Acceleration

About

Jean-Christophe has many years of experience in digital marketing. Having spent more than 10 years in a communications agency and 4 years in a startup specialised in social network technologies, he has become an authority in the field, backed by a successful track record. With his knowledge of technologies, he can automate marketing processes and scale marketing efforts to generate exponential growth. JC also takes a keen interest in business development, devoting some of his time to mentoring and supporting up-and-coming startups and entrepreneurs.

About

Philippe Szombat is an international sales expert and keynote speaker specialized in entrepreneurship, medium-size and large companies. He has worked 15 years for Fortune Global 500 companies such as XEROX, HP, Unisys and Oracle.
He co-founded TweetWall Pro in 2011 (currently known as SocialWall Pro) and made its commercial success worldwide with clients such as The Voice, Mobile World Congress, Obama and the co-founder of Twitter Biz Stone.
He founded BrightBiz in 2013 where, since then, he helps hundreds of companies to reach success by giving them sales training, strategies & coaching. He opened a Sales Academy with his associate Pascal Pytel, in 2017 in Co-Station.
He uses to be mentor at Techstars Paris, WSL, Sambrinvest, Digital Attraxion, Founder Institute, ScaleUp Porto and KBC Start it.

About

Thierry Gieseler coaches executives, academics, experts and innovators to bring their ideas to the world with clear, exciting presentations.

Thierry eases off the strain during the preparation. He increases the power of the presentation. How? With the latest discoveries from scientific psychology on charisma, attention, memorization, leadership, persuasion, emotional intelligence, storytelling and visual design.

Thierry has a master in scientific psychology. He has solid business experience, as he worked for more than 10 years in international corporations as a manager.

Since 2012, his unique coaching helped thousands of staff, investors, and event attendees enjoy great presentations. Those presentations initiated corporate change, triggered collaboration, moved sales networks to action, and got projects funded.

About

Gaëtan is currently Investment Manager at Noshaq. He is very enthusiastic about supporting passionate entrepreneurs in their projects.
At LeanSquare, he is an advisor and board member of 15 startups in Belgium and France, mainly active in the mediatech and proptech sectors.
Before joining Noshaq, he was Finance and Business Manager at Rossel, a leading media group operating in Belgium and France. He was part of the executive committee and had the opportunity to get involved in the acquisition of startups.
Previously, he worked as Senior Consultant in Corporate Finance within EY where he participated in buy and sell-side due diligence for private equity groups and industrial companies.

About

Jean Verheyen is founder and CEO of Nallian.
Nallian provides the world’s first open Data Sharing Platform for Business Collaboration. Its mission is to make the world operate as one, one community at a time. Nallian for Air Cargo empowers the different stakeholders in a cargo hub to align cross-company processes by securely sharing and (re-)using data across multiple apps. This generates levels of logistic process integration, efficiency and visibility that historically were only possible within the confines of a single company. Reference implementations include, amongst others, the award-winning BRUcloud.
Previously, Jean was an Executive at Descartes Systems Group. As SVP Business Development, he was responsible for driving Descartes’ global strategic alliances and initiatives in emerging markets and industries.
Jean joined Descartes through the acquisition of Porthus. Before joining Porthus, Verheyen held sales positions at Xerox.
Jean Verheyen holds a Master degree in Physical Education and a Master degree in Applied Economic Sciences from K.U. Leuven, and an Executive Master in Business Administration from the Flanders Business School in Antwerp.

About

Bert Selis graduated from Brussels’ Ehsal Business School with a master’s degree in Business Administration and has spent part of that study at the University of Parma, Italy.

In 2012 he started working at the Cargo Handling department of the former Belgian flag carrier Sabena only months after the bankruptcy of that carrier. At that moment approximately 10 other airlines were served by this company covering a global footprint. Having an international mindset, the cargo handling business (at that time it became Swissport) has quickly taught him how to juggle the interest of many different stakeholders with the aim of creating seamless supply chains.

An inhouse transfer into the Import & Export customs agency and a period at road transport & logistics company H. Essers brought him deeper knowledge of how powerful the sharing of information and knowledge is, and how cargo and logistics flows flouring when these principles are applied throughout the chain.

This period of logistics driven activities was followed by 6 year of international business development for a Pilot Training Institute called Sabena Flight Academy (later on part of the CAE Aviation Training Group). Main accomplishments were the opening up of the Asian market (China & Vietnam) and the opening of training centres in India, Africa, Australia and the establishment of a globally recognised quality training network for future airline pilots.

