1) What are you currently doing with your life?

I am one of the three co-founders of kicktable, a p-2-p version of Time Out.Kicktable is a platform to discover and book authentic urban experiences organized by passionate people. Concretely, we help people to discover, taste, learn and explore new things in their city. We also help creative and talented people to earn a few quid by organizing their own events around their passion.

Our objective is to enable people to explore the possibilities of urban life. We believe that the richness of a city comes from its people and their talents.

I am also the Brussels co-ambassador for the Sandbox Network. We have just started to grow the community in Brussels and it is very exciting to connect people with different backgrounds.

2) What did you do before this?

I worked as an analyst in the M&A Benelux team of JP Morgan and worked 2 years as a consultant at Bain & Company. At Bain, I have had the chance to work on multiple projects across several industries (retail, consumer goods,...) in different regions of the world (Asia, Denmark, Switzerland, etc).

After JP Morgan and prior to Bain, I co-founded the Fairstreet project with two friends. In the midst of the financial crisis, we travelled through South America to produce short documentaries about social entrepreneurship, innovation & ethical finance (www.fairstreet.org)

3) What was your moment of truth?

I have always enjoyed tackling new challenges and exploring new horizons. Therefore, I always knew that I would try to build something myself.

During the Fairstreet project, we had the chance to interview some amazing social entrepreneurs and they were the most passionate people I had ever met. The vision, the drive and the commitment of those entrepreneurs are a great source of inspiration.

4) How did you plan for it?

I bought a notebook and took it everywhere with me. I was writing down ideas, quotes, names of people, brands, websites, etc. It was very unstructured but it helped me to capture the different ideas I had and to become more concrete. Regularly, I was reading through all the pages of the notebook and it was very interesting to see how my ideas were evolving and how they started to connect all together. I really believe that writing down an idea is the first necessary step towards its realisation.

When planning the escape, I started by doing the most important thing: finding a co-founder. With my friend Matt, we share a similar ambition and we were confident that together we could make it happen.

5) What have been the best and worst things about making this happen?

Each time someone is booking an experience always feels great. Our objective is really to make urban life more authentic, social & inspiring. So it is really cool to see that this is something people want.

We have had a couple of difficult moments and will have many others. However, to be honest I don't think that we can really complain. We are in position where we have the chance to build something really great.  So if you look at the overall experience, we are just at the beginning of an amazing ride.

6) What was the best advice you have received

"The hardest to get is started is to get started" "Make sure you have an ambitious long term vision but be humble and very rigorous on the shorter term"

7) What resources or information have you found really helpful?

“Making ideas happen” from Scott Belsky is amazing. It helps you to realize that the most successful creative people are not the ones who spend their days brainstorming but actually they are the people who have developed a great capacity to act on their ideas. The book is also extremely helpful to prevent you of being overwhelmed by the amount of information & distraction available on the Internet.“What mines is yours” By Rachel Botsman & Roo Rogers: it describes the rise of collaborative consumption and the sharing economy. If you are looking for a business idea, make sure to become familiar with this movement because there will thousand of opportunities in this space. Finally, Twitter is an amazing tool to help you follow your interests and connect with influencers.