Gentrepreneur

One platform for Ghent's young entrepreneurs

Gentrepreneur (opens in a new tab) is Ghent's centre of expertise for entrepreneurial students, researchers and young people. It helps them explore their entrepreneurial potential, supports their growth and boosts their businesses. As several entrepreneurship services in the city came together under the Gentrepreneur name, the team needed one system for coaching, community and reporting, and a sales-focused CRM was never going to fit. With Startium, appointments, coaching notes, events, opportunities and partner benefits now sit in one place, and reporting to partners and government, which the team had struggled with, is now straightforward.

Support organisations are not sales teams

Most CRM systems are built around a sales pipeline of leads, deals and conversions. Organisations that support entrepreneurs do something different. They coach people, connect them to experts and opportunities, and follow their progress over months or years. They also answer to partners and funders who want evidence of that work. Squeezed into a sales tool, the coaching relationship gets lost and reporting becomes a manual job.

Gentrepreneur saw this clearly. The team does not do sales at all; it supports people. It wanted a platform built for centres of entrepreneurial support, and specifically one that worked for support based within higher education, where most of its community studies and researches.

Six institutions, several funders, one new service

The timing mattered. From the 2024–2025 academic year, Ghent's separate student entrepreneurship services were brought together into one renewed Gentrepreneur, run by a single team from the Wintercircus. Coaches, programmes and communities that had worked apart now had to work as one, and the tools had to follow.

The partnership adds another layer. Gentrepreneur works with six higher education institutions (opens in a new tab), and each one wants to see who from its institution is active on the platform and what they are doing. Those numbers have to be accurate for every partner, not just in total.

Then there is public funding. Gentrepreneur is supported by VLAIO (opens in a new tab), the City of Ghent and the Province of East Flanders, and subsidised projects come with reporting to government. Before the platform, pulling those figures together was difficult, and a larger merged service would only have added to the load.

The right tool arrived at the right time

Gentrepreneur found Startium through the Enterprise Europe Network (opens in a new tab). Its local representatives, VLAIO and Invest Northern Ireland (opens in a new tab), made the introduction just as the team was actively looking for a platform for the newly merged service.

Unlike a generic CRM, Startium is built for centres of entrepreneurial support, including those inside higher education, so it fitted how Gentrepreneur actually works. It connects the community with an ecosystem of experts, mentors, events and opportunities, and adds exclusive in-kind partner benefits that give members the resources for the next step in their journey. For the team, the real value is that everything comes together in one place.

Before we had the platform it was really difficult to measure impact and we were struggling with reporting. Now, when we are reporting to the government for subsidised projects, with Startium it is really easy for us to track the numbers that we need to report.

Coaches, founders and managers now work from the same place

Each group at Gentrepreneur uses a different part of Startium, all drawing on the same shared record.

For coaches: sessions that build on each other

Coaches use Startium to manage their appointments, choosing which days are for in-person coaching and which are online, and entrepreneurs book around that. A few minutes before a session, a coach can see why the entrepreneur asked for it and whether colleagues have already coached them on a topic, so nobody repeats advice the founder has already heard.

For young entrepreneurs: every opportunity in one view

Students and young founders get a clear overview of the opportunities open to them, the coaching sessions and activities they can join, and the events hosted by organisations on the platform. Personalised dashboards, easy meeting booking and shared notes and files make the experience intuitive and help build a real community around the programme.

For managers and partners: reporting without the scramble

Managers can see how Gentrepreneur is doing, how it is progressing and who is on the platform. Each partner institution can see which of its students and researchers are active and what they are doing. When the team reports to government on subsidised projects, the figures it needs are already being tracked.

Built for teams that support people, not sell to them

This model suits you if you run entrepreneurial support on behalf of several partners, particularly universities and colleges, and you answer to funders who expect evidence of your work. If your coaching sits in one tool, your events in another and your reporting in spreadsheets, bringing them into one platform can give your team time back and your partners a clearer picture.

Gentrepreneur runs Startium OS in Ecosystem Mode, which gives a city, region or network one access point across several organisations. If you deliver programmes, property, advice or technical support from a single organisation, Operator Mode may suit you better, and if you are a funder or lead body overseeing delivery across several programmes, partners or properties, Governance Mode is built for that. If you are not sure which applies to you, our advisors can help you work it out.

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