He sat down with Robin Wauters and walked through eight years of building from zero. Here's what jumped out.  * Alexis and Nicolas decided to start a company first, then came up with the idea later. They worked backward through three questions and landed on Accountable. * Exits aren't a single moment. The Visma deal took four years to pull off. After the sale? Same team, same product, just a bigger family. More gradual than sudden.  * And while AI is melting software moats, Alexis sees it growing the market, not killing it.

Building What Matters - Navigating the AI Era with Tanguy Goretti, CTO of HEXA

"Today is a good time to build - just make sure you understand the direction the market is heading before you start." In this episode, we sit down with Tanguy Goretti, CTO at HEXA, to unpack the new reality of the tech ecosystem. Drawing from his experience, Tanguy shares what he has learned, what he would do differently, and why he has never been more optimistic about what lies ahead for European founders. The real challenge today is not speed but relevance. Will what you are building now still matter as models evolve? With the barrier to entry lower than ever, every founder must honestly ask whether AI is helping them build something great or just making it easier to build more things. We also took time to look back and discuss what it really takes to build and scale a hardware company in Europe and what we can learn now that the dust has settled. Key questions addressed in this episode: * Will what you build today still matter as models evolve? * Is AI making it easier to build great companies, or just easier to build more companies? * Why is the CTPO profile, technical and product, becoming the most critical role of the next decade?

A chat with Séverine Nolf, CEO and co-founder at Pleasefix.ai

Robin Wauters sat down with @Séverine Nolf on the Syndicate One podcast.  "Every day building my own company is so many learnings. I really don't see it as a risk." 📍 Speed is the one structural advantage startups have over incumbents. Séverine's rule: be a first adopter in everything, without exception. 🔄 On being a female founder across tech, finance and consulting: she does not dwell on the barrier. When people underestimated her, delivering flipped the bias into a strength. 🇧🇪 Ambitious people in Belgium no longer need to leave to build something global. The risk is not starting. It is the compounding of learnings you miss by waiting.