![No, Covid has not had a positive impact on the creation of new businesses [research]](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/startup-creation-240x240.jpg)
No, Covid has not had a positive impact on the creation of new businesses [research]
What has been the impact of the Covid crisis on the creation of businesses in Europe? Some have seen in the Covid situation a catalyst of the will to undertake. In other words, Covid would have pushed project leaders to launch their companies, especially in France. In our article, we analyze the situation of 11 countries and show that this generalization is false. Generally speaking, the dynamics of company creation appears to be on the decline in 2020. Statistics of business...
Jérôme Grimonpon, a French chocolate specialist, is an entrepreneur like no other
In this episode of “The Business World with Pierre-Raffaele“, our star presenter (10 years old at the time of the shooting) receives a very talented French chocolate specialist: Jérôme Grimonpon. Jérôme Grimonpon has been elected chocolatier of the year by the Gault&Millau guide and as such has seen his popularity skyrocket. Of French origin, he has made Belgium his new home. Passionate, daily he does what he loves, and the satisfaction of his customers is reflected in his work....
![[Podcast] SpaceSense, satellite image processing start-up using AI](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/spacesense-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] SpaceSense, satellite image processing start-up using AI
SpaceSense is a recent French start-up offering a solution for processing satellite imagery using artificial intelligence. We learn more in this podcast with Sami Yacoubi, co-founder of SpaceSense. Discover this entrepreneurial adventure in this new podcast.Haut du formulaire Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and marketing advice Email address * Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Terms of use and privacy policy. "I thought the blog was good. But the newsletter is even better!"...
![[Podcast] Flowlity, a solution to revolutionise the Supply Chain with AI](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/supply-chain-digit-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] Flowlity, a solution to revolutionise the Supply Chain with AI
With 8 years of experience in the Supply Chain, Jean-Baptiste Clouard launches Flowlity in 2018 intending to revolutionise logistics with his software. Flowlity’s goal is to help companies to better plan and forecast their needs thanks to AI. Discover this entrepreneurial adventure in this new podcast. Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and marketing advice Email address * Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Terms of use and privacy policy. "I thought the blog was good. But the...
![[Podcast] Labtoo brings together project leaders and R&D service providers](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/labtoo-labo-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] Labtoo brings together project leaders and R&D service providers
Labtoo is a networking platform that connects project leaders and companies with laboratories. Since 2018, Sophie Hue and Guillaume Leboucher, co-founders of the start-up, aim to accelerate research projects and enable innovators to find solutions to their R&D problems more quickly. Discover this entrepreneurial adventure in this new podcast. Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and marketing advice Email address * Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Terms of use and privacy policy. "I...
The lies of the novice entrepreneur
In today’s article, we propose to take a look at all the mistakes that project owners and novice entrepreneurs make. As a market research firm, and especially because we are very active in entrepreneurship, we are in the front line to get a comprehensive view of all the mistruths and preconceived ideas that endanger the survival of an entrepreneurial project. We come back in this article to the golden rules of entrepreneurship. On this occasion, we...
![[Podcast] how to support female entrepreneurship, with Florence Blaimont](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/women-entrepreneurship-TN-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] how to support female entrepreneurship, with Florence Blaimont
Women represent only 1/3 of entrepreneurs in Belgium. They earn 28% less than their male counterparts, according to the Brussels barometer of female entrepreneurship (2017 edition in French). And nearly 40% of Belgian women entrepreneurs have thought about stopping their activity in 2018. At a time when business creation is more than ever a driving force of the economy when governments are pampering start-ups, how can these figures be explained? How can we promote women’s entrepreneurship...
Virtual Reality : Interview of ArtMyn founder, Loic Baboulaz
After a visit at EPFL in Lausanne we discovered the work of ArtMyn, a startup specialising in Virtual Reality applied to Art. We interwied its founder, Loïc Baboulaz, to understand the genesis of ArtMyn and the evolution of the virtual reality market. IntoTheMinds : where does the original idea for ArtMyn come from ? Loic Baboulaz : ARTMYN is born from the academic project called eFacsimile that ran from 2012 to 2015 at the Laboratory of...
