Twenty years after he founded the successful payment software company Clear2Pay, parallel entrepreneur and investor Jurgen Ingels decided it was time to list his entrepreneurial lessons. It became fifty. “I would be a very bad manager.”
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Fintech pioneer, as Jurgen Ingels is invariably described. But the entrepreneur-investor is much more than that. The most impressive feat of his career is undoubtedly the founding of Clear2Pay at the age of 28, out of dissatisfaction with the inefficient way of working he experienced as an investment manager at the then Dexia. He developed his company into an international player in payment software for banks, and sold it for 375 million euros to the American stock exchange-listed FIS in 2014.
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In the years that followed, Ingels spun an ever-growing web around him in the world of technology start-ups and scale-ups: young entrepreneurs, investors, bankers, incubators, in Belgium and abroad, he seems to know them all. And everyone knows him. ‘It is more important who you know than what you know’, is one of his life mottos.
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Six years ago he founded Smartfin, an investment fund with now 300 million euros under management. What drove him to all that unbridled drive? Proving that Clear2Pay was not a one-time fluke. Developing a successful technology company from Flanders is perfectly possible. ‘ And so he invests, advises and manages dozens of small and large companies.
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For thirty years Ingels swam many waters, as a student he was already a party and concert organizer, course salesman, café owner and president. ‘Time reduction is one of my Dadas. As a young entrepreneur, why would you figure everything out from scratch when a hundred others have shown it to you? Listen and watch other entrepreneurs. ‘ And so Ingels wrote down his ’50 lessons for entrepreneurs’ in a book. We pick out four striking ones.
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- 1.01 to the 365th power = 37.78
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Do the math: How much is 1.00 to the 365th power? Yes, 1.00. And how much is (1.01) to the 365th power? Indeed: 37.78. Expressed in time: anyone who systematically works one percent harder than the others has a huge advantage after a year – 365 days. Sound abstract? The mathematical formula has been the guiding principle in Ingels’ life for thirty years. ‘As a student in Antwerp, I could not be left out of our regular café. Fellow students did not give a cent for my chances of success. But what no one knew was that I studied consistently every day from 4pm to 7pm. I started on the first day of the academic year and did not skip a single day, not even on weekends. In this way I built up a huge lead over the many students who only dived into their books for the first time during the study period. That is what I called the power of the extra mile over time. ‘
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Ingels is constantly working on a lot of projects and companies at the same time. ‘I am often asked how I combine that. It’s always about going the extra mile: I often work on Saturday mornings, from 9 am to 12 noon. Three extra hours per week, but converted to gain 20 working days or almost a full month per year. ‘
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The last lesson in the book is complementary to the first: “Sitting is the new smoking.” Ingels argues for sufficient free time, sleep, exercise and a healthy diet. ‘Obvious things, but many entrepreneurs don’t get around to it, supposedly due to a lack of time. A nice book about that is by Tom Rath, ‘Eat, move, sleep’, which I have already given hundreds of times as a present and which I still reread every year. ‘
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Your product or service may be so good, you have to convince that very first customer to buy it. References are crucial to build credibility.
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‘Walking a meeting is highly recommended, and I always take the stairs instead of the elevator. 20 years ago I bought an exercise bike. I grind my mileage while reading business plans. In this way I combine work and sports in a fun way. ‘
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One of the most striking lessons in the book was an idea for which Ingels had to run the course in his own company. He wanted to give the first version of Clear2Pay’s payment software away for free to one or more banks. What is your biggest problem as a start-up company? Your product or service may be so good, you have to convince that very first customer to buy it. References are crucial to build credibility. ‘
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The concept of ‘free’ sparked heated discussions in the team, especially among the engineers. They could accept a discount, but a 100 percent discount? ‘ Ingels persevered, even at four banks on four continents, including the American mastodon Wells Fargo. ‘All we asked was that we could use the bank’s name as a reference in our communication and when negotiating with potential new customers. The ‘gift’ became an investment in marketing and sales. ‘
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Time reduction is one of my Dadas. As a young entrepreneur, why would you figure everything out from scratch when a hundred others have shown it to you?
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Because Ingels was convinced that almost all banks were struggling with the gigantic spaghetti of their payments, he was fairly certain of his solution. The bankers responded enthusiastically. The impact on their business became so great that they absolutely wanted to keep using our product. That’s how we became like the drug dealer who gives away his first lines of coke for free, hoping his customers will become junkies. After a while they couldn’t live without us and became dealers themselves. Nobody brings in new customers more efficiently than existing ones. ‘
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Ingels is not entirely happy that the publisher Lannoo presents his book under the heading ‘management general’ on the website. ‘There is a big difference between managers and entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur and would be a very bad manager. I don’t care to manage a team of 100 people, with evaluations and meetings. I’d rather start on something that at first glance seems impossible, and think about how we can get it done. ‘
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‘I like to cut my way through the forest, but I prefer to leave the cleaning up behind me to others,’ says Ingels. ‘Because I find it difficult to focus, I have never been CEO in the companies I founded. And it played a part in eventually selling them. That way I had time and money to do several projects at the same time. ‘
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Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it. ‘
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Because of the difference between entrepreneurs and managers, and all gradations in between, he does not agree with the management slogan ‘Never change a winning team’. ‘The original team is not necessarily the team that keeps the company growing. That replacement is the only right decision, but it is emotionally very tough. ‘
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Such as when Ingels had to intervene at NG Data, a big data company from the Smartfin portfolio, due to underperformance and fired CEO Luc Burgelman, albeit a friend. ‘That was very difficult, yes. But at some point every company has to move away from the entrepreneur and to a good manager. You have to put the egos aside, also your own. ‘
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4. Every disadvantage has its advantage
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Ingels’ career was certainly not always smooth. When he swept the banks with his idea for payment software in the early days, the twenties often got blunt. “I noticed how the bankers on the other side of the table tried to keep from laughing,” he says. “A few times they even kindly but firmly showed me the door.”
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The development of Clear2Pay was also sometimes difficult. ‘In 2008 we were almost bankrupt. The financial crisis caused banks to postpone the payment of invoices en masse. We had to pay 6 million euros in wages and could barely scrape that money together. If that situation had lasted a month longer, I would not have written a book now, ‘he laughs. “Success and failure are incredibly close.”
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After the sale of his brainchild, Ingels had his hands free to do business again. He conceived the idea of opening chocolate shops in Sweden, in a Leonidas franchise. ‘It has become my biggest failure. I lost 1 million euros because, despite tastings, market research and a detailed financial plan, we had made one big mistake: we had assumed that the Swedes would eat pralines like the Belgians – all at once. But the health-conscious northerners bought no more than two or three chocolates per store visit. After five days I knew it was wrong, but it was too late. So always try to discover what is too obvious in your plan and never assume that what applies in your culture or worldview is the same everywhere. ‘
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‘In 2008 we were almost bankrupt with Clear2Pay. We had to pay 6 million euros in wages. We narrowly scraped that money together.
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Ingels refers to his great hero: Brian Acton, a 50-year-old American computer programmer ‘with an extremely interesting life story’. Acton became Yahoo’s 44th employee and made good money. He invested this in internet companies, each of which went under when the dotcom bubble burst in the late 1990s. He lost everything. After unsuccessful applications at Twitter and Facebook, he became one of the founders of WhatsApp. The messaging service was sold for $ 21 billion to … Facebook many years later. The lesson? ‘Getting up and running again and again, and learning from your setbacks. They have also made me stronger. Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it. ‘
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