GiveActions is a digital startup that works both for the planet and society. In fact, it gives to people between 18 and 35 the possibility to help free environmental and social projects from their smartphones.

The principle of the startup is very simple. Users just have to watch a video sponsored by ethical companies to raise money for an association. In this way, by simply using their smartphones they can plant trees, offer meals to the homeless, or even create nature reserves. All of this in less of two minutes and for free.

Thanks to this award, GiveActions demonstrates that it is possible to link the digital world to good causes, and to use technologies to act for the planet and society.

The post GiveActions wins the award for the most social and environmental digital startup in Brussels appeared first on Brussels Express.

Certified by the National Cooperation Council (CNC), urbike has partnered with a number of stakeholders (Smart cooperative, ULB’s mobility lab, delivery partners…) to generate new models and ways of working to make last mile delivery a viable option for Brussels-based businesses. While this phase is well underway (project BCklet), urbike has now partnered with Financité, a membership organisation which promotes finance as a tool to achieve social change. The objective is to raise 150,000 Euros to fund the purchase of equipment, the launch of delivery activities and the preparation for scale-up in 2020.

You can, until the end of February 2019, invest in urbike and by doing so become a cooperative member. This means that you will have a right to vote on the cooperative issues (1 person = 1 vote), the opportunity to participate to events and workgroups, as well as receiving up to 6% of the dividends on the annual profits made by the cooperative. There is also a bonus: because urbike is certified by the CNC and is a social economy cooperative, you can benefit from a tax reduction of 45% of the capital invested thanks to the Tax Shelter.

To invest you must buy a minimum of 5 shares priced at 100 Euros each (500 Euros), with a maximum of 50 shares for a single member. To buy share, simply fill in the form on urbike.be and a urbike representative will get in touch with you shortly. If you wish to invest more than 5,000 Euros, get in touch with them at info@urbike.be

The post An opportunity to invest in a greener Brussels and the social economy: Urbike cooperative shares for sale appeared first on Brussels Express.

Due to the high risks, innovations are usually commercialised via startups. The increasing number of startups being launched every day all over the world that are successful and impactful attests such statement. Nevertheless, even though stories of success, fame and wealth are highly publicised, many startups fail.

This should not come as a surprise. The risk/reward ratio is extensively used to compare the expected returns of an investment with the amount of risk undertaken to capture these returns. Simply put, in order to reap higher rewards, one must undertake more risk. Thus, not surprisingly, for every startup success story, there are several others of failure.

However, in the business world, there is a risk threshold any capable person is willing to take. Sure, there will always be unknown variables over which we have no control or knowledge, but, similarly, by preparing, analysing and assessing in advance several uncertainties can be mitigated or, at least, minimised.

For this reason, among other, not only entrepreneurs, but also corporates, investors, economic development folks, academics and journalists want insights on what the reasons startups fail are and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

Not-so-great team

One of the success factors most commonly mentioned as being critical to the success of a startup is having a good and diverse team. In fact, 23% of failed startups referred wrongly choosing the team members to run the business as the main reason for startup death. The team is the driving force making the founder’s vision a reality.

In these cases, founders and the team initially recruited to develop the venture do not have the skills, experience, culture fit or vision/purpose required. Wishing one of the founders had a specific skill-set they do not currently posses, identifying that the founding team was not able to, independently, or with a small amount of external help, build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), and recognising that another founding partner should have been engaged in order to balance people out are only a couple of the factors leading to failed entrepreneurial teams.

Some effective tactics in avoiding this mistake are to thoroughly identify the requirements and expectations for each position within the startup, use a good recruitment agency, recruit people matching the requirements listed, provide appropriate training, develop an effective compensation and a benefits scheme, and build an inspiring company culture, among others.

A curious and somewhat worrisome trend, even though still not very significant, are cases where it is uncovered that the team is responsible for financial discrepancies or other activities or operations on the fringes of the law.

Running out of money

Roughly 29% of startup deaths are due to running out of money. To be clear, this does not necessarily mean a lack of capital invested in the project. A startup can run out of cash due to several reasons, such as lack of planning or underestimated assumptions about the projected cash flow, both the short and the long term.

A steady and healthy cash flow is key for the proper functioning of a business. In order to avoid this, founders should develop a pessimistic financial statement and assume it to be true, calculate the initial capital required carefully, seek support from appropriate professional (accountants, consultants, angel investors, etc), and plan exit scenarios and thresholds, among others.

