Entrepreneurship in Belgium: Gaetan Deremince's community marketplace

Name: Gaetan Deremince
Nationality: Belgian
Age: 41
Location: Brussels
Sector:  Tech

Ever tried to find a private teacher in your neighbourhood? Say you want to learn piano or yoga, where do you turn? Who can you trust? Millennials (and especially xpats) will likely look to Google, but the results can be overwhelming and take hours to dig through.

This was exactly the challenge that faced Apprentus founder, Gaetan Deremince, and what changed the course of his life.

Like the best entrepreneurs, he identified a gap in the market and responded by founding the online service called Apprentus to solve it.

How does Apprentus work?
Gaetan Deremince: Apprentus is a community marketplace to list, discover and book private lessons in your neighbourhood or around the world. Teachers can advertise their services and students can identify the right teacher for them based on teacher profiles and reviews. It’s free to search and free for teachers to advertise. We only take a small profit on the cost of lessons that are purchased online. If students aren’t satisfied after their first lesson, we’ll find them another teacher or offer a refund.

How many users do you have and where is most of your business located?
We currently have 7,000 teachers registered and are growing at a fast pace of 20% a month. Naturally, we have the most business in Brussels, but we have a very strong and growing presence in France, especially in Paris. Lausanne and Geneva are also growing markets. Although urban areas have proved to be easier markets at this stage, our goal is to enable learning everywhere. 

You have two other partners. What do they do and how does your relationship work?
I had run businesses in the past and learned the hard way the importance of picking partners that you can work with on a daily basis. I partnered with two people I could trust to manage the emotional and physical stress involved in running a business that demands 110% of your attention. As Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Marius Andra is the architect behind Apprentus. He builds the software that powers our service. We met in 2013 at Beta CoWork, (a co-working space that has become a hive of entrepreneurial activity in Brussels), and it was an instant fit. Janne Harju is our Creative Designer and his role was a no-brainer too. He is an award-winning illustrator in Finland who happens to be my brother-in-law. Both men are family to me now and are completely committed to the company’s success. 

How are you financing Apprentus?
We are bootstrapping, meaning that we have invested a relatively small amount of our own money and plough back into the company the money earned from our customers. We don’t have help from venture capital firms or angel investors. We are all personally and financially invested in Apprentus, which is the best formula for success.

Since you’re bootstrapping, you can’t hire staff easily. What would your dream team look like?  
I would love to hire a super talented data scientist to give us greater insight into Apprentus users and help to explain why we are performing better in certain cities. My dream team would include some awesome marketing mavens too to get the word out about Apprentus. Marketing is a priority investment for us in 2015.

How has Belgium helped you with this venture?
Belgium does not yet have a robust entrepreneurial culture or strong reputation in the tech sector. I think this is partly because the government doesn’t appreciate the opportunities that companies like Apprentus offer or make policies to minimise the risks involved. With so few mentors or information available to us in Belgium, we turned to Silicon Valley for knowledge and insight. We have developed a strong international network of supporters and voraciously read American books and blogs on everything from bootstrapping to Internet marketing.

If you were offered a great job working as an employee, would you take it?
Becoming an employee would be the worst thing that could happen to me. The certainty and monotony of an employed job is deadening to me. I don’t want to be tied to someone else’s vision.

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