Why so few Belgian start-ups grow into real scale-ups

By Robin De Cock, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Belgium has no shortage of entrepreneurial spirit. Thousands of new companies are founded every year, and the number keeps climbing. Yet only a small share ever make the leap to scale-up, the kind of company that creates the most jobs. According to figures from the National Bank, high-growth firms account for just 5% of employment here, roughly half the European average. So why do so few Belgian start-ups manage to reach the next stage?

In 2025, more than 130,000 new businesses registered with the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE), the highest figure in a decade. Many of them, though, plateau at a similar level and never grow into scale-ups. In their early years, headcount at a young Belgian company rises by an average of just 46%, against 150% in France. And among young growth firms, the so-called "gazelles", that share drops to a mere 0.2%, compared with 0.7% across Europe.

Entrepreneurship, then, is not the issue. Belgium produces plenty of companies. The real challenge lies in what comes next. Why do so few of them manage to scale?

Serial entrepreneurship pays off

The approach that built a company in its early days is rarely the one that takes it to the next stage. Scaling calls for different choices, different structures and often different skills. What works for a small team quickly starts to strain at greater scale. That is often where things stall, because founders fall back on what feels familiar.

Experience makes a real difference here. Entrepreneurs who have already scaled a business know better how to win over investors and organise growth, but that group is still relatively small in Belgium. More exchange between seasoned founders and newcomers could be exactly what tips the balance.

Beyond seed capital

Funding a company's early stage is becoming less and less of a problem. A growing number of venture capitalists and seed funds invest relatively early, from Syndicate One, 100IN and Pitchdrive to leading accelerators with their own fund, such as Start it KBC and imec.istart. The real bottleneck lies further down the road. Once companies set out to grow further, capital becomes scarcer, since our policies tend to focus on encouraging new businesses and far less on helping them grow.

This, by the way, is not only a Belgian problem. At European level too, growth financing remains a structural weakness. According to the European Commission, just 5% of the venture capital raised worldwide flows to the EU, against 52% to the United States and 40% to China. Capital itself is not in short supply. The issue is that savings, institutional wealth and pension funds don't flow enough into productive investment in European growth companies.

The recent Wennink Report, drawn up by former ASML CEO Peter Wennink, brings that tension into sharp focus. Dutch pension funds invest considerably more in American than in European non-financial companies. At the end of 2024, that meant €293 billion in US firms against €97 billion in European ones. That is partly logical, since American markets are larger and more profitable. But it does capture the heart of the problem. As long as Europe fails to offer enough scaling, returns and investable growth propositions, European capital will often keep working elsewhere.

From lab to market

Belgium has strong universities and promising research, but the step to market remains hard. Valuable technology too often stays within academic walls, while less innovative ideas secure funding faster. That gap has several causes.

Researchers don't always opt for the risk of entrepreneurship, and collaborating around intellectual property can get complicated. Yet that is precisely where a real opportunity lies. By bringing researchers and entrepreneurs closer together, Belgium could grow more deep tech companies and spark a new generation of scale-ups.

So how do we get there?

Belgium has everything it needs to build a strong innovation economy. According to the European Innovation Scoreboard, the country is even among Europe's front-runners, with a place in the EU top 6 and the label "Strong Innovator".

The challenge, then, isn't a lack of talent, knowledge or entrepreneurial drive. It's growing further. If we manage to share experience more openly, support growth companies more deliberately, channel capital more firmly towards promising local firms and bring innovation to market faster, Belgium can become a genuine European scale-up hub. That takes nerve, but above all a willingness to look at growth differently.

And that is often the sticking point. As long as we confuse scaling with simply "more growth", we keep missing the question that really matters. How do we build companies that don't just get bigger, but also stronger, more international and more sustainably scalable? Time, then, to hold a few stubborn myths about scaling up to the light.

Serial entrepreneurship pays off

Beyond seed capital

From lab to market

So how do we get there?

Curious which myths are standing in the way of your growth?