If you have issues with the sound, the voice is in one channel and the music in a different one.
Toon Vanagt is the founder of data.be, a Belgian startup that has created an intelligent search engine for all public data about companies in the country.  He’s one of the pillars of our coworking community, and also of Belgian startups (go #betech!). He met his cofounder, Eric Rodriguez, in our building during the first ever Startup Weekend Brussels that we organized and since then we have spent a lot of time together advancing our companies, projects and ideas. He has helped me a lot with Betacowork and I could never thank him enough for the conversations we’ve had in his car.
 
[Tweet “A Belgian entrepreneur to follow @Toon #betech #beproud”]
Data.be’s story is linked in many more ways to Betacowork. They’ve made a partnership with another startup of our coworking space: edebex.com. One of their first employees was found thanks to a conversation during the #betacooks. Toon has also found the cofounder for his new project lex.be: Erik De Herdt, one of the many lawyers working from Betacowork. Lex is an intelligent search engine for all the case law (jurisprudence) in Belgium build on top of the engine that they have created for data.be and that is already working with almost two million documents.
[Tweet “Interesting Belgian big data and machine learning startups: @databe @belgiumlex”]
Toon’s life has been linked to our building since he was a student representative in the VUB. He was part of the people that worked to ensure that the building did not go to waste. It took years, but his efforts paid off 🙂
[Tweet “Learn about #fintech and #betech from @Toon”]
PS: those shoes are a limited edition sneakers. We only made 15 pairs (with my choice of colors) for the 4th anniversary of Betacowork to thank the people that have been important and helpful in the development of our coworking community.