Building stuff no one wants

Entrepreneurs tend to focus on interesting problems to solve or on their own interests. Even though this is an interesting technique to boost passion and dedication to the new venture, 42% of startup deaths are due to focusing on these issues rather than serving a market need. Entrepreneurship is all about finding a way to solve a pain point in a scalable way.

Offering products or services that the market is not interested in buying at scale and/or repeatedly leads several startups to death. Additionally, often the market is not convinced about the value of the offering or is already buying it from a competitor with a better offer.

To avoid this common drawback, entrepreneurs must prepare a thorough business plan from day one, identify the weakest assumptions and prepare prevention and contingency plans accordingly. Similarly to what I previously argued, hiring appropriate professionals (consultants, accountants, etc) is also an effective tactic in avoiding this pitfall.

Key take away

These three factors are, undoubtedly, those contributing the most to startup failure. Nevertheless, these are not independent and are often tied to other reasons for failure.

Curiously several other start-up failure drivers are directly related to those mentioned above. For example, having a user un-friendly product and ignoring customers — factors leading to startup failure in 17% and 14% of cases — are directly related to offering products the market is not interested in.

In fact, most entrepreneurs fail on their own fault. From the top 20 factors leading to startup failure, less than 3 are due to external factors. In order to help entrepreneurs be more successful it is important to focus on the development of their own skills, specially concerning the factors that, historically, have led most of them to failure.

Next time an aspiring entrepreneur tells you that there is no money available for entrepreneurs out there, come back to this data. It is really important to clear up some misconception and focus on the most essential.

Entrepreneurship is a well recognised driver of economies and, for that reason, experts, business and political leaders as well as scholars argue it is a priority to foster an entrepreneurial culture. Concurrently, entrepreneurship education, which is a life long process, is key to prepare youth and adults for an entrepreneurial economy. Therefore, a significant investment in entrepreneurship education must be made and the proactive participation of the whole community, education system, government and businesses is required.

From my end, I have taken this seriously and invested a big amount of my time in giving visibility to entrepreneurship education, mentoring first-time entrepreneurs and producing content (hopefully engaging) about it. Through my consulting practice and mentoring activities, my collaboration with universities in providing entrepreneurship education together with more traditional curricula and my blog, I intend to help build this culture in Europe.

What about you?

The post Three deadly sins of startups and why they fail appeared first on Brussels Express.

In Brussels two entrepreneurs have looked into the matter closely and have come up with an innovative idea: Happy Hours Market, created by Ludovic Libert and Aurélien Marino.

To better understand the life cycle of food at supermarkets, the logistics behind its processing and handling, as well as the ideas for improvement brought about by Happy Hours Market, Brussels Express speaks this month with Ludovic Libert.

Could you please describe the current situation at supermarkets? How and when do they determine that food ought not to be sold to the public any more? What mechanisms do they use to dispose of it?

Legally speaking, food cannot be sold once the use-by date has expired. Therefore, every day before closing, supermarkets have to withdraw from their shelves the items which will “be expired” the day after.

However, the majority of these goods are still good to eat on the same day or could also be frozen to be consumed weeks later.

Being more and more concerned by their “Corporate Social Responsibility”, nearly all Belgian supermarkets give a maximum of their surplus to non-for-profit organizations. The remainder – which represents enormous quantity of food – is simply thrown away.

We are thus not alone in believing that such a waste is unacceptable, especially in light of the poverty in Belgium. Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources, charities are not able to collect even a percent of what is wasted every day. Food waste quantities are tremendous, especially in Belgium, with an average of 10.400 tons per day, while charities manage to collect around 10.000 tons per year.

At the end of the day, more than a million people live under the poverty line in Belgium; hence do not have enough income to properly eat, while an average of 7 tons per minute of good food is simply thrown away.

This is why we believe Happy Hours Market will be useful. It will provide daily access to shops’ unsold food, just after their closing, at reduced price. Happy Hours Market aims to be an online platform where we can buy food at a very attractive price, between 8pm and 10pm. Happy Hours Market also intends to foster charities food collection: all the goods that are not sold before 10pm will be brought by Happy Hours Market directly to charities.

Why do you think nobody had done what Happy Hours (you and Aurélien) decided to do?

I think that a lot of people already tried to tackle food waste. Everyone has its own way. For instance, in Belgium there exists a huge network of charities called “Bourse aux dons”, gathering a hundred of charities that are able to supply thousands of households. Nevertheless, due to their non–profit aspect, their growth potential is bound by the generosity of governments and the time of their volunteers.

For its part, Happy Hours Market proposes another way of reducing food waste, which will complement the amazing work performed by non-profit organizations. We strongly believe that using the benefit of technology to gather food waste and inform the customers can be a great way to further reduce the garbage bins in front of the supermarkets and to meet the needs of people who want to buy groceries at reduced price.