Nowadays Bert is part of the dynamic Liege Airport in Belgium, one of Europe’s biggest air cargo hubs, and again the integration of all cargo stakeholders is top of mind. An ever-growing no-restrictions cargo airport located at a prime location in Europe combined with an ongoing 470-hectare logistics park development are just some of the tools used to welcome the logistics companies of the present and the future to find their new home at Liege Airport.

About

Steven Verhasselt graduated in Brussels, from Ehsal Business School with a Master Degree in Business Administration. He started working for the Regional Development Agency, focused on assisting startup companies with business plans, seed and venture capital. One of the projects he was assigned to lead him into aviation.

Mr. Verhasselt entered the aviation world in 2001 running a project to start up a cargo airline based in Brussels. The project led him to the Middle East and Asia, in search of business partners for the project. Mr. Verhasselt was hired by one of them, and moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, In 2003, when working on a project in Hong Kong, Mr. Verhasselt decided to stay there and start his own company, consulting airports, airlines and aviation related companies willing to develop business in Asia.

Mr. Verhasselt was assigned business development projects for the cargo business at from Asia to Belgium. He was also exploring opportunities for handling companies (Aviapartner for Asia market, HACTL for Africa) and service suppliers (Skytanking, CAE in China and Vietnam). Finally, a number of projects for cargo airlines in Japan (Nippon Cargo Airlines), Malaysia (Air Asia), ASL Aviation (Europe, Asia) and linking up a number of Asian Cargo operators into the African market

Today, Mr. Verhasselt works for Liege Airport,  Belgium’s leading cargo airport. Liege Airport appointed Mr. Verhasselt as business development manager Asia 12 years ago. Meanwhile Mr Verhasselt is vp commercial and responsible for the global business development for Liege Airport, for both cargo and passengers. He is in charge of Liege Airport Consulting, who completed projects in Europe, Turkey, India, China, Congo DRC and Mexico.

About

I’ve been an entrepreneur since I got my computer science engineering degree in 1992.

I’ve been involved as co-founder, shareholder, board member in a handful of companies that have done video streaming, mobile messaging, ebooks, elearning, Big Data, business applications (and have raised $18M of venture funding in the aggregate).

In that process I have built an experience of more than 15 years in ICT/Internet with roles including CTO and CEO. I’ve pitched to major VCs, hired teams, opened int’l markets. I bring an innovative, “fresh look” analysis & an entrepreneurial, “hands-on” execution.

I now spend a lot of time meeting, finding, coaching & investing startups (& innovative companies or business units) as part of several accelerators, incubators or funds : LeanSquare / Meusinvest, Microsoft Innovation Center, Nest’Up, StarTech, VentureLab.
I’ve been invited as speaker, mentor in accelerator programs internationally : French Tech Culture, YunusSB (Tunisia), MG Seed (Brazil),…

My goal is to get involved with dynamic teams in startups and SMEs, and bring my entrepreneurial and business experience to help them to take advantage of technological innovation, gather appropriate resources (incl. funding and R&D grants) and deliver value to the (global) market.

My technological interests are in : Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data, blockchain, ICO, social networks, collective intelligence, ICT in Healthcare, Internet of Things, cloud, elearning, Open Source software.

By education, I have both a deep technical background (CS engineer, UC Louvain), and solid background in Business (up to an MBA) from Brussels (Solvay), Louvain and Stanford Business Schools. I also have a keen interest in the broader societal implications of business (environment, ethics, social entrepreneurship).

Specialties: bring a fresh perspective to complex issues, validate with market, write business plan, raise funding, hire & coach team, develop partnerships

About

Senior Business Development & Interim Management. Focus on Innovation, Startups and Digital Transformation of the economy.

Current mission as Operational director for LeanSquare (NOSHAQ Group)

Specialities: Sales & Pre-Sales Coaching; business Model and growth of Startups; New Technologies; Business Applications; CRM; Business Intelligence; Datawarehousing; HR Systems; Performance Management; Training & Skills Developments.

About

Fan of innovation, startups and music, Gérôme likes working in a collaborative way to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems.
He is LeanSquare’s COO, a Belgian VC and start-up accelerator which invests in MusicTech, MediaTech and e-logistics.
He is also La Grand-Poste’s CEO, a 8000m2 old post office in Liège, in which, from 2020, the local MusicTech/MediaTech ecosystem will gather and work together (startups and corporates, University of Liège, LeanSquare, VentureLab (Students entrepreneurs incubators), etc.
Finally, he has co-founded 2 international startups summits : Wallifornia (MediaTech in collaboration with Music Festival Les Ardentes – 100.000 attendees) and WeCargo (AirCargo in collaboration with Liege Aiport).