When I got back from my trip to Silicon Valley, I had to tell my parents about my decision to permanently interrupt my studies to focus on my startup. Their reaction was unequivocal: they were terrified. Why is it that even when all indicators of success are met, entrepreneurship is still considered frightening in Belgium?

Let us first take a look at the company creation rate in Belgium . It immediately sticks out that the number is extremely low (3.6%), much lower than in neighboring countries.

Portion of new companies compared to the amount of active companies. Source: 1819.brussels

Indeed we Belgians don’t like sticking out. Following one’s heart and becoming a stand-up comedian? Being an actor, a musician — or even worse: not having a diploma, being an entrepreneur? Unthinkable. This is even the case in high school: if the teaching staff tells a Belgian parent their kid should change school and go for a vocational education instead, chances are they will be offended and will simply ignore the advice — diverting from the norms being, for many Belgians, somewhat of a humiliation.

Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit (credit)

In Belgium, we are Hobbits. Hobbits have their daily grind, their everyday routine, their very conventional lifestyle, as well as a great aversion for anything out of the ordinary or whatever involves risk. To put it a bit facetiously, the average Belgian follows the typical school path, then gets a master’s degree, and ends up landing a well-paid job along with a company car. This is great for everyone — and if Belgians enjoy this way of life, good for us! Our standard of living can only benefit from it.

After all, being a Hobbit is absolutely not an issue and we Belgians are doing just fine; it gives us a comfortable setting, a sense of security. It completely makes sense since immobilism and security are celebrated in Belgium. One could establish a link between this way of thinking and the fact that nerds are much less glorified than elsewhere in Europe or America. I’ll come back to that.

While researching this, I was very surprised myself by the causes evoked to explain this mentality. I had managed to forget that not that long ago in our history, Belgium had known war, occupation and deportations. A tragic episode on which I will not expand, World War II appears as the latest addition on a long list of national wounds that have obviously not yet completely healed. Little known fact: Belgians have the largest bank savings in the European Union and are in third place in the world, right behind Switzerland and Dubai. Yes, Belgians. If you ask us why we save that much, we’ll simply tell you that “you never know what could happen tomorrow”. Belgians, still scarred, are afraid. Belgians need security.

The problem appears from the moment this need for security, immobilism and conventions turns into an absolute fear of failure, rejection of risk-taking and narrow-mindedness. It is this culture of comfort that explains the ridiculously tiny company creation rate in Belgium — risk being inseparable from entrepreneurship (considered in economics as being a situation of immeasurable risk). How, then, to convince a Belgian to get involved in a startup?

Belgian Venture Capitalism, a complete oxymoron

A startup, for those who don’t know, is a specific type of young company that is searching for its business model and that is going to innovate, iterate until it manages to find a model that works and will allow for rapid and exponential growth. A startup is a temporary phase and once the business model has been found and validated, the goal is immediately reached. The startup is simply the first step for a company, where it tries to create value starting from nothing but an idea; to go from 0 to 1. Innovation (or even disruption) is therefore at the heart of the concept of a startup: where a regular company will do all it can to maximize efficiency and minimize risks while relying on a business plan that’s long been established, a startup will experiment, explore and break codes, whether that’s in terms of product or business model.

In the startup ecosystem, failure is typically celebrated — “fail fast, fail often” being the mantra of Silicon Valley. The virtues of disaster are often praised, and many events & conventions dedicated to this “fail culture” have seen the light of day around the world (FailCons or even Fuck Up Nights in Brussels). It makes a lot of sense given that a painful failure will give an entrepreneur infinitely more experience and credibility than a peaceful cruise ever could. A serious issue is that our cultural aversion for failure also affects our investors, mentors and experts (source). This is, in part, what explains the high proportion of business-to-business startups in Belgium.

Statistics collected by the Brussels Region and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor confirm our phobia of failure: only 52% of Belgians believe entrepreneurship is a good career choice (79% in the Netherlands, 60% in the UK) and in 2014, 49% of Belgian entrepreneurs who thought they had found an opportunity said they feared failure (EU average at 38%). Stats that are worthy of the Hobbits we are. The problem, once again, is that this mentality is at odds with all startup codes.

