Summary
In this episode, I spoke with Margot Wuillaume, co-founder and CEO of eBloom, an HR tech startup. The core product is employee engagement software but they've expanded their offering to provide a broader suite of digital HR tools.
I’ve tried several different tools in this space as a Head of People I can honestly say that I don’t think there’s another tool on the market that’s more customer centric than eBloom.

We talk about many things in this episode, the two stand-out topics for me were eBloom’s contrarian approach to building a product in a crowded market and their journey fundraising in the early stages. Margot shares how they managed to close their first round in just 2 weeks.

We talk about many other things including hiring, finding customers, the help they received as a Brussels-based startup from local organisations.

Chapters

02:07 Introduction to Margot and eBloom

04:10 EBloom’s origin story

05:32 Building a product in a crowded market space

09:30 Launching during covid and finding their first customers

12:03 eBloom’s first hire

13:50 The power of meeting in person

15:53 Building a company culture that optimises for employee happiness

18:75 How a Master’s in Entrepreneurship became eBloom’s launchpad

20:06 The origins of Margot’s entrepreneurial itch

22:18 Writing a book about management

24:29 eBloom’s fundraising journey

28:35 eBloom’s key metrics that matter

31:32 The Belgian entrepreneurial support network

Link to Margot's book
You can buy a copy here

Brussels organisations mentioned in the episode
StartLab
Réseau Entreprendre
HubBrussels

In this episode I spoke with Patricio Castillo, co-founder of Prodi, a SaaS tool that uses AI to create internal communication podcasts for big corporates. At the time we recorded the episode, they’d only been incorporated for 5 months, but they’d already closed deals with some major customers such as Lineas and EntityData. The first customer they signed was Delaware, who chose them over Google’s Notebook LM! We discussed:

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Patricio Castillo and Prodi
05:42 The Journey from Idea to First Customer
11:13 Incorporation Decisions and Challenges
13:38 Transitioning to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
20:10 Getting into Start It KBC
24:04 Other Key Accellerators That Boosted Prodi
31:13 Onboarding Clients and Product Iteration
35:26 Overview of The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers
40:13 Vlaio Subsidies
42:13 Choosing Belgium for Entrepreneurship
45:33 Advice for Future Founders
48:04 Future Goals for Prodi

Resources
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Talking to Humans by Giff Constable
The YC talk Patricio mentioned about the 3 things you need to build a tech startup

Full Transcript
Full transcript of the episode with time stamps available here