Testimonials

Role

Sebastiaan Vanhecke was in charge of opening and setting up a new office in São Paulo for Xpenditure, a Belgian start-up that offers expense management software.

Responsibilities

Further to a strong growth in the U.S.A. and Europe, Xpenditure decided to start exploring the Brazilian market in early 2015. Sebastiaan had to set up a local business structure, hire and manage a local sales and support team, communicating with the local investment partners and developing new business deals and partnerships. “My first month at Xpenditure was a deep-dive into the fast moving world of a technology start-up”, explains he.

After a while, he was able to get the company’s software on the Mastercard Brazil business tool platform. This opened doors to companies and was a great reference to be perceived as a secure and premium expense software. It also helped the company to adapt its product to suit the local market.

How he benefited

Before his Prince Albert Fund project, Stefaan was working as a freelance consultant on various IT projects. Arriving in a start-up with great colleagues and a very open culture gave him the opportunity to build a team from scratch. He learned a lot about how to guide, motivate and manage people. Furthermore, he learned to focus more on building business relations and networking. “This experience was a perfect mix of operational challenges, improving my personal skills, sales skills, teaching me how to come up with creative solutions, financial planning and so much more. I will probably only understand the scope of what I learnt in the years to come”, he says.