This cultural reluctance to undertake and to seize opportunities is a problem for our economy. Often presented as “the backbone of our economy”, small & young companies are the main source of job creation in the US just as in Belgium. They drive economic dynamism thanks to competition and innovation. Startups also bring a diversified economy and fuel economic growth. It is critical that we change course.

Z is for Zorglub

Still, a glimmer of entrepreneurial hope shines through with the arrival of Generation Z (which I am incidentally a part of). Members of this new generation, who are also called Post-Millennials, are born between the mid-90s and the mid 2000s. We were raised with the Internet and smartphones, which makes us much more comfortable with technology than previous generations — and most importantly: we grew up during the recession. Post-Millennials estimate that their level of anxiety regarding their professional future is at around 6.1 out of 10. Working in enterprise appears to them as being hard and complicated, and they see the corporations themselves as close-minded and without protective nature. The words “stress”, “indifference” and “disgust” are among the most used by those surveyed to describe corporate jobs. Additionally, studies reveal that today’s youth know they must rely on themselves, on their network, on their assets and not only on their resume. Overall, wage labor doesn’t interest our youth anymore.

There are thus two opposing forces that will clash in the next decade: the Belgian celebration of immobilism and security on one hand, and an insatiable thirst for fulfillment and entrepreneurship from this new generation on the other. It will be interesting to measure those developments, but above all it will be essential to offer our youth the inspiration, the examples they need to see that this entrepreneurial future is accessible to them.

A mountain to move

In the meantime, let’s have a closer look at the current Belgian startups — those we are hoping will play an inspirational role for new generations. Who are those who have, in our Hobbit country, dared transgressing the rules and decided to start a business? There are unfortunately no studies available on this topic, therefore I want to immediately clarify that the following statements are based on my personal observations, having frequented the Brussels and Walloon startup scene for a few years now.

It is impressive how much, in our entrepreneurial communities, a certain profile emerges. Impressive, but not exactly surprising, that among the few who dream of starting a startup, those who studied in a renowned Business School are the most abundant. What could be more fitting, in a culture that celebrates conventions, that entrepreneurship be reserved to them?

It is hard for me to bite my tongue when the time comes to discuss those people’s startups. Among those that crossed my way, many consisted in an idea bordering on the ridiculous, a target market limited to three rich kids in Louvain-La-Neuve and an app cobbled together by some third party studio for tens of thousands of euros. Many are those who, when facing the 200 downloads they scored over 3 months, proceed to ask me for a miraculous solution to reach a growth similar to that of QuickLyric. This makes for uncomfortable conversations.

There are of course exceptions, but the general trend is undeniable: those people lust after entrepreneurial glory without having the legitimacy, the humility and the judgement that are necessary. And last but not least, regarding Tech startups, they do not have the irreverence, the disobedience that is vital to innovation. Hackers, on the other hand, have it in their blood.

Time-rich & cash-poor kids

The term “hacker” has a negative connotation in the eyes of the general public, but in the computer world, it is used with pride to describe a great programmer (see “The Hacker Way” by Mark Zuckerberg). This figure, that of the hacker, of the nerd, is rare in the Belgian entrepreneurial scene, unlike in Silicon Valley where it is abundantly present and celebrated. I recommend everyone to read Paul Graham’s (famous programmer and entrepreneur) Hackers & Painters and Good Bad Attitude essays. Here’s an excerpt:

“Hackers are unruly. That is the essence of hacking. And it is also the essence of Americanness. It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color inside the lines.”

The insubordination, the irreverence of hackers are in fact derived from the same qualities that make them fantastic creators and innovators. By suppressing one, you suppress the other. Like Paul Graham said, Belgium simply does not provide the necessary environment for the blossoming of a hacker culture.

Silicon Valley, land of startups, land of hackers (Copyright © 2017 Soumaya Lamjahdi)

It is no coincidence that all the Belgian startups that appealed the most to me these last few years have a hacker among their founders. Let me mention Wooclap, NextRide, AppTweak, Muse to Wordpress (and I will take the liberty of adding QuickLyric to the list). All have known success, and for all of them, what was once a weekend project naturally transformed into a startup. The hacker mentality is what allowed them to “think outside the box” and to innovate.

Another geek in the hall

A few years ago, I was starting my bachelor in Computer Science at the university of Brussels. While I was in no way surprised (which does not prevent me from finding it deplorable) to see that the auditorium only counted around 5% of women, I am still surprised I only ever met one other entrepreneur student there. Why wasn’t my auditorium filled with creators, with success stories? The answer is, in my opinion, twofold.

First, as previously explained, conventions hold such a tight grip over the Belgian youth that the entrepreneurial option simply doesn’t cross the mind of Computer Science students. Once again, the only place where it happens is inside Business Schools.In Belgium, entrepreneurship is still perceived as being reserved to a certain elite.

Second (and I want to stress this next point), Belgians lack options to study today’s Computer Science. Coming back to my experience at university, the situation is rather alarming: the students have to endure a curriculum almost exclusively filled with theory, whether that’s physics, bioinformatics or information theory classes. American colleges, on the other hand, offer courses that are relevant to today’s Computer Science (such as classes on web technologies, iOS, entrepreneurship, AI, …) and where students are free to select the classes they are interested in. No trace of that kind of Computer Science around here. The only alternative at this time remains to teach yourself. It is for instance the case of my co-founder.

It is this shortcoming that prevents the studies in Computer Science from being used as a platform to start a project. In other words: no student will ever have a trailblazing startup idea by playing around with what they learned in discrete math class or in bioinformatics 101. All the students I consulted on this subject named their lack of knowledge as a reason not to start a startup. I do not question the legitimacy and the relevance of this curriculum; I simply regret that it is the only option.

With the appointment of Alexander De Croo (Belgian deputy prime minister, federal minister in charge of the digital agenda), plenty of new initiatives to teach Belgians how to code saw the light of day. Among those are MolenGeek, BeCode and CoderDojo.While I wholeheartedly support these initiatives (I even went to the UN with Alexander De Croo to showcase MolenGeek), they mostly address a separate problem: combating the digital divide, for instance by teaching the unemployed and the underprivileged how to code. Though clearly a fantastic initiative, it is a completely separate topic.

My opinion is that we need another option: the hacker way. IT reinvents itself all the time and it is essential to be capable of renewing yourself to face new challenges. An education that follows the hacker philosophy must not be centered on theory but rather on learning key skills such as creativity, critical thinking and the ability to reason, to show initiative and to collaborate. The idea being that practice makes perfect and that these skills will be learned through practicing. This axiom is the one which the now-famous Parisian École 42 follows. A Brussels version, École 19, is supposed to open next February. In theory, this could be an opportunity to check if this way of teaching can work in Belgium and to validate this model of education. Will École 19 generate a new wave of startups? Time will tell, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Todo.txt

Ranking last in Europe in terms of Entrepreneurship, it is clear that Belgium has a long way to go before it catches up with the United Kingdom or the Netherlands. The opportunity presented by Generation Z is to be seized at all costs, and it is essential that our young entrepreneurs go and visit schools to show these kids the opportunities they have. Showcasing success stories could be a game-changer for those who are still wondering which path they should follow in life. This is the reason I decided to tour Brussels schools in 2018 (if they will have me) and I will encourage my young entrepreneur friends to do the same. Destroying this Belgian obsession for security and conventions will take time and it will not be easy, but this seems like a great way to start the movement.

On top of encouraging entrepreneurship, it is clear to me that we also need to promote hackers more than we do. A term that is still pejorative to some, nerds and their culture should be celebrated rather than denigrated. Flemish minister of Education Hilde Crevits declared herself in favor of making it mandatory for high school students to know how to code before they can get their diploma. Though it’s currently only an intention, it would certainly be a great step in the right direction. On top of promoting geek culture, it will hopefully tackle the issue of the male/female disparity we know in IT. It would be great if the French speaking side could follow suit.

The cultural obstacles that separate us from a Belgian Silicon Valley are massive and will not disappear overnight… But if we play our cards right, I believe that within 10 years Belgians will at least be able to brag about not ranking last anymore. Let no one tell you the opposite: this change of mentality is coming and it is up to our politicians to decide whether or not they want to be a part of it. To paraphrase Émile Zola:

“The revolution is on, and no one will stop it.”

Our move.

(Thanks to Constant, David, Juan Bossicard, Stéphane, Antoine & Kenny)

Translated from French. Follow me on Twitter: @geecko86