Belgian Startup Manifesto

Call for stories #BEStartupManifesto

Startups are the future of our economy. They empower people to work on things that they are passionate about. They empower people to innovate, to create the tools and services that we will use tomorrow. Yet, today, it’s still too hard to create and grow a startup in Belgium.

TL;DR: Join the Belgian Startup Movement and share your ideas to improve the environment for startups with the hashtag #BEStartupManifesto

It is imperative that we work together with industry partners and policymakers to create and foster a healthy environment for startups to thrive in Belgium for many years to come.

With a Belgian Startup Manifesto, we can make our voices heard loud and clear, as the Belgian government prepares to established a ‘Digital Agenda’ action plan for the coming years. Now is our chance to communicate our needs and wishes as a community.

The goal is to come up with 5 to 10 concrete propositions that will help Belgium’s policymakers create and support a favorable environment for startup founders, early employees, investors and relevant service providers.

We want to invite everyone in the Belgian startup ecosystem to contribute to the Belgian Startup Manifesto, in order to make sure it represents the interests of the entire community as good as possible.

Until the end of February, please share your stories and propositions for a more favorable startup environment in Belgium using the hashtag #BEStartupManifesto.

Tell us what it was like to create your startup in Belgium, or why did you leave if you ended up creating it elsewhere. Tell us what it is like to be one of the first employees of a startup. Tell us what it was like to be an investor in a startup. And if you have any recommendations on how the ecosystem in Belgium should evolve, please share those as well.
If you’ve already written such blog posts in the past, you are welcome to tweet them again with the hashtag. You can also use the “Post Response” feature of Medium and your post will appear below this one.

Early March, we will review all contributions in a small committee including Ramon Suarez (Betacowork), Robin Wauters (Tech.eu), Toon Vanagt (data.be), Bart Becks (Angel.me), Karen Boers (Startups.be), and Xavier Damman (Storify).

After the review, we will publish a digest and iterate on the final version of the Belgian Startup Manifesto that we will share with everyone to get as many signatures as possible behind it.

Together, we can help shape the future of our economy and create new opportunities for everyone who want to start something.

– Karen (@karenboers) & Xavier (@xdamman)

P.S: Other European countries have already started working on their own startup manifesto, including the UK, Poland, Greece and Spain.