gull“The foundations of the WSL house are healthy and solid. It was the right time to hand over the baton and bring in some new blood.”
“The decision to leave the management of WSL was not easy to make, nor to pass for that matter, confesses Agnès Flémal. But it’s better to leave when the circumstances are right. In 2024, we will have another exceptional year with more than 15 new companies supported by WSL. Our pipeline has doubled in three years. Since the beginnings of WSL, we have accumulated significant expertise and great successes. The foundations of the WSL house are therefore healthy and solid. It was the right time to pass the baton and bring in new blood.”. His successor is known: it is David Dalla Vecchia, current CEO of the Aardex group and former business coach at the WSL (read below).
WSL is neither an incubator nor an accelerator. You prefer to talk about support for techno-entrepreneurs. For what ?
Over time, we have enriched the structure by taking a whole series of initiatives. Some have been abandoned, others have become permanent. We were, for example, pioneers by launching into the field of defense well before the war in Ukraine. Today, WSL has become a key player in the NATO “Diana” and NATO “Major” programs.European Defence Fund. WSL is a continuous process of learning by trial and error with, as its sole obsession, being at the service of companies linked to the engineering professions.
After NATO with “Diana”, the European Defense Fund calls on the Walloon WSL accelerator for “MaJoR”
Do engineers and tech go well together? And, if so, do they make good entrepreneurs?
No ! 20 years ago, we had engineers who, for the most part, knew nothing about economics or entrepreneurship. The objective of WSL was precisely to help researchers and graduates of engineering faculties in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation to become entrepreneurs or to make them understand that they had to join forces with entrepreneurs to carry out their projects. At the beginning of the 2000s, many engineers and doctors of science had a very negative image of entrepreneurship. For them, finding clients for their spin-off was downright prostitution! Some turned around when they discovered WSL’s services. But we stayed the course and the results proved us right since, of the 200 projects that we have supported in just over twenty years, only 7% have not been converted into businesses. The spin-offs and start-ups supported by WSL business coaches have generated a cumulative turnover exceeding 1.5 billion euros and created nearly 1,800 direct jobs. Over the last five years, it has been calculated that each euro invested by the Walloon Region in WSL has generated 5 euros of added value in Wallonia.
You have often said in recent years that start-ups must be obsessed with sales.
The engineer is generally in love with his technology. He thinks it will sell itself like hot cakes. He doesn’t think for a second about the complexity of the sales process, about how to translate “leads” (marks of interest) into purchase orders. We created a tool, “MatMax”, which measures the level of technical and commercial maturity of an innovative entrepreneurial project. This helped us to hammer home to techno-entrepreneurs the importance they must give to sales. In 2023, we supported around seventy technology companies which, while still in the incubation or acceleration phase, had a turnover of 30 million euros and employed 400 FTEs. 10 years ago, I can assure you that we did not have such results.
What are the greatest successes, in your eyes?
IsoHemp is one of them. It’s a project launched by two young people after finishing their studies. We helped them develop a first prototype and, today, they are leaders in their sector (production of natural and high-performance lime-hemp blocks for interior and exterior insulation of buildings, Editor’s note). There is Lambda-X, a former ULB spin-off which has become a world leader in the quality control of intraocular lenses. I could give you many more examples.
We often criticize the too small size of Walloon companies and their lack of international ambition. Is this still the case?
WSL has always aimed internationally thanks to close collaboration with Awex. The previous Walloon government launched the Scale-up program (today led by Wallonie Entreprendre, Editor’s note) in order to offer tailor-made support to companies with high growth potential. But it remains difficult. Growth and internationalization depend very much on the founder and his willingness to get involved. So far, we cannot say that the results of the Scale-up program are very conclusive.
gull“In my opinion, we should even start from a blank page. We must look at what the Walloon economic fabric needs today to progress more quickly and, based on that, determine who can contribute to it and how.”
Does the landscape of Walloon economic tools, of which WSL is a part, remain too complex? Should it be simplified? You won’t find anyone who will tell you that you shouldn’t simplify. In my opinion, we should even start from a blank page. We must look at what the Walloon economic fabric needs today to progress more quickly and, based on this, determine who can contribute and how.
You announce your departure in a context where start-ups are having great difficulty raising funds. At the start of the year, you warned of the risk of seeing some companies having to close their doors, which was the case (Osimis, HeartKinetics, Cytomine, etc.).
This problem of financing young innovative technological companies has not been resolved. It even became more acute. In my opinion, public funds do not always play their role.
“The mortality rate of Walloon technology start-ups is likely to increase sharply in 2024”
Despite increasingly numerous missions, WSL operates with few resources: a team of 15 people and an operating budget of 1.8 million euros. You never seemed to regret it…
I have always been a fan of small, agile, reactive, frugal teams, but very specialized in terms of expertise. WSL values its independence above all. It is what allows us to remain focused on our mission, which is to meet the needs of businesses by being relevant and offensive, to use the words spoken by Willy Borsus when he was Walloon Minister of the Economy.
David Dalla Vecchia reprized the flambeau
David Dalla Vecchia, after a rigorous selection procedure, was chosen as the new CEO of WSL. An engineer and multi-entrepreneur, he has extensive experience in the technology sector, particularly in medtech. Since 2018, he has been the CEO of Aardex, a global leader in drug treatment compliance measurement and management solutions for clinical trials, research centers and professional healthcare systems. An electrical and electronics engineer from the University of Liège, he founded his first company in 2003, RFIDea, which was bought by the Belgian group Zetes a few years later. David Dalla Vecchia also served in the past as a business coach within WSL. “He corresponded to the profile sought: engineer, multi-entrepreneur (with successes and failures) and knowledgeable in the profession of supporting tech entrepreneurs.”rejoices Agnès Flémal. The handover will take place between now and spring.