Is Happy Hours a non-for-profit (ASBL)? If not, could you describe your decision process when you chose the type of organization Happy Hours would be?

Happy Hours Market will be a commercial company focused on its value propositions: we aim at significantly decreasing food waste and, at the same time, providing people with a new opportunity to buy food at reduced price.

We believe that creating economic value from the food that should normally be thrown away is a good way to incentivize supermarket to work with us and to help the customers discover new ways of consuming goods. If more supermarkets contribute to, and more customers buy their groceries from, our platform, less food will be thrown away.

While the impact that non-for-profit organizations may have generally depends on the means provided by governments and the generosity of their volunteers, our goal is to develop a self-sustaining business model that contributes to reduce food waste.

This willingness has therefore led us to explore a commercial approach in order to achieve our objectives.

How did the test period go? Could you share some overview of the results? What are the next steps?

We have been positively surprised by the enthusiasm generated during this test period. As from the first day at the ULB Campus, more than 40 people came to buy goods which we collected an hour before. And they kept coming more and more during all week.

Our wish was to test the distribution logistic in order to discover constraints that we would not have detected otherwise. We found that our operational business seemed solid, although we still have a lot of work to do.

At the end of the week, we collected around 500kg of food from which we sold about the half. The remaining 250 kg were given to refugees.

In the near future, we will develop the online platform that should allow people from everywhere in Brussels to access their neighboring shops’ unsold food. It should be effective within a few months as from now.

We are very thrilled at the challenges ahead!

Good to know

Be informed via Facebook page “Happy Hours Market” and www.happyhours.be.

The post Food waste averages 10,400 tons per day in Belgium – Happy Hours Market wants to do something about it appeared first on Brussels Express.

An entrepreneur must be able to clearly identify the nature of his/her own venture, before going into execution mode. Otherwise chances of survival are slim. Not all startups are the same, and not all entrepreneurs are building startups. Moreover, a startup is different from an SME. For simplicity, let’s use the term new venture interchangeably.

Create something new and exciting

Often new ventures are segmented according to their industry, target customer or technical domain. Even though this provides some insights, more information is needed to better assess these ventures.

All people behind a new venture are trying to create something new and exciting (at least from their point of view). However, new ventures can differ greatly. There are three distinct types of new ventures: Innovative, Traditional or Social New Ventures.

Innovative New Ventures

Innovation is implementing a new solution to a problem and creating value. Innovative new ventures bring new solutions (services or products) to market by creating or seizing opportunities.

After recognizing or creating this opportunity, innovative new ventures offer new solutions that have significant value to their customers and a usefulness that they would not otherwise have. These ventures aren’t necessary started with an exit in mind.

Nevertheless, Innovative New Ventures can come in several different shapes.

Foundation New Ventures

A Foundation New Venture is formed from R&D and may launch a new business area. These companies can grow a lot in the first 10 years of existence but may also go bankrupt relatively quick. It is very uncommon to see Foundation Companies go public. Furthermore, they tend to attract very little investor interest.

Foundation New Ventures are focused on creating new opportunities. Therefore, typically, they are trying to create a new solution, to solve a known or unknown need for new or existing customers.

Example: Prevail Therapeutics

High Growth Startups

These ventures are focused on maximising profit and growth through innovation. This type of venture receives most investor interest.

Also called Gazelles, these firms are extremely important for the economic development of a specific geographic area. Interestingly enough, High Growth Startups may start, originally, as a Foundation Company.

High Growth Startups are focused on seizing opportunities. Therefore, typically, they are seizing an existing solution, to solve a known or unknown need for new or existing customers.

Example: AngelList

Scalable Startups

Despite having very humble beginnings, Scalable Startups aim high. Founders typically believe that their vision can change the world. Their focus is on searching for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Although extremely famous, Scalable Startups make up a very small percentage of the different types of new ventures. However, because of their scalability, they attract a lot of (risk) capital and press. They focus on a simple but powerful concept and are recurrently looking for financial investors to raise capital and fund their search for a scalable business model.

Also called Silicon Valley-type Startups, these ventures tend to group in innovation clusters.

 Personally I am extremely interested in Scalable Startups since many build these startups inefficiently. Scalable Startups are not smaller versions of large companies.

Scalable Startups are temporary organisations designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Once they find a scalable and repeatable business model, their focus shifts to rapid expansion (see High Growth Ventures above), which requires even more capital.

Scalable Startups are focused on creating news opportunities. Therefore, typically, they are trying to create new solutions, to solve a known or unknown need for new or existing customers.

Example: Facebook.

Buyable Startups

Buyable Startups are designed to be quickly sold for large sums of money

It is not uncommon for these ventures to avoid traditional venture capitalists and to search for other funding routes (crowdfunding being an example).

Unlike Scalable Startups, Buyable Ventures don’t necessarily search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Buyable Ventures are focused on seizing opportunities. Therefore, typically, they are seizing an existing solution, to solve a known or unknown need for new or existing customers.

Example: WhatsApp.

Large Company Startups

Large Company Startups are born from the need of large companies to be more disruptive in order to deal with changes in customer tastes, new technologies, legislation, new competitors, etc.

Traditionally, large companies grow through sustaining innovation where offering updated variants of existing solutions ensures growth. However, more and more, in order to ensure sustainable business growth, disruptive innovation is becoming a driver of success.

 Existing businesses can do this by acquiring companies (see Buyable Ventures above) or attempt to build disruptive innovation differently (either by developing other Innovative New Ventures internally or by using other Corporate Innovation Tools). Large companies have an extremely hard time in making disruptive innovation due to their size and culture.

Large Company Startups are focused on creating or seizing new opportunities.

Examples: BCG Digital Ventures portfolio

Other New Ventures

For more information on other new ventures, such as Traditional New Ventures and Social New Ventures, check this extended article on types of startups.

The post Are all startups born the same? appeared first on Brussels Express.

A man named Ludovic Libert has taken the initiative to change this. At the end of his studies (Solvay and Vlerick Business School) he co-created with Aurélien Marino the start-up « Happy Hours Market ».

With this distribution network, he will provide healthy food while substantially lowering the cost by giving access to unsold products at a reduced price via four steps.

1. He convinced supermarkets to give him food that can no longer be sold the following day(s) because it has reached its expiration date, saving the supermarkets costs of managing their food waste.

2. He will pick up the products after 18.00 in the partner supermarkets.

3. Between 20.00-22.00, these products will go on sale at a reduced price (usually 50% of the initial one), and interested people will pick up their order at a food truck parked in an easily accessible place.

4. Products that have remained unsold via this channel will be donated to charities that are not yet in contact with the supermarkets concerned.

This coming week the project will run a trial period:

– Monday 6/08 and Tuesday 07/08 (Avenue Paul Héger, 1050 Brussels in the center of the ULB campus),
– Wednesday 8/08, Thursday 9/08 and Friday 10/08 (Bolivar Square, opposite Gare du Nord).

During this period, one will need to go directly to the food truck to order and pick up the

food.

The project will officially start in the autumn.

Good to know:

www.happyhours.be.

The post A start-up decides to tackle food waste in Brussels appeared first on Brussels Express.

A Belgian start-up promises shake local, regional and thematic communities around the world thanks to « a digital tool that is both powerful and original » says François Dupont, CEO of Vox Teneo and NeoConnect co-founder.

Four entrepreneurs created a bond and value. The idea is simple:  allow everybody to easily connect to others. Through projects, organisations and groups. Here and everywhere. The tool makes it possible to share the chain of supply and demand for skills, know-how, financing and thematic information, and concerns or specific centres of interest.

A new Facebook, the Belgian way? NeoConnect is 100% Belgian: both the initiative and its development. Every community remains owner of its own data, which makes it completely quiet original.

NeoConnect provides every business (in both the private and public sector), local or regional community, or even thematic networks, with a digital tool that not only facilitates the daily management of these communities, but above all enables them to interconnect, expand and promote their ideas, projects, services, products or best practices of their community members.

« Besides the features of managing members, cross-connections, geolocation, sending invitations or newsletters, project management, online payments – to name just a few – this tool allows any community to grow and generate web traffic to attract more partners who are interested in the local, regional or thematic dimension of the platform » explains Frédéric Soudain, NeoConnect co-founder.

« The price for the acquisition of such a platform is unbeatable thanks to the concept of participatory development for all the communities connected to NeoConnect. This system allows the long-term sustainability of the project and operates according to the needs of the shareholders of a NeoConnect platform, included the users who share their ideas, or future needs » continues Pascal Goergen, NeoConnect co-founder.

According to Frédérick Graulich, NeoConnect co-founder, in a few weeks time, the start-up will be turned into a legal entity, allowing the project to quickly grow and at the same time maintain a flexible structure, just like the involved partners. « We invite you all to join us in this adventure » he concludes.

The post A new Belgian start-up was born today: NeoConnect appeared first on Brussels Express.