Tag: start-ups

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Tax shelter explained

Earlier this year Participium was a guest at Mazars for an info session on tax shelter for start-ups. The info session was aimed at (future) private investors who want to invest in young promising companies and fully exploit the tax benefits.

With his extensive expertise in tax & accountancy, Peter De Vos of Mazars comprehensively explained the legal and fiscal aspects of the tax shelter.

Because the attendees were very enthousiastic about what they had learned that evening and because we are convinced that the information can be interesting for any (potential) investor, we shared Peter’s full presentation (in Dutch) on the Participium YouTube channel and at the bottom of this news item. We have put the slides of Peter’s presentation in the video, so you don’t have to miss a thing of the interesting session.

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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.

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Omar Mohout states that the Belgian venture capital is doing well

Omar Mohout gave us an excellent summary of the capital investments in start-ups and scale-ups during the first quarter of 2016. He concludes that Belgium started the year pretty well. Good news, in times of a shrinking venture capital market in the US.

A few highlights:

  • Belgium is ranked fifth in Europe as far as the number of deals are concerned.
  • Belgium is ranked ninth in Europe for raised capital.
  • Belgium has the highest number of B2B companies in Europe (75%). The countries where B2B is more dominant than B2C are: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and UK. In the Netherlands this is 38%. Ireland and Italy are the most B2C oriented with 29%.
  • The top 5 sectors of Europe are a replica of the Belgian startup ecosystem with one exception: manufacturing is ranked in the Belgian top 5 (in the European ranking this is security)
  • The average year of foundation for Belgian technology companies that raise at least $1M is 2011, the same as France, UK, Switzerland and Sweden.
  • Belgium is ranked 15th in Europe with an average amount raised of €3.2M. Sweden takes the first place, then Ireland and then Switzerland. The European average is €10M.

Some interesting European trends:

  • Some countries that did well last year appear to stagnate. Spain for example (€ 500M raised in 2015) has € 27M for Q1 (Source: Novobrief.com).
  • Europe performs better in Q1 2016 than in Q1 2015 (Source: tech.eu).
  • Sweden takes the first place in raised capital thanks to a single company: Spotify. This company raised money 2 x this quarter: $ 500M in January and $ 1B in March.
  • The UK leaving France and Germany far behind in raised capital. France is doing better. Germany is lagging behind in a number of deals.
  • Northern Europe is doing very well. All Scandinavian countries, except for Norway, are ranked in the top 10 of both deals as raised amounts.

Mohout also focuses on Belgium:

  • The total of the capital raised in Q1 is € 55M (of which € 51M consists of deals above $ 1M). 47% of the capital is for Flanders.
  • The € 1M club consists of 15 members: Unified Post, Real Impact Analytics, Rombit, Epigan, Smappee, Icometrix, EMASphere, Molecubes, MyMicroInvest, PieSync, Approplan, Pronoia, Twikey, Intix & Social Karma. Nine of these are from Flanders.
  • LRM, Internet Attitude and Pamica (Michel Akkermans) were the most active investors. With regard to crowdfunding, MyMicroInvest was the most active. They had, among others, a very successful campaign. In half of the deals business angels where involved.
  • Walloon Brabant is on the 1st place for raising capital, with Brussels and Antwerp respectively on place 2 and 3. Together, these 3 provinces account for 71% of all venture capital in Belgium.
  • For cities, the first place goes to Brussels, then Antwerp and La Hulpe. Ghent and Hasselt follow on 4 and 5. Together, these 5 cities accounted for 76% of all venture capital.
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How does a growing SME find its financing nowadays?

share#square at Monard d’Hulst

The available funding for starting companies differs enormously from the growth capital being released for larger companies. For the growing Flemish SME as we all know it, it is far less evident to attract capital than for a promising start-up. Fortunately? there are still a few possibilities left, but as a manager looking for funding, you should be cautious.

Bram Delmotte from Monard Law and Jan Lagast van Participium explain why: