The Story Behind BeTech, and Next!
This posts talks about the BeTech initiative, the community that brings together the Tech entrepreneur scene in Belgium, and is divided into 2 parts: the story behind BeTech and what’s next!
A. The story behind BeTech!
Why and how we initiated a bottom up community
Following the awesome initiative and work done by Kristoffer Tjalve launching BeTech, launching the channels, getting the initiative known via Twitter, via the #BeTech, and spreading the vibe on any occasion and meeting he had, I reckoned it was time to tell you more about the next steps we have been working on and how we see this evolving (not to forget honouring a long request from Kristoffer on having this next on BeTech written down (as he did the initial part, both posts are linked).
Belgium needs BeTech. Indeed, our country has not delivered scale-ups to their full potential (even less, in relative terms to other EU nations).
We want to change that from the bottom-up, by activating the community into a true entrepreneur driven grassroots movement. Because those who truly know entrepreneurship are the startup entrepreneurs themselves.
End of 2014, Kristoffer was planning to move out of Belgium and was looking for someone to help him in maintaining and growing the BeTech initiative he started, preferably by another entrepreneur. Multiple channels had been set up, Twitter was running as a first step, getting the initiative known, people posting and sharing news, on whatever topic, Slack with its 21 channels, and a Facebook group that counted about 100 members. Did he know it would become one of the main entrepreneurial movements back then? Probably not.
Like a startup, a community or movement, always starts small with an idea and needs to scale to stay relevant. Ideas are great, execution is what counts. Always. And this by ‘failing forward ‘, no difference building a community as building a startup, you experiment — see what works — adapt where necessary, always in a search for maximum value. Community leaders easily spend 2–6 hours/day managing their group, with BeTech this represents 2–3 hours each day, aside from the 24/7 availability one needs to have to moderate the group effectively. In average a non-wanted post needs to be removed within a 10 minutes time frame.
After some time we came to the conclusion that Slack was too cumbersome to maintain, so Facebook seemed like the logical platform to focus on for scaling the initiative and offering more value. After all, like in any business, value is what matters. While Twitter (#) is very open to any type of content, a Facebook group offers more options for a more moderated and valuable content approach. Just like talking without listening is annoying, so is broadcasting on Twitter without engaging. On Twitter #BeTech has decreased the connections and conversations, and became a playground for top down scheduled tweets and Twitter bots. #BeTech became BeTech, to become more. More authenticity and pureness.
In Belgium, like in Europe, there’s no shortage of top down initiatives — too many probably — and not so many bottom up ones. BeTech is bottom up. If well maintained, I believe it brings more value and results to members than any top down initiative can provide. Bottom up, i.e. webmission, which I co-organised before, grew up to 40 participants. When it switched later to top down, it ended up at 10 participants on average.
If we can count BeTech a success already (even if we are only getting started), I believe it’s because it’s bottom up, driven by entrepreneurs.
Like any content approach, it started by showing the example, mentioning the different aspects in any entrepreneurial journey. Ups and downs. Most people like to share the ups, though most valuable to learn from are actually each other’s downs. Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster, ups and downs, fast/slow, in any shape, but always present.
Reflecting back: what drives BeTech
1. Building a community people value and want to contribute to.
When there are 100 members in a group, there is not a lot of content showing the direction the community will take. As Belgium is still a rather immature ecosystem, it was predictable that making the ecosystem more mature was going to be an important focal point.
This leads to the goal of BeTech, becoming stronger through one another, learning from each other, entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, becoming more mature in what we are doing and how we are doing it, together. L’union fait la force!
As with building a startup, building a community is also learning from others, from best practices. Good solid community examples are London startups (https://www.facebook.com/groups/LDNstartups/), Paris Startup Ecosystem (https://www.facebook.com/groups/Paris.startup), Amsterdam Startups (https://www.facebook.com/groups/amsterdamstartups/) or the Belgian social media and community managers group VLCM (https://www.facebook.com/groups/VLCMs/).
I invite you to read the interesting post from the Manager of Paris Startup Ecosystem and the more selective, founders only, French Starters Network, explaining his lessons learnt on building the 2 communities: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/member-content-selection-center-engaged-communities-example-giorgi/
Advice from other communities taught us that the most successful communities work in a closed setting, drive on value and have similar rules.
BeTech rules and guidelines are:
1. being respectful to each other at all times,
2. connecting-discussing with people at all times,
3. no self-promotion and publicity.
The last is especially inside the group, the other two also outside to create a good atmosphere inside the group. What we mean with respect, see the pinned post, where every letter matters, respect does not mean having the same opinion, though keeping it fully respectful and in case it is private, address the person directly, or switch to private, and not via the group. Topics that are private or are there to create ‘chaos’ will be deleted immediately.
Being part of a group requires mutual trust. Authentic, expressive discussions make groups great, but may also be sensitive and private. What’s shared in the group should stay in the group. Be Considerate for Everyone’s Privacy.
The most successful groups are closed groups, aiming at best engagement and conversation quality. The success of closed communities lays within the fact that most people do not want to provide opinions, often strong, often vulnerable of what they learned or went through in public. You want people to open up. In a closed setting one cannot find content publicly via i.e. google search.
The topics members like to see and discuss about in BeTech are: Focus on quality over quantity posts. Examples are how did you manage a specific situation, what are the best tools to execute that specific task, what was the difficult period you had to overcome and how did you sort this out, ask others what they would do if they were in your position or situation, etc.
We often have strong discussions and different opinions which drive the value of BeTech up. They are certainly the posts and comments we like most, as they are often the most interesting and valuable ones, of course as long as it remains in full respect to each other.
→ Note for Job and Event posts: One of the questions that we ask new members is what do you want to bring/get out of BeTech, and how? We encourage new members as first interaction to share/ bring something to BeTech, and this is NOT when joining immediately after as first interaction / post a link to your event or open job post. Generally, these are the posts that get the least interaction. They might be highly interesting for the one who is looking, or the one who is organising, though not necesseraly for the group. Event posts can also be posted once (= one time) the group and have to be relevant to BeTechers. When there is a special interest to BeTechers, contact us in case you would like to offer a special deal for the BeTech community.
Try to be catchy with your first post or interaction and stand out.
2. Drivers, not admins. Face the critiques and be honest.
People will surely find something to complain about, no matter what the setting. Content is not what they are looking for, it’s too controlled, or not moderated enough, it becomes too commercial, or if some content is not relevant to some — but can be to others, …share what you want to read yourself has always proven to be the best remedy to drive the discussion forward :)
Kristoffer and I have never seen ourselves as admins, but as drivers. Driving the community (towards a movement), where quality wins over quantity, where learning wins over self-promotion, where opening up minds wins, where supporting each other when and where needed wins — this is the kind of community we set out to create. All within a People-centric mindset: Be there when people need it most, not necesseraly when they’re on top of the world, and everyone is sheering, applauding for them, but especially when entrepreneurs need to know BeTech is there for them, during the most difficult times (we all know that entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster and once at top, this can easily change overnight). That’s the kind of BeTech we envision.
It’s always a fusion between being open (less value) and more controlled (more value). From 100 to 7300 (4300 when this post was written). Being open and moderated, in a constant search for value.
Offering value is the highest priority, value to the entrepreneurs, a platform where entrepreneurs can discuss and share information with each other, from anywhere, without the need to meet physically all the time, and ultra scalable. And again, what people value most is learning from peers, how YOU have overcome things, not plain self promotion and publicity, that’s only good for your own feeling, maybe to comfort your ego.
As transparency is key, I think it’s good to provide some insights and numbers about our community.
When are posts removed?
- When they have a pure intention of self-promotion and publicity.
- When they are not relevant to (other) entrepreneurs.
- When they should be sent in private and not publicly in the group.
- When there is no interaction with the post, cleaning up the flow on a regular basis. See i.e. above note on job and event posts.
When are people removed from the group?
-First there is an acceptance to allow people to the group: being Belgian and/or in Tech, priority on entrepreneur-founders and having responded to the following questions: 1. In which way are you related to the Belgian Tech Entrepreneur scene?, 2. What do you want to bring / get out of BeTech, and how? and 3. Have you read what you can / cannot do in the group and which guidelines we keep high (See the BeTech story in the group description / pinned post or goo.gl/RAeDN6)?
- Second the few that have been removed, silently, were not there in for the right motivation and values, violating the rules on regular basis or were not feeling top at a certain moment and for the group’s best interest had to be (temporarily) removed to keep the spirit clean.
- Third when removed, those who were not at their best, started a direct, open discussion and were let in again. There is no such thing as a ban for life.
But, as BeTech is strongly by and for entrepreneurs driven, there are always others, mostly non entrepreneurs, with a strong ego, violating any rule, clearly not with the appropriate mindset and values (see rules) we keep high at BeTech, strong pay it forward and growing together, when removal this often goes along with aggression or arrogance by removal or even blocking on social media (which is against the connecting with others and making friends rule). They might misuse the BeTech brand name confusing the ecosystem, purely out of self interest and promotion. These solo actions only bring us back to an even more immature ecosystem and damages the full ecosystem ‘s potential to become internationally more credible and recognized. The BeTech brand can only be used, when presented and agreed by the BeTech board.
What are the exact numbers?
To the contrary as sometimes claimed by those who unfortunately had to be removed, it remains a rare fact. So far out of about 7300 members, only 43 have been removed. That’s 0.006%. It means that 99.004% fully participate into the BeTech spirit, keeping the BeTech ‘We’ values high. And yes, it happens that the ones who were removed make noise for all the others, but we prefer to focus on the 99% who are in BeTech for a reason.
3. Be consistent, be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Building a movement requires patience. When we first started to talk about BeTech as a community, it was a simple #, so you can hardly call that a community. Now BeTech is on its way to becoming a real movement.
To state a recent comment of Anne Collet, Driver of LeWagon:
“BeTech is the best real Belgian startup community for helping Belgian startup entrepreneurs to answer their challenges, and for bringing them all together.
Since BeTech is bottom up, by and for entrepreneurs, moving toward a movement recognized in the international scene, it depends on all of us.
All of us collaborating, absorbing international best practices, sharing, …”
Indeed, BeTech has potential. It has the potential to facilitate more scale-ups. This can only be done by entrepreneurs themselves. No government, and no outside organization can make this happen, only entrepreneurs by learning from the best practices in Belgium by the few who were able to do it, and by looking how international startups and entrepreneurs are doing it. By being as open as possible in sharing interesting info, comments and learnings.
4. If there is less or no interesting content; create it! Celebrate and be positive
Especially in the beginning there was hardly any valuable content. This is of course a problem: without a steady stream of qualitative content, the initiative is nothing but a ghost town.
Often when the valuable content flow is getting down, it is time for the drivers of the community to jump in, animate the group and influence, or better drive, the type of content shared with the community. The kind of content that sparks interaction and engagement.
When important events happen (in regards to BeTech startups or entrepreneurs), show it, good or bad. Get the story. I’ve always found it amazing how people I met a couple of years ago turn out. How they learn, evolve and share their learnings to others. It feels like a great cycle to be part of, to live in.
As drivers we often celebrate what is happening in the ecosystem and give meaning to the stories behind. Every startup and entrepreneur has a story, it’s often not what you read publicly, but what happens behind the scenes is often the most valuable info. Often I meet young entrepreneurs with potential, who first had to go through a learning curve or face tough times, to stand up again as brilliant examples of progress and success. That’s the beauty of following other entrepreneurs in their endeavors and challenges.
5. Go offline: Meet people you met online during the BeTech First Tuesdays.
Every month we organize the BeTech First Tuesdays, each month meeting another startup or initiative at their location to learn from how they tackled the challenges they faced. Ask the questions you always wanted to ask. We believe that entrepreneurs should focus on building their project, not jump from one event to another, and instead try to interact mainly online, though it is useful to meet your peers in person, whether in an informal setting or for a drink or dinner between entrepreneurs.
B. BeTech: what’s next!
Getting more mature, where BeTech is heading for — A Future we can Dream of.
As the BeTech initiative grows, becomes more visible, and matures, its ambition expands. Our main focus is similar to any other startup: bringing value.
- End 2016. Setting up a BeTech Board (of Experts): There was a returning point mentioned by entrepreneurs, Belgium knows too many startup ‘experts’ who never did anything to leave their comfort zone, who never participated in a startup, never walked the talk. To tackle that problem I launched the question of a BeTech Board of Experts. People who are going or have gone through the same. Some brilliant minds within the community reached out, who have all gone through difficult situations they had to deal with themselves and are more than willing to share how they did it with others to make BeTech and the success of the BeTech entrepreneurs only stronger. With the BeTech Board of Experts, now fellow entrepreneurs can addesss other entrepreneurs willing to help out; so that they do not have to ask advice that is purely build on, but on real experiences. We have the ambition to remove barriers so that people can ask advice to those who went through it or are going through the same. The list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xntKdt_DHRjaHaYNbpBTH2D7wzFaMbsLaQigurZPIkw/edit?usp=sharing
Note: 1) Best way is to reach out is via FB should you have a specific question and 2) this list is not limited, should other entrepreneurs want to join in creating a stronger BeTech ecosystem, do not hesitate to reach out as well.
-In line with the above: An AI-powered BeTech bot which can answer entrepreneurs questions automatically, with input provided by entrepreneurs. This has the potential to replace all startup experts out there, disrupting the startup industry that was build from inside.
-Look into how other new technologies, especially blockchain, can serve BeTech in the long run to guarantee a smooth organisation and governance with more people actively involved.
- Early 2017. Discussion within the BeTech board on other valuable actions that should be taken. How BeTech can become a movement beyond the current generation of entrepreneurs, for the next generation? What value actions can be brought to the community? Always following the same BeTech goals:
§ Do stuff that does not already exist, provide practical insights, startup tools, documents and methods that matter
§ Can be used by as many people in similar situation
§ Is scalable and not peer2peer
§ Quality above quantity.
- Catalyzing scale ups. Get best practice advice: Postpone priced equity rounds by bootstrapping as long as possible or working with alternative financing methods for early stage financing needs. Avoid government funding, as a startup knows where it starts, but rarely knows where it will end up.
- The BeTech brand. Create a brand people care about, are proud to carry and that is recognized around the world. Belgium is known for…. BeTech (forget chocolates, beer and waffles for a while). We need to be ambitious, like FrenchTech shows since 2013.
- Mid 2017. We’re all in this together — Mentoring the next generation. Post that talks about the need for a strong Pay-it-Forward attitude in order to create a thriving ecosystem, beyond generations. https://medium.com/@nicolasfrenay/were-all-in-this-together-mentoring-the-next-generation-805ffa5f207e
- Early 2018. BeTech was selected as one of the leading Facebook groups in Europe to attend Facebook’s First European Communities Summit (FCS)(150 leading groups out of 3,500 candidacies). Read more in the post that talks about the takeaways of BeTech attending Facebook Communities Summit in London from 8–10th. February 2018, what we picked up, liked and missed, to conclude with the what’s next! https://medium.com/@nicolasfrenay/betech-to-fcs-in-london-4d558d9111c4
- April 2018. The Entrepreneur First network BeTech is accelerating its ambition by launching the BeTech Movement → Read the BeTech charter here and join us in the BeTech Movement: https://medium.com/@BeTech_/betech-charter-ba777652904a
- June 2018: The BeTech Movement FB Page was officially launched during the first BeTech Movement Info Session:
https://www.facebook.com/betech.movement
With BeTech we already showed we are one of the leading European groups on Facebook, now let’s also show the world that we are as BeTech Movement a leading bottom up example in Europe and beyond in guiding and supporting Belgian entrepreneurs.
What can you do? Show a strong BeTech movement to the world.
Here are 4 actions you can take to help us bring BeTech to the next level, internationally recognized.
When every entrepreneur would put its shoulders under BeTech (which we hope this BeTech movement will lead to), it will not only make BeTech a success for yourself, but especially for the future generation of entrepreneurs that will follow your steps.
1. Read the BeTech Charter and join the BeTech Movement.
The BeTech movement is all about implementing the “pay it forward” mentality by and for Belgian tech entrepreneurs, to help other entrepreneurs move forward. BeTech actions are always bottom-up, people-centric and focused on entrepreneurs. Be Dynamic and Ambitious. The success of BeTech is the sum of all its entrepreneurs’ efforts. BeTech strives for quality above quantity in everything we do, all the time.
The BeTech Movement FB Page was officially launched during the first BeTech Movement Info Session:
https://www.facebook.com/betech.movement
With this page BeTech is meeting the general public. It is a central place where one will find all info/ content around BeTech, the history and the future in one place, news around BeTech, and the promotion of the BeTech Movement. For all to Love and embrace a strong BeTech. Parents, friends, professional relationships who want to know more what BeTech is about, like it, follow it and if interested join and support us.
2. Post relevant content on BeTech, share what you would like to read yourself and get involved.
Post interesting links to valuable information, tips and tricks (if the post is slightly longer, use Medium as a platform), good to know practices from abroad, potential solutions to certain situations, …
If you are new to BeTech, take the time to get familiar with the type of content members are appreciating before posting yourself. Always check if the content you want to share hasn’t been mentioned before, escpecially for articles to news or specific topic questions, this can easily be done via the search tab on top of the BeTech group.
If you want your post to appeal, don’t be secret, don’t hide, but instead make a small intro on the project you’re working on, why you are doing it, the potential it has and what type of profiles, help or feedback you would like to attract to make it happen. If you start with a strong why, personal and business wise, you will more easily grab people’s attention, people like to hear/listen to passionated people, and afterwards make up their mind if it’s something for them or they can help you further.
3. Help to create an awesome branding around BeTech internationally.
Kristoffer created the initial logo rather quickly. When asked in February if there was anyone interested in helping out for a better logo, nobody reacted. The question popped up again when I received the question from Edouard Cambier (Seedfactory) if there was a logo for BeTech he would like to use for an event. I said no. He was so friendly to introduce me to 2 digital (Argentinian) nomads, who were not part of BeTech community yet, but who were more than happy to help. They prepared 40 proposals, based on the DNA/identity provided. In the end we decided to let the proposals chosen by the community, probably not the best choice as this was also an issue in another group; hence we ended up with 45 proposals, but not a convincing one yet.
This is the interim logo we proposed:
Recycle an old sign and give it new meaning. It’s a sign everyone recalls, but has been put out of use. There is probably still plenty of stock in stickers available so you can stick it everywhere (not only your car) … though here to promote the BeTech movement. I am sure many will come and ask why you are putting this B up, see this as just another occasion to pitch your passion.
We welcome fresh ideas on how to finetune the BeTech brand going forward.
4. Become a BeTech ambassador.
Become a true BeTech ambassador, even (or especially) if you are international.
If you want to spread the BeTech vibes in the country or city you live in, or even if you live in BE but travel a lot, do not hesitate to contact us.
Latest updates via https://belgiantech.com
BeTech, bottom up, carried by every entrepreneur is the key to success to become an internationally recognised and respected Tech movement.
Be Awesome, Be Ambitious, BeTech!
Thanks to Bastien Gason, a Le Wagon Alumni for the Visuals, Magali De Reu, http://copymag.be for the Copy assistance, Kristoffer, Ludwig and Anne for contributing on writing down the BeTech story and to the many other readers!