Fatal errors for startups growth
Fellow betacoworker Toon Vanagt made an impression when presenting on startups growth at Techstartup 2016. The least you can say is that Toon as vast experience in the field of startups (check his latest baby data.be) and a solid sense of humor. He was not afraid to tell the audience about his failures and I found one of them especially interesting : Casius.be. Toon explained how he burned 4m€ of VC cash to build a …...
Techstartupday 2016 : virtual reality on the rise
At the techstartup day 2016 that took place in Brussels last week, one of the buzzwords was virtual reality (VR). Juan Bossicard, Cluster manager at Impulse and President of the Microsoft Innovation Center, held a very interesting speech on the opportunities offered by VR in various industries. What I loved about Juan’s speech was the perspective it gave to Virtual Reality and its link with digitalization. Juan’s argument was that despite digitalization a frontier still remains...
Service quality and satisfaction : when will real-estate agents change ?
Whether you are looking for a property to buy, sell or rent, chances are high that you have dealt with real estate agents. In Belgium real estate agents have a bad reputation and as we showed in a previous research, it was justified. Today we are reporting on 4 key recurrent problems on this market that foster incredible dissatisfaction. Read further and we bet you’ll recognize yourself Customer’s needs not understood The first satisfaction levier which...
France and Belgium : two countries lacking a culture for customer orientation
In a very inspiring article (in French) Frederic Klotz, former community manager of Rue du Commerce, describes all the problems an e-customer can face in France (don’t hesitate to read the interview Frederic gave us last year). He describes the lack of customer orientation in French firms and suggests that French customers are the most badly treated. Frederic, believe it or not, France is not a unique example of a country lacking service culture and drive for...
What are the main reasons to create a company?
After the post we published 2 weeks ago on why companies fail, another interesting piece of statistics published by the French National Institute for Statistics (INSEE) regards the motivations of people to start their company and how these motivations have evolved since 2006. You’ll find the complete table below (we did the translations ourselves given that those interesting statistics are unfortunately only available in French). There are a few interesting insights out of this survey. ...
“Les Causses”, an example of successful retail concept
Sometimes I feel fortunate. I do a wonderful job, have a lot of wonderful clients, advise a lot of very different businesses. And on top of that I meet inspiring entrepreneurs when going on market research tours. The story of Alexis Roux de Bezieux During our last tour in Paris I met with Alexis Roux de Bezieux who launched “Les Causses” a tiny upscale proximity store selling food and drinks. Alexis was kind enough to...
A personal story about people who don’t deserve to be entrepreneurs
Our small company is approached or in contact each year with dozens of entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. They contact us for a broad range of topics, most of the time marketing-related, but for those of them who have already launched their business there’s a question that comes over and over again: “how can I make more money?” Well that’s an excellent question that can have many different answers. Yet, like in every single business, there are...
Intotheminds partner of the BSE Academy
Intotheminds renewed its partnership with the Brussels Region for the “BSE Academy” entrepreneurship and coaching program. The BSE Academy is a program financed by the Brussels Region and by the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER) to help green entrepreneurs. During 5 months, 8 teams of 2 to 4 people with complementing skills will be accompanied and coached. Participants will be selected based on the online call for applications. The aim of the program is to...
When innovation fuels other parties’ innovation potential
When innovation fuels other parties’ innovation potential I met at the SIAL 2012 fair with Emmanuelle Bernhardt, the marketing responsible of Groix et Nature, a company based in Groix (Brittany) which specializes in canned sea-food. As many SMEs in the sector, Groix et Nature claims a local positioning, sourcing exclusively local products and branding their geographical origin. This is a common strategy among SMEs and a well-working one in most cases, although the growth potential...
Air Cork: the story of an inventor who became an entrepreneur
Beautiful stories need to be known. So is the story of Eric Corti, the inventor of Air Cork. Eric presented his already well-developed concept of wine preserver in ABS show “The Shark Tank”. He turned down a $1m offer to buy his idea and decided to launch it by himself and embrace the entrepreneurship path. This was probably a difficult decision but the challenge was worth it. It was worth the challenge because Air Cork is...
