"As an entrepreneur, you don't have time to build on assumptions. Dare to express your ideas."

Did you know that 75% of all new products and services fail within their first year? Untold amounts of time and money are lost by tackling innovation the wrong way. Dennis De Clercq and his co-founder Seppe Stroo want to solve that problem with BUFFL. It's a platform built for your smartphone, where companies can quickly and reliably ask questions of their (potential) target audience. The founder sees it big: his ultimate mission is to completely change the world of innovation. "Innovation needs to fail less. I believe we can do that."

Dennis already finds himself in an exciting playing field, one that seems almost made for him. Yet starting his own business was not initially a dream of his. "I really got into it. I studied various courses on Product Development and then wanted to go to the top of the business world," says the founder. "That was the ideal picture that was held up to me at home: working at a big company, where you can at least climb the ladder. So I started my career at such companies, but I soon felt trapped. My freedom is hugely important to me."

It is ultimately his own brother who lures him out of his golden cage: "My brother had come up with the idea of developing an advertising app during a night at the pub with friends. It would reward people for watching advertising. To make their idea viable, they wanted to participate in the accelerator Start It @KBC. They asked me to help shape the pitch," Dennis explains. "When they were allowed to participate in the accelerator program, I jumped into the business with them."

Taking a different path.

Still, he is not completely convinced by the initial idea. "I actually wanted to go in a different direction. If you're going to create a platform to survey people anyway, why not do market research with it? I had run into that problem many times in my previous jobs. I didn't want to do expensive and time-consuming market research there, I just wanted to ask one question to 100 people once, to see if I was going in the right direction. What feature should this have, at what price would you buy this, things like that. The rest of the team then agreed to go that route."

"We wanted to validate our assumptions around the issue of market research in innovation processes as quickly as possible, so we started working quite strategically with sales sprints - on Michael Humblet's advice, by the way," the founder looks back. "That involved pitching to a different potential target group every six weeks for six months. That way we could sense for whom the need for a tool like BUFFL was greatest - our ideal customers, that is. And just as well we did, because because of my background I had expected design & product development agencies to be our best clients."

"However, it turned out that they didn't have the budgets for that, nor could they upsell BUFFL to their customers," Dennis reflects. "We definitely saw the conversations with potential customers as a sales opportunity, but the approach was market research. We didn't talk so much about our idea, but wanted the customers themselves to elaborate as much as possible on their problems in this context. Market research is the new selling: if you understand someone's problem through and through, you can present a better solution."

"Doing sales sprints was one of our best decisions ever."

"Thanks to that exercise, we found out that corporates with an internal innovation team form the most interesting target group. They sometimes launch up to 100 new products and services a year, so 75% of them fail. The process of launching something like that can sometimes cost up to a million euros. So in addition to losing money and time, the internal team gets demotivated and it can even damage their brand. Obviously, you'd rather avoid that."

The speed of innovation and validation.

In addition to the cost of failed innovation, Dennis also does not believe in the way classic market research is used within innovation processes. "Don't get me wrong, these forms of questioning certainly have their place in the whole, but not in this innovation context. The clock speed of innovation is so much faster than the clock speed of validation. Months of data collection and processing just isn't an option then. Moreover, we see that long questionnaires usually do not do well with our respondents because they are filled out less attentively. This obviously leads to unreliable data and consequently to wrong decisions."

"So we believe in iterative research: start with some questions, see what the answer is, and then adjust your next research questions accordingly. The result may surprise you and lead to new assumptions that you want to test. But if you've asked all your questions at once, you can't adjust. For example, you need to know exactly what the problem is for which target group before you can ask the right questions about possible solutions for that problem to this target group. Iterative validation is possible by dividing the innovation process into small pieces and keeping in mind what the goal of each experiment is at each stage."

"I see a lot of entrepreneurs dabbling with things that they just need to validate once."

The entrepreneur is convinced that founders also benefit from quickly checking off their ideas and projects. But according to him, this happens far too infrequently today: "I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggling with stupid things. Actually, you just have to start validating that. Building on assumptions is the most dangerous thing you can do as an entrepreneur, both in terms of time and budget. Don't think that as an entrepreneur you have the luxury of being lavish with time, there is always an opportunity cost."

"You just have to validate your ideas, every step you have doubts about, as quickly as possible. And you do that by talking to people, not from behind your computer," Dennis believes. Entrepreneurs are too reticent in this respect, he thinks: "I see that many entrepreneurs do not dare to talk about their ideas, for fear that someone will steal it. But how often will that happen? The first moment of truth for your idea is when you show it to someone, right? Not by letting it mature in your head . Stop letting that drag on, grab it."

Not an ounce of regret.

Dennis seems a determined and inspired founder - yet entrepreneurship brings challenges and doubts for him as well. "I started this three years ago, and it passed in a flash. Meanwhile, I've had two children. I sometimes ask myself: am I dealing with my private life enough, too? What if this all fails later? Then I do lose that time for my family. It's a classic, isn't it, keeping that work-life balance as an entrepreneur?" he says.

"Entrepreneurship has left me alienated from some friends, because you don't understand each other anymore."

Another challenge, is being sufficiently in sync with his partner. "My wife does just work 9-to-5, and that's sometimes hard to match. What's important for us is talking about that. Sometimes it seems like I don't think small decisions for our kids are important, like buying a new pair of shoes. But it is important to me, I just don't always have the time. You have to dare to say that. Saying things like that shows respect for the other person."

"I also notice that entrepreneurship makes me feel alienated from my group of friends," Dennis confesses. "You have friends that you lose, because sometimes what's important to you doesn't interest them. You can't voice your concerns because they don't understand you. That's tough. It's why Rubicon is also so valuable to me. In a circle of entrepreneurs, everyone understands you right away. Just being able to do a mental dump for once, without having to explain everything - that relieves. They also run into the same problems, so they can give you valuable advice."

But the entrepreneur does not regret an ounce of the steps he has taken: "I feel that in those three years I have already gained 4 MBAs of knowledge. Even if we ever fail, I know I'll be fine, even if there's not a single euro in my bank account. Although, of course, I rather hope to be able to say one day: I have changed innovation. That's my mission - and BUFFL's too, for that matter. And I believe we can deliver on it. Innovation should fail less, and everything we do is centered around that. Someday we will turn the world of market research on its head."