Watch out for the poppies

It is great that there are so many start-ups and incubators. Starting and doing business is hip. Yes! Enterprising Flanders will wake up after all. It is relatively easy to build an app, put together a powerpoint (or prezi), win awards and even make it into the news with a fun project.

Unfortunately, we also see too many poppy flowers blossoming: companies with a business model that can hardly stand a little adversity from a larger party for example, that suddenly comes up with a comparable innovation and pulls the rug out from under the startup with an extensive customer base, a solid reputation and sufficient resources to last a few years. Let’s hope that the very short flowering period of these poppies does not dampen the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs, journalists, investors, friends and family. And for those who still can: check the SWOT analysis and remember the business model!

The same challenge applies for Participium. For each company they evaluate different business models that scale quickly enough in order to be able to become a serious company with European opportunities in the short term. At the same time, we are looking for a business model that is also reasonably solid and can withstand a collision. Do we have a monopoly on the truth? Obviously not. That is why, for every project, we surround ourselves with a few external observers that help us remove the blind spots. We also regularly ask our financiers to think about the companies we want to build. And then we stay down to earth and keep our fingers crossed for our projects to survive the first storms.

“We are going to build companies” (Trends)

Journalist Benny Debruyne articulated it perfectly in his article on Participium in Trends of 7 April 2016: “We are going to build companies”. That is exactly what Participium wants to do: create a business, create a lean start-up company around it, let that company quickly do business with its first customers and then achieve years of growth with a solid capital injection. The role of Participium is not that of an investor, but that of an inventor, entrepreneur and manager.

Francis Dams (left on the photo) is a lecturer at the University of Antwerp, and made Participium realize that, for the early stage, they need a typical entrepreneur such as Jan Lagast (partner at Forte, center of the photo) with a lean team. The years of growth on the other hand are best supported by an experienced manager such as Herman Demarbaix (former top director in the petroleum sector, right on the photo).

Every company gets its own manager, also known by Participium as business leader. They call it that way because they want that person to focus on generating business and coaching the team to develop that business and to take good care of customers. The business leaders of Participium are typically 45+ people who are tired of the corporate environment and yet do not want to take the risk to develop their own company alone. Participium offers them a team consisting of a visionary inventor, a financial planner, a business analyst and a back-office operations manager. Each of them providing support services. They also find a company that has traction in the market already, so they don’t have to (re) invent the wheel themselves. They will find a team that searches together for the capital they need in order for that first nucleus to grow into a beautiful pan-European growth company.

Many financial parties answer “team-team-team” to the question “what do you think are the three most important success factors for the future of a company”. The bringing of this very team is the strength of Participium. Special thanks to Jo Libeer for this reminder.

Click here and read the full article Benny Debryne wrote about Participium in Trends of April 7, 2016.

Participium builds first companies

Today, the first Investor Committee of Participium gathered to reflect on the companies that we structurally want to work on and in which we want to invest full time and effort. Last summer, Participium’s emphasis shifted from advisor-supervisor to company builder. And that has its consequences for our way of working.

As a company builder, Participium will now only lead companies for a longer period of time to guarantee success in the medium term. In existing companies we work together with the existing team that can further realize their product or service. But we also create our own companies, which we believe to be potentially successful throughout Europe. In the first years, the focus will be on two ‘sweet’ spots: Brains@Work and Living & Leisure. The first group consists of knowledge workers and their suppliers. Product manufacturers and service providers for the future of living and recreating are part of the second group.

All projects Participium was involved in, in the last few months were analyzed. The Investor Committee decided to actively engage in the reorganization of two existing companies. The first one is a management consultancy firm annex marketing communications specialist for technology companies and the second one a software producer that creates web software for consultants and freelancers. In addition, Participium is preparing a completely new franchise concept for administrative services for its first capital injection. All projects are covered by the Brains@Work sector and have an international growth perspective.

Participium will of course not abandon its customers from the advice and guidance. These customers get the opportunity to receive structural support if they are open to it. Today, however, Participium wants to invest resources and time on a number of crucial projects.

Matchmaker becomes company builder

Participium organized various Investor Nights during the first months of 2014. One of the most important lessons from these sessions was that they have to try to be more than just a matchmaker between an entrepreneur on one side and potential capital and directors on the other side. Our role must be more active.

As a test case, we have started to make an active commercial contribution to one of the projects and we have noticed that this is paying off. We have also seen that specialists and engineers with excellent ideas are usually unable to do it alone. They often don’t even want to do it alone, but are forced to do it alone because of a lack of resources. The entrepreneur with the golden idea turns out to be a rare combination. Some entrepreneurs do not have good ideas at all, but they are brilliant entrepreneurs when someone else brings them those ideas. Others have an idea, want to undertake, but do not have the guts or the experience to do it alone.

Team-team-team

This is still ranked in the top 3 of reasons for success. One of our contacts put it firmly: “I believe in the survival of the fittest”. Well, we believe that the “fittest” include exactly those technological companies in which the technical specialist with the golden egg is supplemented by co-entrepreneurs with additional expertise, such as marketing, sales, HR. And those fellow entrepreneurs? That’s what we’re going to take care of.
How we will make this tangible, we will explain to you in a next update.