Do you want to do business or not?
This post is a little be off-topic but it’s a kind of therapy for me. Writing is good for the peace of mind, isn’t it ? Over the last few weeks I’ve been disappointed several times by potential suppliers and partners who have shown themselves non-responsive and far from what one could call “customer oriented”. Let’s start first with a little bit of background. We are constantly dealing with a dozen of customer projects and...
The BSE Academy program for “green business” entrepreneurs
The BSE Academy program is aimed to be a springboard for would-be entrepreneurs wishing to start a “green business”. Financed by the Brussels Region and FEDER, the European Fund for Regional Development promoted by the European Commission. The BSE Academy gives the opportunity to more than 20 would-be entrepreneurs to be trained on various subjects such as marketing, finance, intellectual property, strategy. In addition they attend workshops and have the possibility to be coached personally and...
The biggest barriers to become an entrepreneur
One piece of research that liked very much at the RENT conference in Bodo was that of Tatiana Iokavleka : “Entrepreneurial intentions in post-soviet economies”. She conducted a research in 4 countries and asked 583 respondents a single question: “What is the single biggest barrier for you to become an entrepreneur?” Interestingly, for all 4 countries, 4 answers came back over and over again and contributed 60% of the results : risk aversion, lack of capital,...
Sabine Laruelle, Belgian ministry of SMEs, on the importance of entrepreneurship
I was listening on Dec. 13th to an interview of Sabine Laruelle, the Belgian Ministry in charge of SMEs, on a local Belgian radio (Twizz). In a crisis context like the one we are currently going through, it is perfectly understandable that the attention of the States focuses on entrepreneurs. For instance Bruno Wattenbergh, the Managing Director of the Brussels Enterprise Agency, was dealing the other day on RTL with the powerty problems 15% of the...
A few key points from RENT conference (#rentconference) introductory speech
The RENT conference started in Bodo (Norway) with a panelist discussion on entrepreneurship and more precisely on the role of entrepreneurship in the current crisis situation that the world is going through. I don’t want to sum up the whole discussion. Rather I’d like to stress a few striking facts or figures mentioned by the speakers. Professor Sarah Carter mentioned that 6 sectors were identified in Scotland as promising for the future of the economy. Those...
Impediments in business transfers (#rentconference)
Yvonne Slots and Loek Swelsen presented at the RENT XXV conference in Bodo, Norway, a piece of research on business transfers. Their research was conducted in the region of Parkstad, The Netherlands, at the borders with Germany (Aachen) and Belgium. This region is characterized by an important number of closed businesses, so Yvonne Slots in her introduction. The two researchers at the Hogeschool Zuid studied in particular the bottlenecks in the transfer of soon-to-be-transfered businesses, owned...
RENT conference (#rentconference) opens up on the debt crisis
The RENT conference, held this year in Bodo (Norway) opens up on the role of entrepreneurship in solving the European debt crisis. Who could actually doubt that entrepreneurship is part of the solution...
Bankruptcies vs. business creations
During my latest weekly session at the Brussels Agency for Enterprises (BEA) I mentioned the record level of bankruptcies in Belgium. Since January 2008 the number of bankruptcies has increased by 35% as readers of this blog may have already read. One of the candidates entrepreneurs objected that the increase number of bankruptcies was the consequence of a proportional increase of firms’ creations. I wanted to verify by myself and search the info on StatBel. To...
I want to be scared … let’s have a look at Belgium’s firms bankruptcies figures
The Belgium statistical institute just published the latest bankruptcies figures. It’s far from being positive. Here’s an extract: In July 2011, 599 businesses in Belgium went bankrupt, a rise of 0.8% compared to July 2010. The bankruptcies in July resulted in a loss of 1,304 jobs: 744 full-time employees, 354 part-time employees and 206 salaried employers lost their jobs. The number of bankruptcies in the first seven months of 2011 amounts to 5,830, a rise of...
Are entrepreneurs not suffering from the Knowledge Corridor more successful?
This is the question I asked myself when having a look at Olivier Laffut’s LinkedIn profile. The founder of the successful venture “Les Tartes de Françoise” (now striving for a market in New-York) is actually coming from the finance world which is seemingly unusual for someone in the fast food industry. I immediately made a parallel with Olivier Van Espen and Frédéric Duqué, the founders of Guapa, another entrepreneurial success of Belgium. Both came from sectors...
Entrepreneurs and black money
Since IntoTheMinds has started giving trainings on market research at The Brussels Enterprises Agency, one remark is coming over and over again. We explain to future entrepreneurs that it’s useful to have a look at competitors’ balance sheets and analyze the figures. If you pick the right competitors (in terms of size for instance) you’ll get a good comparison basis which will allow you to judge whether the industry you want to do business in is...
Next sessions of the market research workshop at the Brussels Enterprise Agency (BEA)
The two first workshops we gave were huge successes and were rapidly sold out. The Brussels Enterprise Agency therefore decided to schedule 4 new sessions from September onwards. This decision is really positive because it will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to be faced to the challenges posed by a good market research. Moreover we will insist on the importance of market research as far as the venture success is concerned. Remember that 60% of bankruptcies could...
Take the test … and see whether your startup will fail
We have developped an online assessment tool for the Brussels Enterprise Agency that allows startups to test the pre-requisites of success. This online assessment is free-of-charge and will allow you to test whether your business venture is at risk or not. Several solutions are proposed depending on the profiles of risk. This tool comes as a complement of the training on market study that we give regularly at the Brussels Enterprise Agency (browse their agenda here)...
Cerdan Heritage: a very professional SME
Generally I’m not easily convinced by new businesses and I rarely get enthusiastic about a young SME. Well, I think I must make an exception. I was in Paris this week where I met up with Alban Cordier who co-founded Cerdan Heritage with Nicolas Cerdan, Marcel Cerdan’s grandson. Marcel Cerdan was probably one of the first sportsman (with René Lacoste) to use his name as a brand on clothes. Nicolas discovered this pretty unknown aspect of...
Press review: focus on IntoTheMinds
We recently participated to the “SME week”organized by the Brussels Chamber of Commerce. As experts in strategy and marketing we advised free-of-charge SME which had previously registered for an appointment through the Chamber of Commerce. We were invited to share our experience in the journal “Entreprendre” (Dec. 2010 issue) and discussed the common problems entrepreneurs were faced with. Open publication – Free publishing – More...
The most common mistakes made by entrepreneurs
I was recently reading an interview of Bill Draper, an American Venture Capitalist, recalling his good and less good experiences with the SME’s his firm invested in. This guy is certainly not the less talented in the industry since he invested in firms like Skype, Hotmail ad OpenTable. I was particularly interested in his answer on the most common mistakes made by entrepreneurs. Here is en excerpt: “[…] They overestimate market size and underestimate how long...
The power of inertia
I was chatting last Friday with the managing director of one the most famous real-estate agencies network in Brussels. I quickly discussed with him the two posts that we recently published over his industry: the first was showing the state of amateurism of agencies in Brussels, the second the innovations launched by Century 21. After confessing that he couldn’t grasp the aim of publishing ideas and thoughts on a blog (I’ll come back to that later)...
It’s never too soon to prepare the sale of your company
I was visiting a client in the south of France last month and on my way back, in the plane, I was seating (as it is too rarely the case) next to a very sympathetic passenger who was willing to chat a little bit. I had a wonderful trip back to Belgium discussing some business-related issues with this entrepreneur who was thinking about selling his company. The company was apparently in good shape, made good profits...
![No, Covid has not had a positive impact on the creation of new businesses [research]](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/startup-creation-60x60.jpg)
![[Podcast] SpaceSense, satellite image processing start-up using AI](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/spacesense-60x60.jpg)
![[Podcast] Flowlity, a solution to revolutionise the Supply Chain with AI](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/supply-chain-digit-60x60.jpg)
![[Podcast] Labtoo brings together project leaders and R&D service providers](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/labtoo-labo-60x60.jpg)
![[Podcast] how to support female entrepreneurship, with Florence Blaimont](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/women-entrepreneurship-TN-60x60.jpg)
